Long Island Serial Killer Rex Heuermann Sentenced to Life Without Parole

On a spring morning in 2010, a 23-year-old escort named Shannan Gilbert made a panicked 911 call from Long Island. She told the operator that people were trying to kill her, then ran into the darkness and vanished. Police launched an exhaustive search. Months turned into a year. Then, in December 2010, a police officer and his dog found human remains near Gilgo Beach—not Gilbert, but four women. The discovery would unravel into one of New York's most persistent serial killing cases, one that would take sixteen years and a reinvigorated task force to solve.

The four women found that December became known as the Gilgo Four: Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Costello, Megan Waterman, and Melissa Barthelemy. All were in their twenties. All were petite—five feet or under, around 100 pounds. All had worked as escorts, advertising their services online. The killer, it seemed, had a type. Police began hunting for a serial murderer, but the trail went cold. For nearly a decade, the investigation stalled.

The victims' stories stretched back further than anyone initially realized. Brainard-Barnes, a single mother of two from Connecticut, had disappeared in July 2007 after her phone received calls from a burner phone—a prepaid device bought anonymously. Her sister Missy Cann received a call from Maureen late one night from Penn Station in Manhattan. Maureen said she was taking the midnight train. She never arrived. Melissa Barthelemy vanished in July 2009, nearly two years later to the day. Within weeks, someone called her teenage sister Amanda from Melissa's own phone, claiming he had killed her. Megan Waterman, a 22-year-old mother from Maine, was contacted by a burner phone on June 5, 2010, and left a hotel in Long Island the next morning at 1:31 a.m. Security video captured her walking out. She was never seen alive again. Her daughter Liliana was three years old when her mother disappeared. Years later, in her first television interview, Liliana said she missed her mother every day and wished she could tell her how much she loved her. Amber Costello, 27, disappeared in September 2010 after a client offered her $1,500 for the night—six times her usual rate. Her roommate Dave Schaller described the man as looking like an "ogre" and driving a first-generation Chevrolet Avalanche. Schaller told police the client had called relentlessly, getting Costello to do something she never did: leave her home without her purse or cellphone and meet him in his vehicle. She walked down the street near midnight and never returned.

In February 2022, Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison and District Attorney Ray Tierney formed a fresh task force to examine the cold case. Within six weeks, they had a suspect. The breakthrough came from old clues finally connected. Police knew the killer had used burner phones to contact victims. In 2012, working with the FBI, they had mapped cell tower data and identified a small area in Massapequa Park, Long Island—they called it "the box"—where those burner phones had pinged when contacting victims. They also knew the suspect drove a first-generation Chevrolet Avalanche and looked like an ogre. The task force identified Rex Heuermann, a 62-year-old architect living in Massapequa Park, as their prime suspect. When investigators examined his personal cellphone records, they found his phone was in the same locations as the burner phones when they contacted victims—Massapequa Park, where he lived, and midtown Manhattan, where his architectural firm operated. In 2023, police watched him enter a phone store to make a payment on a burner phone.

The DNA evidence came from an ordinary moment. Police tailed Heuermann and recovered a pizza box he had discarded in a trash can in Manhattan. DNA from the pizza crust matched a male hair found with Megan Waterman's body. The match was definitive. On July 14, 2023, Heuermann was arrested and charged with the murders of Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello. His attorney insisted his client had told him he was innocent. Police searched his properties for twelve days, recovering guns and a first-generation Chevrolet Avalanche from South Carolina. Heuermann was married with a daughter and stepson. His wife, Asa Ellerup, would take the children to Iceland each summer to visit family. Police believed those absences provided him opportunity to kill.

Over the following years, the charges accumulated. In January 2024, Heuermann was charged with the murder of Maureen Brainard-Barnes after DNA from a female hair found in a belt buckle used to bind her ankles matched him with odds of eight trillion to one. In June 2024, he was charged with two more murders: Sandra Costilla in 1993 and Jessica Taylor in 2003. In December 2024, he was charged with the killing of Valerie Mack, a 24-year-old escort from New Jersey who had been missing since 2000 and was known only as "Jane Doe #6" until her remains were identified. On April 8, 2026, Heuermann pleaded guilty. He confessed to strangling seven women and admitted to an eighth killing. On June 17, 2026, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The case, however, remains incomplete. Other bodies found near Gilgo Beach—including a toddler girl, an Asian male dressed in women's clothing, and several other victims—have not been linked to Heuermann. Investigations continue in South Carolina and Las Vegas, where he owns property. Shannan Gilbert, the woman whose disappearance began the search that uncovered the Gilgo Four, was found in December 2011. Police believe she drowned in a marsh while fleeing, not murdered. Eight women are confirmed dead by Heuermann's hand. Their families waited sixteen years for answers.