Suspected Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann will reportedly face a new charge Thursday following a recent weeklong search at his Massapequa Park home.
Multiple news outlets have reported that the 60-year-old suspect is set to face a new murder charge, but it was not immediately clear who the victim was.
Heuermann was arrested in July 2023 and charged with the murders of three of the Gilgo Four: Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy, and Amber Lynn Costello – and named a suspect in the murder of the fourth, Maureen Brainard-Barnes. He was charged with the murder of Maureen Brainard-Barnes in January. He pleaded not guilty to all four murders.
Following the fourth indictment, Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney told reporters that the grand jury investigation would be continuing into the other unsolved murders on Gilgo Beach.
The Gilgo Four were all discovered bound and fully intact on Ocean Parkway in December 2010 while searching for Shannan Gilbert, a woman who went missing on Oak Beach in 2010 and was found dead in December 2011. Gilbert’s cause of death is unclear, but her family believes she was killed.
The rest of the victims were found in spring of 2011.
They include “Fire Island Jane Doe” Karen Vergata, whose dismembered partial remains had been found on Fire Island in 1996 and turned up on Tobay Beach in 2011, “Peaches,” whose torso was found at Hempstead Lake State Park in 1997 and whose additional remains were found on Jones Beach in 2011, “Baby Doe,” a toddler confirmed to be Peaches’ daughter who was found on Gilgo Beach, an unidentified Asian male, and Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack, whose dismembered partial remains were found in 2003 and 2000 in Manorville, respectively, and found on Gilgo in 2011.
The difference in modus operandi between the Gilgo Four and the dismembered victims caused many people through the years to speculate if the bodies on Gilgo Beach were the work of more than one serial killer. Notably, however, former Suffolk Police Commissioner Richard Dormer, the top cop at the time of discovery, repeatedly said he believed it was all the work of one killer.
It is currently not known which murder Heuermann will be charged with. However, this comes after a multi-agency search in the Manorville woods, where Taylor and Mack’s partial remains had both been found. That search, which included Suffolk police, state police, and New York City police, also extended to North Sea, where the remains of Sandra Costilla were found in 1993. Costilla is typically thought of as a victim of convicted double-murderer John Bittrolff – who was from Manorville – but no one was ever charged with her murder.
It was not confirmed what police were searching for in Manorville, nor what was found. Mere weeks after that search, police once again descended on Heuermann’s Massapequa Park home. It was, again, not confirmed what they were looking for, although the Press observed many items being taken out of the home. The Suffolk County Medical Examiner, as well as Tierney himself, were both spotted on the scene.
Heuermann will appear in front of Suffolk County Judge Timothy Mazzei in Riverhead on Thursday.
– With Timothy Bolger
Related Stories:
Police Search of Massapequa Park Home of Alleged Gilgo Beach Serial Killer
Manorville Search Hits One Week Mark; DA Won’t Confirm If It’s Gilgo-Related
