Rex Heuermann news updates: Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect to face court as wife pleads for privacy

For around two decades, the sands and marshes of Long Island’s Gilgo Beach kept a dark secret.

A killer or killers roamed the locality, luring in escorts and sex workers and brutally murdering them.

Body after body was dumped along the shoreline, hidden for months and even years without being discovered.

Then, in 2010, a chilling 911 call made by a woman in fear for her life led police to search the area.

What they discovered was far more horrifying than anyone could have imagined.

Over the next year, the remains of 11 victims – mainly female escorts – were discovered dumped in the area, plunging the Suffolk County community into terror.

But, the case went cold and no arrests were made, no suspects were named and there was no justice for the victims and their families.

That is, until the 13 July arrest of suspect Rex Heuermann.

Read Rachel Sharp’s explanation of the case:

People gawking at the Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect’s home will be fined $150 if reported by Long Island residents.

Residents congregated last week at Massapequa Park Village Hall, where Nassau County Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder discussed the commotion surrounding suspect Rex Heuermann’s home, according to the Daily Mail.

“The county executive has made it very clear that we are protecting the neighborhood and we are not allowing this to turn into a side-show,” Mr Ryder reportedly said.

“If you don’t live on that street or visiting someone on that street and are there to stop and take pictures and break the law you will be issued a summons… no questions asked.”

Some residents, the publication reported, complained at the meeting that their driveways have been blocked, their lawns have been destroyed, and they have found trash scattered in the area.

The Independent’s Kelly Rissman has more:

More than 13 years after a string of bodies were found in Gilgo Beach, authorities finally announced they’d caught the serial killer who lured in sex workers, brutally murdered them and then dumped their bound and wrapped bodies along the shore.

What led investigators to suspected killer Rex Heuermann was laid out in court documents as prosecutors asked a judge to deny him bail.

It consisted of a pimp’s tip about his pickup truck, a stash of burner phones, “sadistic” online searches, phone calls taunting victims’ families, his wife’s hair – and a pizza crust.

The Independent’s Rachel Sharp has more:

The Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect had a somewhat blase reaction when a group of plain-clothes police officers swooped on him in the heart of a busy Manhattan street and arrested him in connection to a chilling series of cold case murders, according to authorities.

Rex Heuermann was taken into custody on 13 July as he left the office of his architecture business in midtown Manhattan.

Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison later revealed the accused serial killer’s first words when officers descended on him.

Mr Harrison told NBC News that the 59-year-old married father-of-two was dismissive of the allegations – but then quickly lawyered up.

“He very much said, ‘What am I here for? I don’t know nothing of what you’re talking about,’” he said.

“He asked for a lawyer – and that was the end of the conversation,” he added.

As the 59-year-old was processed into Suffolk County Jail on a string of murder charges, sources told CNN he did have another chilling question – this time about his newfound notoriety.

“Is it in the news?” he asked.

A days-long search of Rex Heuermann’s Long Island home led to the seizure of a “massive amount” of evidence, authorities said last week.

Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney announced the end of the search at a press conference on 25 July.

“There were a number of items of evidence but I’m not going to say especially where,” he said.

The DA also refused to comment on whether or not the search had uncovered any trophies taken from the victims or if there was evidence that items had been burned on the grounds of the home.

“There were a number of disturbances that were found in the ground but we don’t know what it is,” he said.

While he would not go into details about what was found, he did confirm that a “massive amount of evidence” had been recovered from the home which Mr Heuermann grew up in as a child – and which he went on to share with his wife of two decades, their daughter and his stepson until his sudden arrest.

Among the trove of evidence inside the “very cluttered” one-storey property, no human remains were discovered, the DA said.

However, he noted that it will take time for the crime lab to test the trove of items seized for the likes of blood, hairs, fibres or other trace evidence which could indicate whether victims were killed at the property.

Asa Ellerup, the estranged wife of Gilgo Beach murder suspect Rex Heuermann, said her children “cry themselves to sleep” since their father’s arrest.

Ms Ellerup, 59, filed for divorce after Mr Heuermann was charged on 13 July with the murders of three women whose bodies were found on a stretch of Long Island shoreline more than a decade ago.

“I woke up in the middle of the night, shivering,” she told New York Post, detailing the anxieties she and her family has felt since police searched her Massapequa Park home.

“My children cry themselves to sleep. I mean, they’re not children. They’re grown adults but they’re my children, and my son has developmental disabilities and he cried himself to sleep.”

Manhattan architect and married father-of-two Rex Heuermann was taken into custody on the night of 13 July near his Midtown office.

Dramatic video captured him walking along a Manhattan road when he was suddenly surrounded by plainclothes officers and taken into custody.

The accused killer has been married twice and shares a 26-year-old daughter and stepson, with special needs, with his second wife.

Mr Heuermann is president of architecture firm RH Consultants & Associates, a company which he founded in 1994 and which his adult daughter also works for.

The Independent’s Rachel Sharp has more:

Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney was grilled in a press conference on Tuesday about the chilling alleged discovery of a mattress inside a huge vault in the basement of his home in Massapequa Park.

The DA repeatedly refused to confirm or deny the existence of the potentially harrowing piece of evidence but did confirm the existence of the walk-in underground vault beneath the property that he shared with his family.

“The vault is big enough to walk into and it’s in the basement,” he said, adding that “like the rest of the house, [the vault] was cluttered”.

When pressed about the mattress and whether anything other than firearms were found inside the vault, he doubled down and said “I’m not going to speak on that”.

The Independent’s Rachel Sharp has more:

For around two decades, the sands and marshes of Long Island’s Gilgo Beach kept a dark secret.

Body after body was dumped along the shoreline, hidden for months and even years without being discovered.

Then, in 2010, a chilling 911 call made by a woman in fear for her life led police to search the area.

What they discovered was far more horrifying than anyone could have imagined.

Over the next year, the remains of 11 victims – mainly female escorts – were discovered dumped in the area, plunging the Suffolk County community into terror.

But, the case went cold and no arrests were made, no suspects were named and there was no justice for the victims and their families.

That is, until the 13 July arrest of suspect Rex Heuermann.

Read Rachel Sharp’s explanation of the case:

Authorities have reportedly determined that Rex Heuermann is not connected to a series of unsolved murders in Atlantic City, New Jersey – quashing speculation that arose following his arrest in the Gilgo Beach case.

After Mr Heuermann was taken into custody on 13 July, authorities in Las Vegas, South Carolina, New Jersey and Connecticut have probed possible links between the accused serial killer and local cold cases.

Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison told ABC News earlier this month that authorities were weighing an investigation against Mr Huermanna in connection with the Black Horse Pike Strangler case in Atlantic City. Similarly to the Gilgo Beach killing, the victims in the Garden State were also working as sex workers. Their bodies were found in a ditch in the Black Horse Pike hotel in 2006.

But Mr Harrison has now told The New York Post that he believes someone else is behind the Atlantic City murders.

The Independent’s Andrea Blanco has more: