On Friday morning, July 14, 2023, I was perusing my MacBook Air about 6:30 a.m. and wondering when my managers at PIX11 News in New York City would let me back to work.
I had returned from a trip to Italy and Ireland on July 5 and brought COVID-19 home with me, diagnosed on July 8. It was sort of an embarrassment. After taking a three week vacation--my longest in thirty years--I was out of commission for another five days with coronavirus. My quarantine had ended, but my Assistant News Director, Saul Adams, was being cautious about exposing me to colleagues.
Just after 7 a.m. on July 14, our News Director, Nicole Tindiglia, called me on my cell phone. She usually texted.
"They've got someone in the Gilgo case," she said. "Tony Mazza (a PIX11 cameraman) called us from Long Island."
The suspected serial killer was reportedly from Massapequa Park, a suburban community close to the Great South Bay. He was a 15 minute car ride from the dumping ground where ten victims were discovered in the bramble off Ocean Parkway, the first skeletons found by a K9 dog in Gilgo Beach in December 2010.
Rex Heuermann Mug Shot (Accused Long Island Serial Killer)
Photo credit: Suffolk County Sheriff's Office
My heart nearly jumped out of my chest.
I had actually made an inquiry on Thursday afternoon, July 13, about the status of the Gilgo Beach investigation. A source only revealed the FBI would be using genetic genealogy to identify more victims. Meantime, unbeknownst to me and every reporter in New York, investigators were quietly gearing up for an arrest four hours later.
I had been chasing stories about the elusive murderer, known as LISK (Long Island Serial Killer), for more than twelve years. The mysterious suspect was officially tied to the murders of eight women, one man wearing women's clothing, and a female toddler. The May 2010 disappearance of a Jersey City woman, Shannan Gilbert, spawned a periodic police search that led to the initial, horrifying finds in the dead of winter. The first women discovered were known as the Gilgo Four: Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Costello, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, and Megan Waterman. The toddler was linked through DNA to a victim known as Peaches, whose body parts were found in April 2011 on the Nassau County side of Ocean Parkway.
Some bodies were intact--and others had been dismembered--when the grisly discoveries of human remains started. A number of the victims were sex workers who had advertised on Craig's List and Backpage.
"We need to confirm it," my news director said of the purported arrest.
The phone rang and rang and rang, when I tried to reach a high-ranking law enforcement source. I had no choice; I had to try a more recent contact I'd only known since February 2023.
My second call paid off....to this impeccable source.
A suspect was in custody.
He was a white male in his late 50's from Massapequa Park, Long Island.
Cell phone data from Massapequa and midtown Manhattan had been crucial in building a case against him. We had reported more than a decade before that the unknown killer used the cell phone of victim Melissa Barthelemy, 24, to repeatedly taunt her teen sister, Amanda. One call was made from Penn Station in July 2009 on Manhattan's West Side, a hub for the Long Island Railroad and Amtrak.
We rushed a camera crew to First Avenue in Massapequa Park, where the suspect--later identified as architect Rex Heuermann--lived with his wife and two adult children.
And in that rush to start delivering the news for the 8 a.m. lead story, armed with solid details about the suspect, cell phone data, and the history of the investigation, I made the assumption, in my initial reporting over cell phone, that the person of interest was arrested at home that morning. That's because a flood of local and state police vans had shown up about 5:30 a.m. outside Heuermann's ramshackle red house, which was something of an eyesore on First Avenue in Massapequa Park. Investigators carried search warrants and a number of them wore white Tyvek suits. They would ultimately break open sinks and bathtubs, and dig up the backyard, in the original search that lasted twelve days.
Heuermann had actually been surrounded around 8:30 p.m. the night before, near his office on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. He was then taken to Suffolk County Police Headquarters in Yaphank, Long Island.
Investigators had recorded the takedown; Rex Heuermann didn't bother to resist.
Friday morning, I threw on my N95 face mask and drove the roughly sixty miles from my home to the criminal courthouse in Riverhead, Long Island, where the suspect was scheduled to appear. I was extremely eager to see what he looked like. An indictment was set to be unsealed in the afternoon.
While waiting on line, Tania Lopez, Director of Communications for Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney, handed me a 32 page affidavit, which was assembled to convince the judge that Heuermann didn't deserve bail.
The details in the documents were stunning, to say the least.
The affidavit revealed that Rex Heuermann had been isolated as a person of interest in March 2022, not long after victim Amber Costello's roommate was interviewed a second time about events before her 2010 disappearance. The roommate said on September 1, 2010, he walked into their West Babylon home to discover a large man who looked like an 'ogre.' The witness told investigators he had played the role of outraged boyfriend to scare the 'john' away, after the client had already paid Costello for expected services.
The roommate recalled seeing a dark green, first generation Chevy Avalanche.
My heart was pounding when the courtroom filled with victims' relatives. Megan Waterman's daughter, now a teenager, was among them. So was Melissa Barthelemy's sister, Amanda--who had been taunted by the alleged killer on the phone--and Melissa Cann, the sister of Maureen Brainard-Barnes.
Journalists like myself filled the first two rows; District Attorney Tierney entered the well to make the argument for no bail.
Shortly after Judge Richard Ambro took the bench, a hulking and shackled Rex Heuermann entered the courtroom, still wearing the khaki pants and grey polo shirt he was arrested in. He looked expressionless, and I was struck by his large size. His hair was scraggly and D.A. Tierney estimated Heuermann stood between six foot four and six foot six. I would say closer to six foot six. His known, alleged victims were mostly petite, some less than five feet tall.
District Attorney Tierney explained to the court a male hair tied genetically to Rex Heuermann was found on the burlap used to bind victim, Megan Waterman.
Four female hairs were discovered on three victims: two on Megan Waterman, one hair on tape that had bound Amber Costello, and another hair on the belt buckle used to restrain Maureen Brainard-Barnes, a mom of two.
It emerged that three hairs were linked to Heuermann's wife, Asa Ellerup, and it would be six months before we learned that the female hair on Costello was consistent with the DNA of Heuermann's daughter, Victoria.
Raymond Tierney said Heuermann's family was out of town when every murder was committed, and the initial indictment charged Heuermann with killing Waterman, Barthelemy, and Costello. D.A. Tierney said Heuermann was the prime suspect in the murder of Brainard-Barnes.
Police had staked out a trash can outside Rex Heuermann's office to retrieve a discarded pizza crust and napkin that was tested for DNA and tied Heuermann to Waterman's crime scene.
Tierney later announced Heuermann had used a separate 'burner' phone for each murder. Heuermann was recorded on surveillance footage buying additional minutes for a burner in the days before his arrest, and those images were contained in the bail affidavit. The documents also shared a phony Tinder account allegedly set up by Heuermann, using the name Andrew Roberts.
Perhaps most disturbingly, another fake e-mail account showed thousands of searches related to "sex workers, sadistic torture-related pornography and child pornography."
Some of the subjects Heuermann allegedly searched included "girl begging for rape porn, Asian twink tied up porn, girl hog tied torture porn." D.A. Tierney said Heuermann also obsessively searched for articles about the Gilgo Beach investigation, victims, and their families.
When a large gaggle of local and national media surrounded Rex Heuermann's appointed attorney outside the courthouse last July 14, Michael Brown stated that Heuermann was crying when they met and said, "I didn't do this."
Then-Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison, who had joined the department in late 2021, called Heuermann "a demon that walks among us, a predator that ruined families."
A year after the arrest, Rex Heuermann remains locked up in Riverhead's Suffolk County Jail, and he's been charged with three additional murders: Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Jessica Taylor, and Sandra Costilla.
District Attorney Tierney alleged in a June 6, 2024 bail affidavit that Rex Heuermann's hair was found on murder victim Costilla's shirt in December 1993 at a Southampton crime scene and that her body had been mutilated with a sharp instrument about 25 times. The D.A. added that one of Heuermann's hairs was also on a surgical tarp under the dismembered body of Jessica Taylor in July 2003. The superseding indictment made it clear: prosecutors believe Heuermann started killing people more than 30 years ago.
Sandra Costilla, murdered in 1993, and Jessica Taylor, who was killed in 2003.
The most sensational information to come out on June 6, 2024 was the revelation that Heuermann allegedly made a Microsoft Word document to "methodically blue print and plan out his kills." It was titled HK2002-04, but the investigation indicated it was likely created in 2000.
The file was discovered through 'computer forensic extraction' in unallocated space.
There had been an attempt to delete it, but the computer experts found it.
Called the HK Planning Document, prosecutors alleged Heuermann prepared for the murders meticulously to avoid being captured and used the acronym DS to speak of dump sites and TRG to plan for targets.
The planning document made reference to Mill Road, which is close to where the torsos of Gilgo victims Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack were discovered in Manorville, their bodies dismembered and ravaged in much the same way, three years apart. Both were decapitated, with their arms severed beneath the elbows.
The document's 'prep' section talked of having a set-up stage and "hard point," which prosecutors believe is tied to 'sexual suspension bondage,' where a victim would be held against their will to a "fixed attachment point in the ceiling that supports the weight of an individual being suspended off the ground."
The document also reminded the author not to spend too much time in the area where he hunts for victims and "remember don't charge gas." There's also a notation to "remove head and hands," which caused prosecutors to note "clearly relates to the condition of Jessica Taylor's and Valerie Mack's remains..."
The District Attorney's office also included a photo of a book written by FBI profiler, John Douglas, and co-writer, Mark Olshaker, called "The Cases That Haunt Us," which was found in Heuermann's house.
Prosecutors said Heuermann's alleged HK planning document quoted Douglas extensively on the issue of sex substitution, citing page 162 of one book discussing "rather horrible sexual mutilation and masturbation over (the victim's) body, but "no intercourse."
Perhaps this is too much information to process, but prosecutors note it's evidence of Rex Heuermann's depravity, which they believe was acted out in the basement of his home, when his family was away. Heuermann has pleaded 'not guilty' to all six of the murders he's been charged with, so far. He remains the prime suspect in Valerie Mack's killing and dismemberment.
A year after Heuermann's arrest, I no longer work in local TV news, but I am still pursuing my journalism and following his case closely. My instincts are to keep digging for information on other murders he could be tied to, even as I struggle to understand his psyche.
In the week after Heuermann's arrest last July 13th, I had spoken with renowned, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Park Dietz, who once consulted in the case of serial killer, Joel Rifkin, another Long Island resident.
"The most common, sexual motive for serial killers is sexual sadism," Dr. Dietz noted. "Becoming the god to that victim is the offender's primal goal."
Read the full June 6, 2024 bail affidavit -
Read the first July 14, 2023 bail affidavit -
It was certainly a day not to be forgotten. Thank you for all of your reporting over the years, congratulations on the website and your continued presence in this space. You bring responsible investigative journalism in a much needed environment.