The man accused of the Gilgo Beach serial killings may have started preying on young women earlier than initially thought — and not just on Long Island’s South Shore.
Rex Heuermann was 29 and three years shy of getting his architect’s license when the remains of Sandra Costilla, one of two women he was accused of killing Thursday, were found in 1993 at the east end of Long Island, in a wooded area of Southampton near Fish Cove Road.
The remains of the five other women Heuermann was accused of killing were all found around 2010 or later in and around Gilgo Beach, about 70 miles west of Southampton.
The fact that Heuermann is now charged with a murder more than 30 years old is a worrying sign for criminology experts like Joseph Giacalone, an assistant professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a retired New York City police sergeant who , formerly headed the cold case team in the Bronx.
“Before this is over, he could become one of the most prolific serial killers on Long Island,” Giacalone said. “There could be as many as 50 other unsolved murder cases that could be linked to him based on this time period and his modus operandi. [modus operandi]”
Heuermann is also under investigation in the 2000 death of another woman, Valeria Mack, according to his indictment.
Heuermann, 60, led a quiet life with his family, commuting between his home in Massapequa Park and his office in Manhattan since 1987, police said.
“It’s like they say, watch out for the quiet ones,” Giacalone said. “He was walking back and forth and trying not to draw attention to himself. And during this time, women were disappearing.
The Costilla case is the oldest murder prosecutors have charged Heuermann with. They say the 28-year-old woman was killed in November. 19 or 20, 1993, when hunters found his badly beaten and mutilated body. They say the DNA from the hairs found on his body matched that of Heuermann.
Costilla, according to Heuermann’s indictment, was a native of Trinidad and Tobago and lived in New York. But the document doesn’t contain much else about her.
At the time of his disappearance, police said Costilla lived on Gates Avenue in the Ridgewood neighborhood of Queens, a borough of New York City, and sometimes used the last name Cutello. She was arrested in 1992 for jumping a subway turnstile, so her fingerprints were on file, Newsday reported at the time.
But reporters who visited Costilla’s Queens neighborhood at the time found no residents who knew her.
“Until someone who cares about her comes forward, that’s what we’re stuck with,” said Detective Lt. John Gierasch, then commander of the Suffolk homicide squad, was quoted as saying. “We have no recent address on her and we have no information on where her family might be.”
Heuermann was also charged Thursday with second-degree murder in the killing of Jessica Taylor, 20, who disappeared in July 2003 while working as an escort in New York. Her dismembered and mutilated body was found in 2011 in the brush near Ocean Parkway, just east of Gilgo Beach on the south shore of Long Island. His hair was also found on his body.
Taylor, according to the indictment, was a sex worker in Manhattan’s Midtown neighborhood and had spoken with her mother by phone before leaving for what would be her final appointment. She had planned to go to Poughkeepsie, New York, on July 25, 2003, for her mother’s birthday.
“When her daughter did not arrive at her Poughkeepsie residence nor respond to phone calls, Ms. Taylor’s mother notified law enforcement,” the indictment states.
Last year, Heuermann was charged with the long-unsolved murders of three sex workers whose bodies were found abandoned on a Long Island beach: Melissa Barthelemy, 24; Megan Waterman, 22; and Amber Lynn Costello, 27.
Earlier this year, Heuermann was also charged with the murder of 25-year-old Maureen Brainard-Barnes.
The bodies of Taylor and Mack were found near the other women, nicknamed the “Gilgo Four,” according to the indictment.
The hunt for the Gilgo Beach killer began in 2010 after the search for a missing sex worker led to the discovery of the remains of 11 other people on and around the beach on Long Island’s south shore.
But the case quickly bogged down amid accusations that detectives were dragging their feet because of cultural bias against sex workers. It was not revived until 2022, when new Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison assembled the Gilgo Beach Homicide Investigation Task Force, made up of federal and state investigators, as well than local detectives.
Meanwhile, Heuermann was, at least on the surface, just an average Long Island family man minding his own business. The architect lived with his wife, Asa Ellerup, his daughter, Victoria, and his stepson, Christopher Sheridan, in the modest house in which he grew up. He rarely interacted with his neighbors.
Besides an interview conducted in his Manhattan office and published on YouTube in 2002 by Bonjour Reality, Heuermann has also kept a low profile professionally.
Heuermann, who became a licensed architect in 1996, spoke in the video about the ins and outs of being a consultant who helps clients navigate New York City’s arcane building codes. He also told how he learned to make furniture from his father in their workshop.
In a part of the interview that now seems particularly chilling, Heuermann described his favorite tool: a cabinetmaker’s hammer.
“It’s quite convincing when I need to persuade something,” he can be heard saying.
“Not someone?” » asks the interviewer.
“Something,” Heuermann responds. “And it always produces great results.”
Heuermann also had another interest that only came to light after police searched his home: a fascination with unsolved murder cases.
In his office, according to the indictment, police found a copy of a book by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker called “The Cases That Haunt Us.”