A Long Island architect was charged Friday with murder in the deaths of three of the 11 victims in a long-unsolved string of killings known as the Gilgo Beach murders after detectives pursuing a new lead say they matched DNA from a pizza he ate to genetic material found on the women’s remains.
Rex Heuermann, who has lived for decades across a bay from where the remains were found, is charged with killing Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello. He is also considered the prime suspect in the death of a fourth woman whose body was bound and hidden in thick underbrush along a remote beach highway, authorities said.
Heuermann, 59, was arrested late Thursday amid a renewed investigation that tied him to a pickup truck a witness reported seeing when one of the victims disappeared in 2010. In March, detectives tailing Heuermann recovered his DNA from pizza crust in a box that he’d discarded in a Manhattan trash can and matched it to DNA from a hair found on a restraint used in the killings, authorities said.
Heuermann’s lawyer entered a not guilty plea on his behalf Friday in state court in Riverhead. Judge Richard Ambro ordered him jailed without bail, citing “the extreme depravity” of his alleged conduct. The depravity the judge referred to includes Heuermann's alleged online search for child and torture pornography.
Get Tri-state area news and weather forecasts to your inbox. Sign up for NBC New York newsletters.
Read the 32-page bail application below:
