Police haul more items from home of man charged in Gilgo Beach killings

MASSAPEQUA PARK, N.Y. (AP) — Police carted more boxes of potential evidence Tuesday out of the Long Island home of Rex Heuermann, who has been charged with killing at least three women and leaving their remains alongside a remote stretch of beach highway.

Items pulled out of Heuermann’s home in Massapequa Park in recent days have included more than 200 firearms, a large doll in a glass case, a large portrait of a woman with a bruised face and a filing cabinet.

Investigators, some dressed in “crime lab” T-shirts and protective suits, were seen Tuesday carting away a desktop computer, a large picture frame, a mirror and many other household items.

It remains to be seen whether any of those items will help authorities build their case against Heuermann, an architect who was charged Friday with murdering three women and was said by a prosecutor to be a suspect in a fourth slaying.

Heuermann has denied killing the women, according to his attorney, Michael Brown.

Since his arrest, Heuermann has been on suicide watch at the Suffolk County Correctional Facility, according to a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office. The designation, which requires “high security measures” and close observation, came following an evaluation by county medical staff, according to the spokesperson, Vicki DiStefano.

The charges were a remarkable development in one of New York’s most notorious mysteries.

Starting in 2010, police searching for a missing woman near Long Island’s Gilgo Beach discovered 10 sets of human remains scattered along a long barrier island. The dead included eight women, one man and a young child.

Authorities concluded it was unlikely one person killed all of those victims, but that several of the bodies found relatively close together appeared to have been the likely work of a serial killer.

Heuermann, 59, is accused of murdering Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Costello and Megan Waterman. Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said investigators are continuing to work toward charging him in the death of a fourth victim, Maureen Brainard-Barnes. All four women had been sex workers. Their bodies were found along the same quarter-mile (0.4-kilometer) stretch of Ocean Parkway.

Investigators in the case have also searched storage units that had been rented by Heuermann, who also owned undeveloped land in South Carolina and a timeshare condominium in Las Vegas.

The missing woman whose disappearance prompted the police search that led to the accidental discovery of the Gilgo Beach remains, Shannan Gilbert, was herself found dead in a nearby coastal marsh in 2011.

Suffolk Police concluded that she drowned accidentally — a finding her family has not accepted, believing she was also killed.