DNA From Pizza Crust Leads To Arrest In US Gilgo Seaside Homicide | Crime Information

It was a collection of ugly, unsolved murders that captured the general public’s consideration, placing residents of Lengthy Island, New York, on edge.

Now, on Friday, authorities in america have introduced that they’ve charged a suspect in no less than three of the deaths, offering a doable reply to a long-standing thriller.

Investigators have charged Nassau County architect Rex Heuerman, 59, within the murders of Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello.

He stays an individual of curiosity in a fourth homicide, that of Maureen Brainard-Burns. She was discovered sure and hidden in brush alongside the coastal freeway in 2010.

“Girls and gents, Rex Heverman is a demon who walks amongst us – a predator who destroyed households,” stated Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison. “If not for the members of this process power, he would nonetheless be out on the streets immediately.”

Protection lawyer Michael Brown, nevertheless, stated Heuemann advised him, “I did not do it.” Heverman, by his lawyer, has entered a plea of ​​not responsible.

Given the “excessive gravity” of the case, Suffolk County Decide Richard Umbro ordered Heuerman held in jail with out bail.

The investigation started a decade in the past, in Could 2010, when 24-year-old Shannon Gilbert disappeared after making a panicked name to emergency companies.

“Somebody’s following me,” she stated within the recording, as she left a home in Oak Seaside, Lengthy Island, the place she had been employed for intercourse work.

Her disappearance sparked a police manhunt that stretched into months. However in December of that 12 months, on a lonely seashore alongside the south shore of Lengthy Island, an officer got here throughout a set of stays: Bartholomew’s.

Over the subsequent few days, extra our bodies had been found, these of Costello, Brainard-Burns and Waterman. The ladies had been all younger – of their 20s – and all had been employed in intercourse work. Their stays had been discovered wrapped in tattered burlap-style fabric.

Because the search continued in 2011, the variety of our bodies would rise to 11, with a further 4 ladies, a person and a small little one discovered. The police stated that they imagine that many individuals are accountable.

In accordance with investigators, Heverman lived throughout the bay from the Gilgo Seaside crime scene, in an space known as Massapequa Park.

Detectives started specializing in him as a suspect in March 2022, after they found he owned a Chevrolet Avalanche pickup truck, the identical mannequin a witness had recognized on the time of the disappearance.

Later that month a surveillance crew tracked down Heuerman after he threw away some leftover pizza crust in Manhattan. Detectives then collected the crust and swabbed it for DNA, which linked it to hair recovered from the victims’ our bodies.

Police arrested Heuemann late Thursday, and by Friday morning, investigators had been scouring his small pink home on Lengthy Island.

Suffolk County District Lawyer Ray Tierney advised reporters Friday that Heverman “searched frantically” for data on-line concerning the Gilgo Seaside homicide.

Till his arrest, Tierney stated the architect used a burner cellphone to contact intercourse employees. He additionally famous that Horman allegedly had permits for 92 weapons.

“This case shouldn’t be over,” Tierney stated at a press convention Friday. “That is only the start.”

The Gilgo Seaside bloodbath has captured the general public’s consideration lately, ensuing within the Netflix collection Lacking Ladies and a true-crime podcast dissecting the case.

As she visited Lengthy Island on Friday, New York Gov. Cathy Huchel stated she hoped the arrests would assist the victims’ family members discover closure.

“This can be a day that has been a very long time coming and hopefully a day that may convey peace to this group and households – peace that has been lengthy overdue,” he stated.