Rex Heuermann Faces Fourth Murder Charge in Gilgo Beach Serial Killings

Rex Heuermann, whom prosecutors charged in July as the Gilgo Beach serial killer, was indicted Tuesday morning in connection with a fourth killing.

Heuermann, 60, was previously charged in the killings of three of the four women who in 2010 were found bound in similar fashion with burlap, belts and tape on the Long Island, New York, oceanfront.

In July, prosecutors called Heuermann the prime suspect in the killing of the fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, of Norwich, Connecticut. Brainard-Barnes disappeared in 2007, becoming the first of the so-called Gilgo Four to vanish.

But charges in her killing were delayed, pending DNA test results on a hair recovered from her remains, and the grand jury in the case continued its work. Months later, it finally returned a murder indictment in connection with her death.

In a Suffolk County courtroom Tuesday morning, Heuermann, his hands shackled behind his back, remained silent and maintained a calm demeanor as the district attorney, Ray Tierney, asked the judge to keep him remanded without bail.

Heuermann pleaded not guilty, as he has to all previous charges.

The DNA tests showed that the hair had belonged to Heuermann’s wife, Asa Ellerup, prosecutors say, and was likely tracked to the crime scene by Heuermann.

Prosecutors say that Ellerup, who has not been charged in the Gilgo Beach case, was out of town during the disappearances of the women, whom they say Heuermann hired as escorts and then killed.

Court papers filed Tuesday added details that would strengthen prosecutors’ claims that DNA evidence connected Heuermann to all four victims and that he was trying to cover his tracks by using software to erase online interactions with escorts.

Heuermann was first identified as a suspect in the killings in early 2022, shortly after a new multiagency task force was formed to investigate the case.

Investigators say he made numerous calls and texts to Brainard-Barnes just before her disappearance.

Prosecutors say they also have records of damning internet searches he made, as well as mobile phone location data corresponding to his home in Massapequa Park, New York, and his architectural consulting office in midtown Manhattan.

The DNA evidence connecting him to the murders includes several stray hairs that belonged to Ellerup, found on the bodies, and a male hair that corresponds to a genetic sample taken from pizza crusts Heuermann discarded outside his office, prosecutors say.

Investigators say Brainard-Barnes’ remains, likely the most decomposed of the four sets, were bound by three belts.

The stray female hair was found near one belt, and another belt had a distinctive buckle bearing the initials W.H., which authorities said in 2020 could have belonged to Heuermann’s father.

“He has maintained his innocence from Day 1,” Michael Brown, Heuermann’s lawyer, said outside the courtroom after the hearing Tuesday. “He’s looking forward to fighting these charges, and we’re doing that.”

Brown cited weaknesses in the mitochondrial DNA testing used by investigators. The technology does not prove a link to a specific person but instead eliminates suspects by ruling out others. Brown has argued that Heuermann could be among a group of “thousands and thousands” of suspects.

After the four women’s bodies were discovered in 2010 along a stretch of oceanfront parkway, six more sets of remains were found. The circumstances around those deaths are still being investigated.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .