MASSAPEQUA PARK, N.Y. (1010 WINS/WCBS 880/AP) -- A New York City architect from Nassau County was arrested Friday in the unsolved Gilgo Beach serial killer case that has gripped Long Island for more than a decade, according to officials and sources.
Police have yet to officially name the suspect, but Associated Press sources identified him as Rex Heuermann, 59, of Massapequa Park. He's an architect who works in Midtown Manhattan and is suspected in at least some of the 10 killings, the New York Times reported. He was arrested in Midtown on Thursday night, according to sources.
Heuermann is scheduled to be arraigned Friday afternoon in state court in Riverhead. Suffolk County D.A. Raymond Tierney announced a 4 p.m. news conference to discuss the charges, which have yet to be revealed. Gov. Kathy Hochul is also expected to address the high-profile case at an unrelated news conference in Jones Beach.
At a brief news conference Friday morning, Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone confirmed the arrest and called it a "major step forward" in the case.
Suffolk Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison said the suspect was transported to police headquarters Friday and remains in custody. "The case is in grand jury, we anticipate an indictment," Harrison said.
A swarm of state police and county police from Nassau and Suffolk descended Thursday night on First Avenue, near Michigan Avenue, in Massapequa Park. Investigators were seen carrying evidence boxes out of the house in a quiet neighborhood across the bay from where the bodies were found.
Police were focusing on a small, red-colored house where neighbors said a man with a wife and two kids has lived all his life. A neighbor next door said he's known him for decades and has had no issues with him.
"There's never been a problem at all—not a scream, not a yell, nothing," he said. "We've been here for about 30 years, and the guy's been quiet, never really bothers anybody. We're kind of shocked to tell you the truth."
Hundreds of stunned residents came and went throughout the day to watch the investigation unfold on an unassuming street.
"It's crazy, it's mind-blowing—you know, it's quiet Massapequa Park," a woman said.
The apprehension is in connection with the Gilgo Beach murders, a long-unsolved case involving the remains of 10 people—many of them missing women—found along Ocean Parkway more than a decade ago.
The first sets of remains were found in 2010, with more victims discovered in 2011.
The case has attracted national headlines for years, and the killings were even the subject of the 2020 Netflix film “Lost Girls.”
Most of the victims were young women who had been sex workers. Several of the bodies were found near the town of Gilgo Beach, leading to the case being known as the Gilgo Beach murders.
Determining who killed them, and why, has vexed a slew of seasoned homicide detectives through several changes in police leadership. Last year, an interagency task force was formed with investigators from the FBI, as well as state and local police departments, aimed at solving the case. Police even set up a website to track the case, gilgonews.com.
Shannan Gilbert's disappearance in 2010 triggered the hunt that exposed the larger mystery. A 24-year-old sex worker, she vanished after leaving a client’s house on foot in the seafront community of Oak Beach, disappearing into the marsh.
Months later, a police officer and his cadaver dog were looking for her body in the thicket along nearby Ocean Parkway when they happened upon the remains of a different woman. Within days, three other bodies were found, all within a short walk of one another.
By spring 2011, that number had climbed to 10 sets of human remains -- those of eight women, one man and one toddler. Some were later linked to dismembered body parts found elsewhere on Long Island, making for a puzzling crime scene that stretched from a park near the New York City limits to a resort community on Fire Island and out to far eastern Long Island.
Gilbert’s body was found in December 2011, about 3 miles east of where the other 10 sets were discovered.
Police have said they believe Gilbert’s death near Gilgo Beach was a “tragic accident” unconnected to the 10 other remains. “Based on the evidence, the facts, and the totality of the circumstances, the prevailing opinion in Shannan’s death, while tragic, was not a murder and was most likely noncriminal,” Suffolk Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison said last year.
Gilbert’s family has been skeptical of the police account. An independent autopsy performed for Gilbert’s family in 2016 concluded her death was “consistent with homicidal strangulation,” family lawyer John Ray said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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