Riverhead (United States) (AFP) – A man accused of strangling and dismembering women and scattering their remains around an elite US coastal community admitted to eight murders Wednesday, resolving a decades-long mystery over the so-called Gilgo Beach killings. Rex Heuermann, 62, pleaded guilty to seven murders, plus an eighth that he had not yet been charged with, in a disturbing crime spree spanning 1993 to 2010 around Long Island near New York City.
Heuermann, an architect who was arrested in July 2023 outside his Manhattan office, had initially pleaded not guilty, raising the prospect of a lengthy trial. He entered his plea at Suffolk County Court in Riverhead on Wednesday and faces life in prison with no chance of parole when sentenced in June. Gloria Allred, an attorney representing several victims’ relatives, praised them for relentlessly pursuing justice in the notorious cold case. “What he (Heuermann) had thought was his perfect blueprint for serial murder did not take into account the courage and the persistence of the murder victims’ family members,” she told reporters.
Most of the women’s remains were found in 2010 and 2011 near Gilgo Beach, an Atlantic Ocean barrier beach on Long Island’s south shore. One victim’s body was discovered some 70 miles (110 kilometers) away in 1993. The Gilgo Beach case had stumped investigators for years with no suspects identified, and some critics alleged it would have progressed quicker had the women not been sex workers.
But in 2022, detectives narrowed their focus onto Heuermann after he was found to be the registered owner of a vehicle one of the victims had been spotted in. Since then, the case against Heuermann — a married father of two at the time of the killings — has been based on DNA evidence from a discarded pizza box and cell phone data linking him to the victims. Some of that evidence was found in his family home in Massapequa Park, a suburban village.
Heuermann also performed hundreds of internet searches about the investigation into the murders, asking questions such as “Why hasn’t the Long Island serial killer been caught?” At a news conference, district attorney Raymond Tierney painted an eerie picture of a serial killer who portrayed himself as a “harmless father.” “This defendant walked among us, play-acting as a normal suburban dad, when in reality, all along, he was obsessively targeting innocent women for death,” he said.
Suffolk County Sheriff Errol Toulon, whose jail held Heuermann as he awaited trial, gave a similar assessment. “What has been the most alarming is how ordinary Heuermann has been. It’s a chilling reminder that those capable of horrific acts can often go unnoticed,” said Toulon.
© 2024 AFP
