STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Rex Heuermann, 59, has been arrested in connection with the serial killings of multiple people whose bodies were found more than a decade ago near Gilgo and Oak beaches on Long Island, according to the Associated Press.
Heuermann, an architect, was taken into custody in Massapequa late Thursday near where investigators were seen on Friday searching his home, the Associated Press reported.
The suspect has been living for decades across a bay from where some of the remains of 11 people were buried, according to the Associated Press.
Heuermann was scheduled to be arraigned Friday in state court in Riverhead. A message seeking comment by the Associated Press was left with his lawyer. Voice and email messages were left by the Associated Press at Heuermann’s Manhattan office and at possible numbers for his home and family Friday.
The sister of victim Shannan Gilbert, whose status as a missing person launched the search that unearthed the bodies, told NBC News that she was “relieved that they finally caught him.”
“It’s been a long time coming & I never gave up hope that one day justice would be served,” Sherre Gilbert said in an email to NBC News. “I’m just happy it happened sooner rather than later. The suspect (Rex) deserves to rot in prison for the rest of his life. He destroyed many lives so while it won’t bring our loved ones back, it does help that one less monster is off the streets and he can’t ever hurt anyone else!”
Heuermann “flew under the radar” in high school, a former classmate and neighborhood who was in the same homeroom as the suspect told The New York Post on Friday.
“[I’m] sick to my stomach,” the individual, who graduated alongside Heuermann with Berner High School’s Class of 1981, said of the shocking arrest.
The Post said that Heuermann is married with children.
“He lives a couple blocks away from me,” the classmate told the Post. “You hear about this and then all of a sudden you find out it’s a former classmate and a neighbor … it’s shocking.”
This undated photo, provided by John Ray Law, Friday, July 14, 2023, shows Shannan Gilbert, whose remains were found along at Gilgo Beach, on New York's Long Island, decades ago. A man arrested in connection with a long-unsolved string of killings, known as the Gilgo Beach murders, has been identified as Rex Heuermann, an architect living across a bay from where some of the bodies were found, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press, Friday. (John Ray Law via AP) APAP
SHOCKING DISCOVERY
Human remains from multiple people were found in Suffolk and Nassau counties after police began searching along Ocean Parkway for Shannan Gilbert, a 23-year-old escort who vanished in 2010 after leaving a client’s house in Oak Beach, according to CBS News.
“Years before the 2010 discovery of one set of human remains at Oak Beach in Suffolk County, 10 people fell victim to suspected homicide,” according to the Suffolk County Police website. “Multiple females, one male, and a toddler were robbed of their lives between 1996 and 2010.
“The pursuit of a 2010 missing persons search [Gilbert] unveiled their remains across Long Island; and, one of the most consequential homicide investigations in the history of Long Island began.”
Authorities were searching for Gilbert over a span of about eight months when, on Dec. 11, 2010, a Suffolk County Police Department Canine Unit uncovered human remains later identified as Melissa Barthelemy, 24, along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach, according to the website.
Two days later, three additional victims were located along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach and later identified as Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, Amber Lynn Costello, 27, and Megan Waterman, 22.
“All four women worked as Craigslist escorts and were last seen between July 2007 and September 2010,” according to the police website.
As the search continued for Gilbert, partial remains of Jessica Taylor, another woman who worked as an escort, were discovered on March 29, 2011, several miles east of where the four other women were found.
The discovery of Taylor’s remains led to the first connection between the Gilgo homicides and Manorville where some of her other remains were found on July 26, 2003.
On April 4, 2011, three more sets of remains were found on Ocean Parkway in Suffolk County. One set was of a female toddler, another was a still unidentified Asian male, and the third remains eventually were identified as Valerie Mack, 24.
A week later, the investigation uncovered two additional sets of remains along Ocean Parkway in neighboring Nassau County. One set, through DNA analysis, was confirmed to be the mother of the female toddler. The mother’s partial remains were first discovered in Hempstead Lake State Park in 1997 and she has become known as “Peaches” due to a bitten heart-shaped tattoo of a peach on her body, according to the police website.
“Peaches has not yet been identified by authorities.
The other set of remains discovered in Nassau County along Ocean Parkway was genetically matched with remains discovered in 1996 in Davis Park on Fire Island. She has not been identified.
Suffolk County Police provided this map showing where multiple human remains were found in and around Gilgo and Oak beaches on Long Island in 2010 and 2011. (Courtesy of Suffolk County Police)
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