MANORVILLE, N.Y. (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) – Suspected Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann will be charged soon for a fifth murder, with a court hearing set for later this week, sources told 1010 WINS on Monday.
The disturbing update appears to confirm that the investigation into the Gilgo murders case has taken investigators all the way back to the early 2000s, when the remains of two women were found in Manorville.
Dozens of law enforcement officials not only searched wooded areas in and around Manorville this spring but also returned to Heuermann's home in Massapequa Park late last month—to search for additional evidence in the cold case that was ripped wide open last year with the arrest of Heuermann.
The Suffolk County District Attorney's Office didn't immediately confirm reports of the new charges but did say there will be a court hearing on Thursday.
The days-long search of Heuermann's house by the Gilgo Beach Task Force in May followed last summer's nearly two-week search of the home after Heuermann's July 13 arrest outside his architectural consultants office in Midtown Manhattan.
The partial remains of two victims were found in both Manorville and in Gilgo Beach: Valerie Mack, 24, Jessica Taylor, 20.
The remains of both Taylor and Mack were tied up, authorities have said, in a way a hunter would tie someone up.
Attorney John Ray, who represents some of the families of the victims, said Heuermann was a hunter who met with a club in Gilgo Beach.
Heuermann, 60, has already pleaded not guilty to murdering four women—collectively known as the "Gilgo Four"—whose remains were found along Ocean Parkway in Gilgo Beach in late 2010 and early 2011.
Those four women—Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Lynn Costello and Maureen Brainard-Barnes—all worked as sex workers who went missing between 2007 and 2010. Authorities have said Heuermann frequented sex workers up until his arrest.
The remains of Taylor and Mack, who also worked as sex workers, were dismembered, unlike the remains of the Gilgo Four. Some of their remains were found in the early 2000s, which would take the Gilgo case back years earlier if Heuermann is charged with one of their murders.
Taylor's partial remains were found along Halsey Manor Road in Manorville in July 2003, just days after she went missing. Mack's partial remains were found along that road three years earlier in November 2000; she'd gone missing in the spring or summer of 2000.
Additional dismembered remains from the two women, including their heads and hands, were found in the Gilgo Beach area in the spring of 2011.
Heuermann's defense attorney, Michael Brown, said his client denied any involvement in the deaths of any of the women. He has remained jailed without bail in Riverhead.
A special grand jury has been looking into the murders of other victims found at Gilgo Beach. The Gilgo case started in 2010 after the search for a missing sex worker, Shannan Gilbert, led to 10 sets of human remains among roadside brush along the barrier island. Investigators have said they don't believe Gilbert—whose remains were ultimately found in December 2011—was murdered and that she most likely drowned.
At this point, the oldest remains found in the area were of Karen Vergata, a 34-year-old sex worker who went missing in February 1996. Her partial remains were found in April 1996 on Fire Island, with additional remains found west of Gilgo Beach during a search in April 2011. She was finally identified through DNA in October 2022 and then publicly named as a murder victim in August 2023.