Suspected Gilgo Beach Serial Killer Rex Heuermann Charged with 2000 Murder of Valerie Mack

Suspected Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann has been charged with the 2000 murder of Valerie Mack. He has pleaded not guilty.

“Your Honor, I am not guilty of any of these charges,” Heuermann told Judge Timothy Mazzei shortly after entering the courtroom, drawing a mixture of gasps and scoffs from the gallery.

In total, Heuermann now stands charged with the murders of seven people: Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Lynn Costello, Megan Waterman, Jessica Taylor, Sandra Costilla, and Valerie Mack.

Mack’s dismembered, partial remains were found in the woods Manorville, near the intersection of Mill Road and Halsey Manor Road in 2000. According to prosecutors in the superseding indictment and bail application released Tuesday, Mack’s remains were found by hunters in the Manorville woods, in several black plastic bags wrapped up in duct tape. Mack’s head, hands, and right leg were severed. Some eleven years later, all were found on Gilgo Beach, on the same side of Ocean Parkway as the others. Mack was unidentified and known as “Manorville Jane Doe” for 20 years; in 2020, law enforcement publicly identified her, and revealed she had last been seen in Port Republic, New Jersey.

According to the bail document, a hair was found on Mack which DNA testing allegedly matched to Heuermann’s estranged wife Asa Ellerup and his daughter Victoria Heuermann. Other evidence in Tuesday’s superseding indictment included a collection of newspaper articles found in Heuermann’s Massapequa Park residence related to the Gilgo Beach serial killings. Additionally, the black plastic bags Mack was found in in Manorville were similar to the ones Taylor was found in.

Heuermann also allegedly took an interest in Valerie Mack’s public identification in 2020, and accessed the now-defunct official website gilgonews.com multiple times that year for information pertaining to Mack.

“As we’ve said, we are not limiting this investigation to Gilgo Beach – we have moved off the beach,” Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney told reporters. “I think that if you had asked me back when we started this, ‘Could we potentially get to the place where we are now,’ I would say that this was a possibility and we’re very glad that we’re here.

“Valerie’s body was discovered on Nov. 19, 2000 in a wooded area off of Mill Road by hunters. From there, we worked the case. According to the bail document, we have mitochondrial DNA from a hair that was found on the body of Valerie Mack… and that hair was consistent with the mitochondrial DNA profiles of Asa Ellerup and Victoria Heuermann.”

Like other victims associated with the case, Mack, who was 24 at the time of her death, was believed to have been working as a sex worker at the time of her disappearance.

Heuermann had been officially named a suspect in Mack’s murder on June 6 – the day he was charged with the murders of Costilla and Taylor. Taylor was also found partially in Manorville and near Gilgo Beach. Mack was briefly mentioned in the indictment. Also in the June 6 indictment was a planning document investigators say was recovered from Heuermann’s house. In the document, Heuermann allegedly wrote “DS-1,” meaning dump site, and identified Mill Road as a dumping site. Heuermann also noted where cameras may be located on the Long Island Expressway. He allegedly described, in disturbing detail, his plans to kidnap, torture, murder, and dispose of the victims.

Valerie Mack’s partial remains were found in Manorville in 2003, and near Gilgo Beach in 2011.

Michael Brown, Heuermann’s court-appointed defense attorney, continues to protest Heuermann’s innocence, calling into question the validity of the DNA evidence, saying the case is circumstantial, and saying he knows, from evidence turned over, that there were other suspects prior to Heuermann’s arrest.

“They had two searches [of Heuermann’s house], two different searches,” Brown said. “They went through that house in that property with a fine tooth comb. They dug up the backyard. They went into walls, they went into pipes, they went under the cement foundation. And they have yet to show anyone any evidence in that home. They allege that weapons and tools were used. They gathered and collected all those weapons and tools. There is no evidence that any victims DNA is on any of those weapons. There’s no evidence that any of the victims DNA is on anything. But rather, they’re relying on on cutouts of articles from the New York Post and People Magazine.”

Valerie Mack was born Valerie Lyn Fulton and was eventually adopted by JoAnn and Edwin Mack. In 1994, at the age of 17, Mack gave birth to a son, and lived with the son’s father for some time, going back and forth between New Jersey and Philadelphia. She had been arrested several times for prostitution, beginning in 1996 and ending in 2000, according to investigators. It is still not currently known where Mack disappeared from prior to her death.

Edwin and JoAnn Mack were in court today, appearing alongside other victims’ families and attorney Gloria Allred, who represents several of them. They were presented with roses from other victims’ family members.

“As Queen Elizabeth once said, ‘Grief is the price that we pay for love,'” Allred said. “Even though what is alleged in the superseding indictment is stated to have taken place decades ago, the impact of the loss and the knowledge that this is not a missing person’s case, but is instead of first or second degree murder case, has caused the pain that they feel to cut to their hearts, their loss and what their loved one may have suffered before she was killed, has affected them emotionally and in some cases, physically as well, even now, decades later, in 2024. None of the victims deserve to die. They were all innocent, and they were just trying to earn some funds to support themselves and their families. They were and they are loved and they are missed every day by those who knew them and who had a strong bond with them.”

Edwin and JoAnn Mack are given a rose and embraced by Jasmine Robinson, cousin of Jessica Taylor.Photo by Michael Malaszczyk

With the charges for Valerie Mack, Heuermann now stands charged with 7 murders – to all of which he has pleaded not guilty.

When he was first arrested in July 2023, he was charged with the murders of Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, and Amber Lynn Costello, and named a suspect in the murder of Maureen Brainard-Barnes. All four had been found fully intact on Gilgo Beach in December 2010.

In January 2024, Heuermann was charged with Brainard-Barnes’s murder.

In April, investigators conducted a multiagency search of the Manorville woods, apparently in connection with the Gilgo investigation, and in May conducted a second search of Heuermann’s Massapequa Park home.

In June, Heuermann was charged with the murder of Jessica Taylor, whose dismembered, partial remains had been found in Manorville in 2003, and near Gilgo Beach in 2011. He was also charged with the murder of Sandra Costilla, who had been found dead in North Sea in 1993. Costilla had long been considered a likely victim of convicted double-murderer John Bittrolff, a carpenter from Manorville, before Heuermann was charged.

There are still as many as four victims traditionally associated with the Gilgo Beach serial killer case who are unaccounted for in terms of charges. Tierney refused to name Heuermann as a suspect in any of them when asked Tuesday, but asserted the investigation is continuing.

Three victims in the case remain unidentified. Those include Peaches, whose dismembered, partial remains were found at Hempstead Lake State Park in 1997 and on Jones Beach in 2011, Baby Doe, a toddler who was found roughly 250 feet from Mack’s remains near Gilgo Beach in 2011 and who was revealed to be Peaches’s daughter, and Asian Doe, a biologically male individual who may have identified as a woman who was found on Gilgo in 2011.

In September, the Gilgo Task Force released updated renderings of Asian Doe, and put information out in several different languages seeking help in identifying them.

At that same press conference, Tierney told the Press that the Task Force was working with Nassau law enforcement to identify Peaches and her daughter.

Also unaccounted for is “Fire Island Jane Doe” Karen Vergata, whose remains were found on Fire Island in 1996 and on Tobay Beach in 2011. Her identity was revealed in August 2023, several weeks after Heuermann’s arrest.