Rex Heuermann, who was arrested final summer season and has been accused of murdering 4 girls within the Gilgo Seaside serial killings on Lengthy Island, was indicted Thursday on homicide prices within the deaths of two extra girls.
Mr. Heuermann, 60, who has pleaded not responsible to all prices in reference to the deaths of the six girls, has remained in jail for practically a 12 months awaiting trial. Within the meantime, investigators turned to the six different victims — 4 girls, a person and a toddler — whose stays, like these of the primary 4 girls, had been discovered alongside Ocean Parkway by Gilgo Seaside.
On Thursday, Mr. Heuermann was charged with killing one in every of them: Jessica Taylor, whose partial stays had been discovered close to Gilgo Seaside in 2011 after which linked to different partial stays discovered eight years earlier in a distant wooded space in Manorville, a 45-minute drive east.
He was additionally charged with killing Sandra Costilla, a 28-year-old New York girl whose stays had been present in 1993 within the Hamptons. Her lengthy unsolved homicide had not beforehand been related to the Gilgo Seaside investigation.
Prosecutors additionally detailed a guide they stated Mr. Heuermann stored that outlined learn how to choose, kill and get rid of victims. It contained headings reminiscent of “Provides” and “Issues,” about avoiding detection by altering automotive tires, burning gloves, destroying pictures of victims, concocting alibis and “packaging” our bodies for transport, in keeping with courtroom papers.
The brand new indictment adopted a current flurry of exercise within the investigation: a nine-day canine search accomplished final month in Manorville and a wooded space in Southampton the place Ms. Costilla’s physique was discovered. Final month, investigators additionally performed a six-day search of Mr. Heuermann’s house in Massapequa Park, on Lengthy Island, which had been exhaustively searched for 2 weeks final summer season after his arrest.
Within the courtroom listening to, Mr. Heuermann remained silent whereas standing subsequent to his lawyer, Michael J. Brown, who informed Justice Timothy P. Mazzei that he had simply acquired the brand new particulars on the 2 murders.
In an interview afterward, Mr. Brown stated he was nonetheless enjoying catch-up.
“They’ve a military of investigators and prosecutors and consultants engaged on the case,” he stated, referring to the duty pressure assembled by the Suffolk County district lawyer, Ray Tierney.
“Speak about having a head begin,” Mr. Brown stated. “They’re going to throw as a lot as they’ll at us, and we’ll put together a protection as greatest as we will.
The Gilgo investigation dates again to late 2010, when investigators found the primary of 10 victims left alongside a desolate stretch of Ocean Parkway operating east from Jones Seaside.
The primary 4 victims found, often called the Gilgo 4, appeared to be the prey of a serial killer. They had been all younger, petite girls certain with burlap, belts and tape. Their our bodies had been dumped over a quarter-mile stretch within the earlier three years, the authorities stated.
Prosecutors used DNA from human hairs discovered on the tape to attach the our bodies to Mr. Heuermann. That, alongside along with his web historical past and data from his burner telephones, linked Mr. Heuermann to the ladies and the placement the place the our bodies had been discovered, prosecutors stated.
However the different six units of stays had been colder instances with fewer clues and extra inconsistent traits than the Gilgo 4.
They disappeared as way back because the mid-Nineteen Nineties, when cellphones and web use had been uncommon, and they didn’t depart many clues. 4 victims had been dismembered, together with Ms. Taylor, and their stays had been uncovered to the weather for greater than a decade.
DNA matches remained so sparse for the six our bodies throughout the first decade of the investigation that just one sufferer, Ms. Taylor, was recognized. In recent times, Karen Vergata and Valerie Mack have been named as victims, whereas the opposite three have remained unidentified.
Ms. Taylor grew up in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., about 90 minutes north of New York Metropolis, and started working in her late teenagers as an escort, the authorities stated. She was 20 when she was final seen close to the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan across the time of her dying in 2003.
In keeping with a brand new bail utility on Thursday, a canine walker discovered Ms. Taylor’s dismembered physique that 12 months on a secluded street in Manorville simply north of the Lengthy Island Expressway within the Lengthy Island Pine Barrens.
Prosecutors stated Mr. Heuermann mutilated a tattoo on her proper hip — a crimson coronary heart with an angel wing and the phrases “Remy’s Angel” — in an try and obscure her identification. However health workers had been in a position to salvage a picture of the tattoo that helped result in her identification.
Relating to DNA proof that prosecutors stated linked Mr. Heuermann to Ms. Taylor and Ms. Costilla, Mr. Brown stated it amounted to “a single strand of hair” on one of many our bodies, which “simply doesn’t sound affordable.”
In keeping with prosecutors, two hunters in a wooded space in Southampton in 1993 discovered Ms. Costilla partially nude with “quite a few sharp pressure accidents” to her face, torso, breasts, thigh and vaginal space. Her accidents had been much like the type exhibited in a group of pornographic pictures that prosecutors stated Mr. Heuermann stored.
At a information convention after the listening to, Mr. Tierney stated the fees referring to Ms. Costilla indicated that Mr. Heuermann is likely to be tied to an unknowable string of murders exterior the Gilgo case.
Mr. Brown, along with difficult prosecutors’ genetic proof, has floated an alternate concept concerning the case: that the investigation into the murders was tainted years in the past by the involvement of a now-disgraced Lengthy Island police chief, James Burke. Mr. Burke, who oversaw the investigation as head of the Suffolk County Police Division from 2012 to 2015, later grew to become an emblem of police corruption and frolicked in federal jail.
In a telephone interview, Mr. Brown stated his consumer maintained his innocence. He has additionally questioned the authorship of the guide attributed to Mr. Heuermann and whether or not it might have been taken out of context.
In keeping with courtroom papers, the guide prosecutors stated Mr. Heuermann stored was a “planning doc” to “methodically blueprint” murders.
It particulars preferences for victims (“small is nice”), learn how to arrange a heavy-duty desk for mutilating a physique and learn how to assemble a suspension system for sexual bondage.
It recommends eradicating tattoos and different figuring out marks, and descriptions learn how to dismember a sufferer and “physique prep” for disposal, which prosecutors stated corresponded to the best way that Ms. Taylor’s stays had been discovered.
The doc additionally stresses the significance of relaxation earlier than assaults to extend “play time” with the victims, in keeping with courtroom papers.
After the courtroom listening to, Ms. Taylor’s mom, Elizabeth Baczkiel, described her daughter as a humorous and hard-working one that dreamed of changing into a mom.
“She beloved supporting youngsters and serving to care for them,” she stated.
Mr. Heuermann’s spouse, Asa Ellerup, and their kids haven’t been charged in reference to the 2 further murders and had been out of state on the time of Ms. Taylor’s disappearance, prosecutors stated. They’ve additionally not been charged in reference to the Gilgo 4.
Ms. Ellerup, who not too long ago voiced assist for her husband and have become an everyday at courtroom hearings, was not on the listening to on Thursday. Her lawyer, Robert Macedonio, stated she was away on a deliberate trip.
Mr. Tierney stated the investigation would proceed so long as clues stored rising linking Mr. Heuermann to extra killings.
“We’re not going to cease — we will’t cease,” he stated. “We owe that to the victims.”
