Gilgo Beach serial killings

• 1. Introduction

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  The Gilgo Beach serial killings came to light because of a frightened phone call placed at 4:51 in the morning on the 1st of May 2010. Shannan Gilbert, a 24-year-old escort, rang 911 from a client's property in the gated community of Oak Beach, in Suffolk County, New York. She told the dispatcher that someone was "after her" and that "they" were trying to kill her. She did not say where she was. Soon afterward she was last seen running into the night. The search for Gilbert led police to something far larger. Along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach, and in nearby parts of Suffolk and Nassau counties, they found the remains of ten victims. The murders behind those discoveries were spread across Long Island between 1993 and 2010. Who was responsible? Why did it take more than a decade to name a suspect? And what actually happened to Gilbert herself?

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• 2. The Gilgo Four

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  Maureen Brainard-Barnes, a 25-year-old mother of two from Norwich, Connecticut, was last seen on the 9th of July 2007. She said she planned "to spend the day in New York City." She worked as a seasonal telemarketer. When other jobs did not come, she advertised as a sex worker on Craigslist to cover her mortgage. She had stayed out of that work for seven months, until an eviction notice pushed her back. That night she phoned a friend in Connecticut and said she would meet a client outside the Manhattan Super 8 motel where she was working. At 4 ft 11 in and 105 lb, she was very petite, as were many of the victims. Her remains were among four found in December 2010 in close proximity. Together the four came to be called the Gilgo Four.

  Melissa Barthelemy, 24, from Erie County, New York, went missing on the 12th of July 2009. She was living in the Bronx and advertising through Craigslist under the alias "Chloe". On her last night she met a client, deposited $900 in her bank account, and tried to phone an ex-boyfriend without reaching him. She stood 4 ft 10 in and weighed 95 lb. Her remains were the first discovered during the search for Gilbert.

  Megan Waterman, 22, from Scarborough, Maine, vanished on the 6th of June 2010 after posting escort advertisements on Craigslist. The day before, she told her boyfriend she was going out and would call him later. She was staying at a motel in Hauppauge, 15 miles northeast of Gilgo Beach. On the 8th of June she was reported missing, because she had stopped checking in on her three-year-old daughter, who was with family. Her boyfriend was arrested on sex-trafficking charges on the 11th of April 2012, though he is not believed to be connected to her death.

  Amber Lynn Costello, 27, of West Babylon, New York, went missing on the 2nd of September 2010. She left to meet a stranger who had phoned her several times and offered $2,500 for her services. She was born in Charlotte and raised in Wilmington, North Carolina, and had been a strong student before drug addiction took hold in her teens. She later lived in Clearwater, Florida, with her second husband and worked as a waitress. Her family believed she was in a residential drug rehabilitation center, so they did not report her missing right away. In fact she was living in West Babylon with several other heroin users.

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• 3. Voices on the Phone

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  Soon after Brainard-Barnes disappeared, her friend Sara Karnes answered a call from a man on a blocked number. He claimed he had seen Brainard-Barnes, that she was alive, and that she was staying at a "whorehouse in Queens." He would not give his name or say where. Karnes asked him to call back from a number police could trace, so they could act on what he said. He agreed. He never called again. Karnes reported that he had no discernible regional accent.

  A far crueler series of calls followed Barthelemy's disappearance. Beginning one week later and lasting five weeks, her 15-year-old sister received "vulgar, mocking, and insulting" calls from a man using Barthelemy's phone. He asked whether the girl "was a whore like her sister." The calls escalated. At the end, the caller said Barthelemy was dead and that he was going to "watch her rot."

  Police traced some of the calls to Madison Square Garden, to Midtown Manhattan, and to Massapequa. They could not identify the caller. Barthelemy's mother noted that her daughter's phone had made "a lot of calls to Manorville" around the time she disappeared. Manorville, a town on the eastern side of Long Island, would turn up again in the story of other victims.

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• 4. Spring Discoveries

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  Four more sets of remains turned up on the 29th of March and the 4th of April 2011, in another stretch off the parkway near Oak Beach and Gilgo Beach. All lay within 2 miles east of the December finds. They belonged to Jessica Taylor, Valerie Mack, Tanya Jackson, and Jackson's daughter, Tatiana Dykes. Suffolk County Police then widened the search to the Nassau County border. On the 11th of April 2011, two more sets of remains surfaced there, about a mile apart and roughly 5 miles west of the December discoveries.

  Jessica Taylor, 20, was living in Manhattan when she went missing on the 21st of July 2003. Five days later her torso was found in Manorville, 45 miles east of Gilgo Beach. It lay on a pile of scrap wood at the end of a paved access road off Halsey Manor Road. Plastic sheeting was beneath it, and a tattoo on her body had been mutilated with a sharp instrument. DNA analysis identified her later that year. She had worked in Washington, D.C., and Manhattan, and was last seen near the Port Authority Bus Terminal between the 18th and the 22nd of July. In 2011 her skull, hands, and forearm were matched to her.

  Valerie Mack's case began with a torso found wrapped in garbage bags in Manorville on the 19th of November 2000. It lay in woods near the junction of Halsey Manor Road and Mill Road, beside power lines. A head, right foot, and hands found on the 4th of April 2011 were labeled "Jane Doe No. 6." In 2020 officials determined that all of it belonged to one woman. On the 28th of May 2020, police announced her name. Mack was 24, stood about 5 ft, and weighed about 100 lb. She also used the name Melissa Taylor, though she and Jessica Taylor were not related. Mack had been in foster care from an early age and was never reported missing. She was an escort in Philadelphia and the mother of a young son. Family last saw her in spring or summer 2000, in the Port Republic, New Jersey, area. Her remains and Taylor's had been disposed of in a similar manner, in the same part of Manorville.

  Karen Vergata, 34, from Manhattan, is believed to have been working as a sex worker when she disappeared around the 14th of February 1996. No one reported her missing. Her severed legs were found in a garbage bag on Fire Island on the 20th of April 1996. Fifteen years later, on the 11th of April 2011, her skull and several teeth were recovered at Tobay Beach. DNA linked the two finds. For 27 years she was known as "Jane Doe No. 7" and "Fire Island Jane Doe." Genetic genealogy finally gave her a name in 2023. It has been suggested that her legs drifted to Fire Island after her remains were dumped on Long Island.

  Another set of remains belonged to a young Asian person who had died from blunt-force trauma. The victim had XY chromosomes and was wearing women's clothing, so may have been a trans woman. Investigators estimated an age of 17 to 23, a height between 5 ft 3 in and 5 ft 9 in, and four missing teeth. The person may have had a musculoskeletal condition affecting gait and was likely ethnically Han Chinese. Investigators estimated the death occurred five to 10 years before the discovery. Police released a male-presenting composite sketch in September 2011 and a female-presenting rendering in September 2024. The victim remains unidentified.

  Tanya Denise Jackson was born in Alabama on the 22nd of October 1970 and served in the US Army from July 1993 to February 1995. She was living in Brooklyn in 1997 when she disappeared with her 2-year-old daughter, Tatiana Marie Dykes. Jackson was estranged from her family and was never reported missing. Her dismembered torso was found on the 28th of June 1997 at Hempstead Lake State Park in Lakeview, New York, inside a green plastic Rubbermaid container. A tattoo of a heart-shaped peach with a bite taken out of it earned her the nickname "Peaches." In 2011, remains found in a plastic bag near Jones Beach State Park were designated "Jane Doe No. 3." DNA analysis in December 2016 showed the two were the same woman. It also showed that "Baby Doe," found wearing gold jewelry like her mother's, was her daughter. After 28 years unnamed, both were identified in early 2025. That December, the girl's father, Andrew Dykes, was arrested and charged with the murders of Jackson and their daughter. Police no longer believe their deaths are connected to the Long Island serial killings.

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• 5. A Death Disputed

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  In December 2011-19 months after her disappearance, Shannan Gilbert's remains were found in a marsh between Oak Beach and Ocean Parkway. The spot was about half a mile from where she had last been seen. Her death has never been conclusively tied to the other victims. In May 2012, Suffolk County medical examiners ruled that she had accidentally drowned after wandering into the marsh. Yet the official autopsy lists the cause of death as "undetermined."

  Her mother, Mari Gilbert, who has since died, publicly argued that a serial killer had murdered her daughter. She also criticized police for failing to identify a perpetrator. In September 2014, forensic pathologist Michael Baden agreed to carry out an independent autopsy. He found damage to the hyoid bone that suggested strangulation might have occurred. He also noted that the body lay face-up, which is not common among drowning victims. Even so, her death is still officially listed as an accident.

  The 911 recording became its own fight. On the 6th of May 2020, the New York State Supreme Court ordered Suffolk County Police to release it, rejecting their request to keep it withheld after more than 10 years. Police finally made the recording public on the 13th of May 2022.

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• 6. Friction and False Leads

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  On the 10th of December 2015, Suffolk County Police Commissioner Tim Sini announced that the FBI had officially joined the investigation. The announcement came one day after former police chief James Burke was indicted for civil rights violations and conspiracy. Burke had resigned in October 2015. He was reported to have blocked FBI involvement in the Gilgo Beach cases for years. The bureau had helped search for victims before, but had never been formally part of the case. In November 2016, Burke was sentenced to 46 months in federal prison for assault and conspiracy. Other friction between agencies and failures to cooperate also hindered the investigation over the years.

  Profiling offered little certainty. According to a 2011 article in The New York Times, the killer was most likely a white man in his mid-twenties to mid-forties. He would know the South Shore of Long Island well and have access to the burlap sacks used to hold the bodies. Investigators entertained various theories about whether more than one killer was involved.

  On the 12th of September 2017, Suffolk County prosecutor Robert Biancavilla named a person of interest. John Bittrolff, a Suffolk County resident, had been convicted of murdering two sex workers and was suspected in a third death. Biancavilla said Bittrolff may have committed some of the Gilgo Beach murders. Bittrolff had been arrested in 2014 after his DNA turned up on the bodies of Rita Tangredi and Colleen McNamee, found in 1993 and 1994. The match came through DNA submitted by his brother, who was convicted in an unrelated case in 2013. Bittrolff was convicted in May 2017 and sentenced that September to consecutive 25-year terms. He lived in Manorville, where the torsos of Taylor and Mack were recovered. Tangredi's adult daughter was also the best friend of Barthelemy. His attorney rejected the prosecutor's assertion.

  On the 16th of January 2020, Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart released images of a belt with the letters "HM" or "WH" embossed in black leather, depending on its orientation. It had been found near Ocean Parkway during the initial investigation. Police believed the perpetrator had handled it and that it had not belonged to any victim. They launched a tip website at the same time, which has since been taken down. The break, when it came, would have more to do with a vehicle than a belt.

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• 7. The Architect

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  In March 2022, investigators began to consider Rex Heuermann a suspect. A dark green, first-generation Chevrolet Avalanche registered in his name matched a vehicle a witness had described in one of the killings. Costello's roommate had earlier given police a description of her client and the Avalanche he drove. That detail sat in the file for more than a decade.

  Rex Andrew Heuermann was born on the 13th of September 1963 in Massapequa Park, on Long Island's South Shore, to Theodore and Dolores Heuermann. Childhood acquaintances recalled a "momma's boy" who was extremely close to a mother they described as controlling. His father, a World War II veteran and former Air Force second lieutenant, died in 1975, when Rex was twelve. In 1994, Heuermann bought his childhood home from his mother for $170,000. He lived there until his arrest in 2023, while neighbors noticed the house growing more dilapidated beside its upscale surroundings. He graduated from Berner High School in 1981, in the same class as the actor William Baldwin. He studied architecture at the New York Institute of Technology and by 1987 worked for a Manhattan architectural firm.

  He married his first wife on the 29th of September 1990 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. They divorced in 1994. In April 1996 he married Asa Ellerup, and the couple had two children. Ellerup filed for divorce in 2023.

  The case against him grew from several kinds of evidence. Investigators said his cellphone records showed contact with three of the four victims known as the Gilgo Four. An email account linked to him had been used to search for information about the investigation. Court records also indicated searches for "sadistic materials, child pornography, and images of the victims and their relatives".

  DNA supplied more. A potential match emerged between DNA on a discarded pizza crust and DNA on hair from burlap used to wrap one victim. Hair found on or near three victims showed a potential match to his wife, using samples from bottles in the trash outside the family home. DNA on one of the three leather belts that restrained Brainard-Barnes also matched his wife. Investigators stated that his wife and children were out of state during each period when the killings are believed to have occurred.

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• 8. Charges and Plea

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  On the 13th of July 2023, Heuermann was arrested and charged with three counts of first-degree murder and three of second-degree murder. The charges covered Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello. In January 2024 he was also charged with the murder of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, who had disappeared in 2007.

  On the 6th of June 2024, he was arraigned for the murders of Jessica Taylor and Sandra Costilla. Costilla had not previously been linked to the Gilgo Beach killings. She was 28, from Trinidad and Tobago, and was living in New York City when she disappeared. She was killed on the 19th or the 20th of November 1993. Hunters found her body that month in a wooded area of North Sea, Long Island, about 60 miles northeast of Gilgo Beach. DNA from hairs on her body matched Heuermann's. As the earliest known victim in the charges, she pushed the timeline back to the early 1990s, far earlier than investigators had believed. She also showed that bodies were left in places well beyond the Gilgo Beach area. On the 17th of December 2024, the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office indicted him for Valerie Mack's murder.

  On the 8th of April 2026, Heuermann pleaded guilty to the seven murders with which he had been charged. He also admitted an eighth, the killing of Karen Vergata, the woman once known only as Jane Doe No. 7. His sentencing was scheduled for the 17th of June 2026.

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