39°
Rex Heuermann, 59, of Massapequa Park was seized after authorities matched his DNA during a full-scale investigation of what became known as the Gilgo Beach murders.
What began as a search for Shannan Gilbert, a 23-year-old Craigslist escort who lived in Jersey City, led to the discovery of the skeletal remains of four victims along a sandy stretch of Long Island highway in 2010.
Overall, police had the murders of nine young women, a man and a toddler on their hands, as well as questions of whether the same predator was or wasn't responsible. The cold-case killings made headlines and became the focus of a Netflix film, "Lost Girls," in 2020.
Although authorities haven't connected Heuermann to Gilbert's death, it was the search for her that triggered a chain reaction of events that ultimately led directly to Heuermann's arrest.
Her driver had taken Gilbert from Manhattan to meet a client at the gated Oak Beach Association community at the eastern end of Jones Beach Island early on May 1, 2010, police said.
Original police reports said that Gilbert left the home at the client's request, then knocked on some doors and spoke with a couple of neighbors.
That was the last anyone saw her.
A K-9 officer and his cadaver dog were searching for Gilbert's body when they found another woman's remains near Gilgo Beach along Ocean Parkway, between Jones Beach State Park and Captree State Park on Long Island's South Shore.
The remains of three other victims were found the same week. They, like the first, had been wrapped in burlap bags, police said.
Within months the number of discovered victims had climbed to nearly a dozen.
Some of the remains found in those subsequent months were tied to other dismembered body parts that turned up elsewhere on the island. That only deepened the mystery.
Gilbert's body was found in December 2011 -- 19 months after she went missing -- about three miles from where the other 10 sets of remains were discovered.
Then came the release of a 911 call from an anxious Gilbert shortly before 5 in the morning on the day she disappeared.
"Something is going to happen to me," she tells a dispatcher. "Please get me out of here. I want to go home. Somebody's after me.
"I don't know where I am. I am inside a house. I don't know where I am. Can you trace where I am?" she asks desperately.
Gilbert is still on the phone when she knocks on the door of a neighbor. He then calls 911 himself, telling of a young girl who is "running around here screaming, and there's some guy trying to follow her."
Authorities ruled Gilbert's death a "tragic accident" and not the result of foul play, although family members have believed ever since that she was slain.
Investigators have also said over the years that they didn't believe one person was responsible for all the killings.
A task force that was assigned to the murders early last year united investigators from the FBI, New York State, multiple counties and several local police departments.
Little more was heard about it until the news on Friday, July 14, of Heuermann's arrest the day before on a midtown Manhattan street.
Heuermann, who was ordered held pending trial, founded and owns RH Consultants and Associates, an architectural firm that services, among others, American Airlines and Catholic Charities, according to its website.
A North Jersey architect who used Heurermann's firm for code consulting work in Manhattan described him as a "very bright guy who's fairly expert in the many codes and regulations unique to New York City."
"He very good at what he does," the business owner told Daily Voice, "but he always seemed a bit on the manic side."
The task force that was created in January 2022 quickly zeroed in on a Chevy Avalanche described by a witness following one of the murders. It turns out it had been registered to Heuermann, who lives across a bay from where some of the remains were found.
The big break came this past January after a surveillance team that was watching Heuermann retrieved a pizza box he'd tossed into a trash can.
The Suffolk County Crime Laboratory matched DNA on a partially eaten piece of crust to a hair found on burlap that investigators said had been used to bind victims.
Other DNA found on some of the victims matched Heuermann's wife's, authorities said. She'd been away when the killing occurred, they said.
A secret grand jury was empaneled in Suffolk County to secure more than 300 subpoenas and search warrants.
Heuermann is charged with three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of second-degree murder. Additional charges were expected.
Click here to follow Daily Voice Bergenfield and receive free news updates.
