YAPHANK, N.Y. (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) – Two more detectives have been added to the Suffolk Police Department's Gilgo Beach Task Force as investigators undertake an intensive effort to see if the deaths of more victims are connected to prime suspect Rex Heuermann.
Suffolk Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison told Newsday in a report Monday that he added the pair of investigators to look into the backgrounds of two women, Valerie Mack and Karen Vergata, whose killings remain unsolved.
Partial remains of both women were found along Ocean Parkway in April 2011. Before that, remains belonging to Mack were found in Manorville in November 2000, while remains of Vergata were first found on Fire Island in April 1996.
The respective remains were first publicly identified as Mack's in May 2020 and as Vergata's in August 2023.
The newly added detectives in the task force will work through some of the "numerous" Crime Stoppers tips that have been submitted by the public, according to Harrison.
"I thought it was a good idea to grab some people from the outside to take a look at other things that may be, potentially attach themselves to Rex Heuermann," the commissioner told Newsday, adding the decade-old case "is not going to be solved overnight."
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Heuermann, 60, remains jailed in Riverhead after he was charged with murder in the serial killings of Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello. He's also the prime suspect in the murder of Maureen Brainard-Barnes but has not been charged in her death.
The four women are known collectively as the "Gilgo Four." All of their remains were found along a stretch of Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach in 2010 and 2011.
Heuermann has not been accused of killing Mack or Vergata as the investigation continues.
He has pleaded not guilty to the three murders he's been charged with since his July 13 arrest outside his Manhattan architectural consulting firm.
The task force has also been looking into the remains of three unidentified people that were found in the Gilgo Beach area, according to Suffolk County D.A. Ray Tierney. They include a woman known as "Peaches," a toddler believed to be her child and an Asian man.
