Tuesday, the Long Island serial killer case’s New York prosecutor will go to the suspect’s home, where police have been carrying out search warrants for more than a week.
Outside the Massapequa Park residence of Gilgo Beach suspect Rex Heuermann, Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney announced on Tuesday that police had essentially finished their search of the building.
“The evidence doesn’t point one way or the other that someone was killed in the house,” he told reporters. “We have obtained a massive amount of material that has to be catalogued and analyzed.
He revealed what police were looking for, but claimed it was too soon to divulge what had been discovered inside after more than a week of searching.
“We were looking for tangible items of evidence as well as trace evidence including blood and DNA and hair fibres,” he told reporters. “That is a process that takes a while.”
According to Tierney, no human remains were discovered at the house, but detectives were still combing through trace evidence retrieved from the interior and backyard.
On July 14, Suffolk police made an arrest of Heuermann close to his Manhattan office on six counts of murder in relation to three of the four Gilgo deaths: Melissa Barthelemy, 24, Megan Waterman, 22, and Amber Costello, 27.
They claimed at the time that he continued to be the major suspect in the death of 25-year-old Maureen Brainard-Barnes, whose remains they discovered close to the other three.
At his arraignment the following day, he entered a not-guilty plea.
In the first months of 2022, Tierney and Suffolk Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison both announced the formation of a new task team to solve the unsolved Gilgo Beach killings.
The purported Gilgo A sickening 11 sets of human remains, including the remains of four victims, were found during the hunt for Shannan Gilbert, who made a terrifying 911 call before disappearing into the swamp.
Since then, police have stated that they think Gilbert’s death may have been an accident and is unrelated to the others.
After connecting data from Heuermann’s phone, many burner phones, and the phones belonging to the victims to the suspect vehicle and cell towers close to his Long Island home and New York City office, the new task team soon narrowed in on Heuermann.
Just six weeks into the new investigation, they discovered his name for the first time in March of last year. After developing their cases and being concerned that he may commit another crime, they picked him up off the street in Manhattan earlier this month.
Less than a week after learning of Heuermann’s allegations, his wife Asa Ellerup hired a formidable Long Island defence attorney and filed for divorce.
Heuermann is being investigated by police in several jurisdictions, including Nevada, South Carolina, and New Jersey, for potential ties to unsolved cases in those locations.
If found guilty, he could receive a sentence of life in jail without the chance of parole when he next appears in court on August 1.
