MASSAPEQUA PARK, NY — A man arrested in connection with a series of unsolved murders on Long Island, known as the Gilgo Beach murders, has been identified as an architect who had lived on the other side for decades of the bay where the remains of 11 people were found.
A law enforcement official told The Associated Press that Rex Heuermann, 59, was taken into custody in Massapequa late Thursday, near where investigators were seen Friday in searching his home.
Massapequa is on the south shore of Long Island.
Mr. Heuermann was scheduled to appear in Riverhead State Court on Friday.
“This is a day that we have been waiting for a long time and that will hopefully bring peace to this community and to the families ― a peace that is long overdue,” said New York Governor, Kathy Hochul, at an unrelated public appearance on Long Island.
The news of the arrest came as a shock to some family members, who had been waiting for so many years for a resolution to the case. In a text message, the sister of one of the victims said her family was not ready to speak out publicly because they had “really had no time to process the news today”.
Mr Heuermann lives in Massapequa Park, a locality just north of South Oyster Bay and the stretch of sand known as Gilgo Beach, where skeletal remains were found along an isolated road by the shore. of the ocean in 2010 and 2011. These deaths have long puzzled investigators. Most of the victims were young women working in the sex industry.
The case has captured the public’s attention for more than ten years. The mystery made national headlines for many years and the unsolved murders were the subject of the 2020 Netflix film ‘Lost Girls’.
Figuring out who killed the victims, and why, has frustrated many seasoned detectives over the years. Last year, an interagency task force was formed with investigators from the FBI, as well as local and state police departments, in an effort to solve the case.
Law enforcement converged on the little red house that was raided early Friday in this suburb about 40 miles east of midtown Manhattan. Dozens of residents mingled with police and the media, observing half a dozen investigators in protective suits conferring outside the dilapidated entrance porch, whose roof was supported by beams.
The house belonged to a family that had long kept away, according to neighbors, who noted that the dilapidated property looked out of place among the rows of single-family homes and manicured lawns of the small community.
“There were overgrown shrubs, there was always wood in front of the house,” said Gabriella Libardi, a 24-year-old teacher. It was really scary. I wouldn’t send my child there.
Barry Auslander, another neighbor, said the man who lived in the house traveled by train to New York every morning, dressed in a suit and tie and carrying a briefcase.
“It was weird. He looked like a businessman, Mr Auslander said. But his house is a dump.
Shannan Gilbert’s disappearance in 2010 sparked the hunt that uncovered the larger mystery. The 24-year-old sex worker vanished after walking from a client’s home in the beachfront community of Oak Beach.
Months later, a police officer and his human remains search dog were searching for the young woman’s body in the thickets that line Ocean Parkway, when they came across the remains of another woman. A few days later, three more bodies were found, all within walking distance of each other.
In the spring of 2011, the number of human remains stood at ten, those of eight women, a man and an infant. Some were later linked to parts of dismembered bodies found elsewhere on Long Island, resulting in a confusing crime scene that stretched from a park near the New York City limits to a resort town on Fire Island and to the far east of Long Island.
Ms Gilbert’s body was found in December 2011, about three miles east of where the other ten sets were discovered.
Of the bodies found near Gilgo Beach, investigators have repeatedly asserted over the years that it is unlikely that a single person killed all of the victims.
2023-07-14 17:14:01
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