Serial killer suspect arrested for murders of 10 women on Long Island in the past 13 years
Joe Harker
Featured Image Credit: SPD/Suffolk County Police Department
Police have arrested an individual in connection with an unsolved serial killer case involving at least 10 victims after human remains were discovered in 2010.
Law enforcement officials today (14 July) told the Associated Press that a suspect had been taken into custody on Long Island, New York.
The suspect, named Rex Heuermann, 59, was arrested late on Thursday night and investigators in the case were today at a home connected to the case.
According to the bail application from the Suffolk County District Attorney he will be charged with six counts of murder in connection with the deaths of Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy and Amber Costello.
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Prosecutors are asking that the suspect be remanded in custody without bail, citing the 'heinous nature of these serial murders' and the 'planning and forethought' involved in the crimes Heuermann has been arrested in connection with.
The Gilgo Beach murders are a string of unsolved deaths which investigators have been looking into for years.
Most of the victims were young women who had been sex workers, and several bodies had been uncovered along the stretch of sand known as Gilgo Beach.
On 1 May, 2010, a woman named Shannan Gilbert disappeared, with claims of people seeing her run through a gated community called Oak Beach while she also called 911 saying that 'somebody's after me'.
In the same call, she is heard arguing with a man seemingly referred to as 'Mike' and asks him if he is 'going to kill' her while telling the 911 dispatcher that someone was 'plotting to kill me'.
On 11 December - during the search for Gilbert's body - a police dog found human remains of a woman who was not Shannan, and two days later the bodies of three additional victims were discovered.
All four of the women had been escorts who used Craigslist to meet clients and in the search for Shannan's body, partial remains of another woman were found on 29 March, 2011, these were later linked to Jessica Taylor, a woman who had been found dead in 2003.
On 4 April, 2011, three more sets of human remains were found including that of an unidentified male and a female toddler.
A week later two more bodies were found, with one of them being the mother of the toddler and the other matched with remains discovered in 1996.
Shannan's remains were found in December 2011, meaning the investigation spans several years of deaths and missing people.
According to The Independent, officials have previously said they believe the killings could have been carried out by as many as three different serial killers.
Officials have said it is unlikely that one person carried out all of the murders which range from 1996 to 2010.
Of the bodies found by investigators four are yet to be identified.
Last year, Suffolk County police formed a joint task force with the FBI, state police and offices of the county district attorney and sheriff.