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The Massapequa Park architect and married father of two, was arraigned on murder charges in Suffolk County Court on Friday, July 14, in the killings of Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello.
The bodies of 10 people, including two from New Jersey and Philadelphia, are linked to the case.
Among them, 24-year-old Valerie Mack, who worked as an escort in Philadelphia as "Melissa Taylor," according to speculations following his arrest. However, no concrete evidence links Heuermann and Mack, who disappeared in March from Atlantic County in 2000.
The suspected killer could also be tied to Shannan Gilbert, a 23-year-old Craigslist escort who lived in Jersey City.
The search for Gilbert is what 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.
The Gilgo Beach case sat cold for more than a decade until a new task force was created in January 2022. The team was made up of special homicide detectives from the Suffolk County Police Department and the FBI, along with the district attorney’s office and the sheriff’s office.
Their big break came the following March, when a thorough review of all the evidence pointed them to a Chevrolet Avalanche that was registered to Heuermann at the time of the murders. A witness had described the vehicle as having been driven by Amber Costello’s killer.
But the most damning evidence came from a pizza box that Heuermann tossed into a trash can in Manhattan in January 2023. According to prosecutors, a team that was surveilling him snatched up the box and recovered a partially eaten pizza crust.
The crust was sent to the Suffolk County Crime Laboratory, which determined that DNA on it matched DNA from a man’s hair that had been found on the camouflage burlap that was used to restrain Megan Waterman,
On another occasion, police recovered female DNA from bottles outside Heuermann’s home that matched DNA that was found on some of the victims. Police determined that the DNA was that of Heuermann’s wife, who was out of the state when the killings occurred.
Investigators also linked Heuermann’s email account to dozens of disturbing search queries, including “girl begging for rape porn” and “torture redhead porn,” prosecutors said. He also reportedly looked up numerous news articles about the Gilgo Beach murders.
Heuermann was arrested by Suffolk County Police on Thursday, July 13. He is charged with three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of second-degree murder, and could face additional charges.
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