Gilgo Beach murders live updates: Rex Heuermann charged with three counts of first-degree murder

New York State police officers carry out a large item as law enforcement searches the home of Rex Heuermann on Saturday 15 July 2023, in Massapequa Park, New York.

One woman told News12 that it was “mind-boggling” that the “quiet” 59-year-old could be involved in the horrific case while another said that he was known to do outdoor activities such as woodwork.

Mr Heuermann works in Manhattan – where some of the Gilgo Beach victims were last seen alive – as the president of architecture firm RH Consultants & Associates.

According to the company website, he founded the company in 1994. It has since worked with the likes of Catholic Charities, NYC-DEP Sewerage Treatment and American Airlines and other major tenants at the JFK International Airport.

A company page called Meet The Team and featuring his photo appeared to be taken down on Friday morning as news of his arrest broke.

In an interview posted on YouTube by Bonjour Realty last year, the father-of-two said that he was “born and raised in Long Island” but had been “working in Manhattan since 1987… [a] very long time”.

DNA results came back on 12 June with a 99.96 per cent degree of accuracy.

New York architect Rex Heuermann is facing charges in the murders of three Gilgo Beach victims, court documents released by the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office revealed.

The unsolved murders sent fear through the shoreline community of Gilgo Beach but for more than a decade, few developments were made in the case. Last year, the Suffolk County Police Department, New York State Police, Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI revamped the probe into the killings that ultimately led to Mr Heuermann’s bombshell arrest outside his Midtown office on Thursday.

Gilgo Beach murders suspect Rex Heuermann appeared in court on Friday as he insisted on his innocence.

Mr Heaurmann, 59, is accused of murdering Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello — all sex workers in their 20s who disappeared in the Massapequa Park area in Long Island before their bodies were found during a separate missing person investigation in 2010.

The mother of one of the Gilgo Beach murder victims has said she would like to see suspect Rex Heuermann “suffer at the hands of other inmates”.

In an interview with NBC News, Lynn Barthelemy said: “I’d like him to suffer at the hands of other inmates. Let him receive what the girls received. Death is too good for him. It’s too easy.”

Ms Barthelemy’s daughter, Melissa, disappeared in 2009.

Rex Heuermann, 59, was arrested on Thursday and charged with six counts of murder in connection with three of 11 unsolved killings known as the Gilgo Beach murders.

Suffolk County district attorney Raymond Tierney wrote in a court filing that the sister of victim Melissa Barthelemy received “taunting calls” near to Mr Heuermann’s office in Midtown Manhattan after her disappearance in July 2009.

Mr Heuerman also used the phones of Barthelemy and another victim Maureen Brainard-Barnes to check their voicemails after they disappeared, the district attorney wrote while requesting the suspect be held without bail.

Mr Heuerman has been charged with first and second-degree murders of sex workers Barthelemy, 24, Megan Waterman, 22; and Amber Costello, 27, and is considered a “prime suspect” in the murder of Brainard-Barnes, 25.

The Independent’s Bevan Hurley reports:

Rex Heuermann was charged Friday with six counts of murder in connection with the infamous Gilgo Beach killings, which were believed to be the work of a serial killer after the first bodies were found in 2010 along remote stretches of Long Island shoreline. The killer is believed to have claimed at least 10 victims.

One long-time neighbor of the Heuermanns, who has lived a few doors down from the family for more than two decades, told The Independent on Friday that the suspect, his wife and two children were “a very quiet family” who made “no imprint at all” on the local community.

“Basically, we never had any contact with him … living here 22 years and never said two words to him,” she said – while quick to point out that “one bad apple doesn’t spoil the bunch” in a “great neighbourhood.”