Rex Heuermann to plead guilty in the Gilgo Beach killings, ending long search for a serial killer

A Long Island architect accused in a string of long-unsolved slayings known as the Gilgo Beach killings is expected to plead guilty on Wednesday, closing a case that bedeviled investigators, agonized victims’ relatives and tantalized a true-crime obsessed public for years.

Rex Heuermann, 62, is charged with murdering seven women, many of them sex workers, over a 17-year span. A guilty plea would put him in prison for the rest of his life.

His decision to plead guilty was confirmed by three people familiar with it. They spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because the plea has yet to be entered in court. Heuermann will be sentenced at a later date.

Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney has scheduled a news conference for Wednesday afternoon, following a morning court hearing. He will be joined by members of victims’ families and of the Gilgo Beach Homicide Investigation Task Force, which cracked the case with the help of clues that included DNA lifted from a discarded pizza crust.

A message seeking comment was left for Heuermann’s lawyer, Michael Brown.

The Gilgo Beach investigation began in earnest in 2010 after police found numerous sets of human remains along a remote beach highway on Long Island’s South Shore, setting off a search for a potential serial killer that attracted global interest and spawned a Hollywood movie.

Investigators used DNA analysis and other evidence to identify victims. In some cases, they were able to connect them to remains found elsewhere on Long Island years earlier.

Remains of six victims — Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Lynn Costello, Valerie Mack, Jessica Taylor and Megan Waterman — were found in the scrub along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach. The remains of another victim, Sandra Costilla, were found more than 60 miles (100 kilometers) away in the Hamptons.

Police have also identified an eighth woman, Karen Vergata, whose remains were found on Fire Island, more than 20 miles (32 kilometers) west, in 1996, and near Gilgo Beach in 2011. Heuermann has not been charged in Vergata’s killing.

But despite the attention, including a documentary series and the 2020 Netflix film, “Lost Girls,” the investigation dragged on for more than a decade, punctuated by fleeting leads and dashed hopes.

In 2022, six weeks after a new police commissioner formed the Gilgo Beach task force, detectives identified Heuermann as a suspect by using a vehicle registration database to connect him to a pickup truck that a witness reported seeing when one of the victims disappeared in 2010.

Heuermann lived for decades in Massapequa Park, about a 25-minute drive across a causeway spanning South Oyster Bay to the sandy stretch where the women’s remains were found. Some of the victims were believed to have disappeared from that community and their cellphones were found to have pinged towers in the area, authorities said.

After the truck discovery, a grand jury authorized more than 300 subpoenas and search warrants, allowing the task force to dig in to Heuermann’s life.

Detectives collected billing records for burner phones he allegedly used to arrange meetings with the victims, retested DNA found with the bodies and scoured Heuermann’s internet search history, which showed that he had viewed violent torture pornography and exhibited an intense interest in the Gilgo Beach killings and the renewed investigation. Cellphone data showed Heuermann was in contact with some victims just before they disappeared, investigators said.

To obtain Heuermann’s DNA, a task force surveillance team tailed him in Manhattan, where he worked, and watched as he threw the remnants of his lunch — a box of partially eaten pizza crusts — into a sidewalk garbage can.

Investigators rushed in, grabbed the box, and sent it to the crime lab, which matched DNA from the crust to a male hair found on burlap used to restrain one of the victims. He was arrested in July 2023.

After Heuermann’s arrest, detectives spent more than 12 days searching his yard and home, where they found a basement vault that contained 279 weapons. On his computer, investigators said, they found what they described as a “blueprint” for the killings, including a series of checklists with reminders to limit noise, clean the bodies and destroy evidence.

Last year, a judge rejected Heuermann’s bid to exclude DNA evidence obtained through advanced techniques that prosecutors say proves he’s the killer.