Michael R. Sisak and Philip Marcelo
New York: A Long Island architect who led a secret life as a serial killer has pleaded guilty to murdering seven women and admitted he killed an eighth in a string of long-unsolved crimes known as the Gilgo Beach killings.
Rex Heuermann, 62, entered the pleas on Wednesday (US time) in a courtroom packed with reporters and victims’ relatives, some of whom wept as he detailed his crimes for the court.
Heuermann’s guilty pleas bringing finality to a case that bedevilled investigators, agonised victims’ relatives and tantalised a true-crime obsessed public for years.
Heuermann strangled the women, many of them sex workers, over a 17-year span and buried their remains in remote locations, including along an isolated beach highway across the bay from where he lived, authorities said.
He faces life in prison and will be sentenced at a later date.
Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney has scheduled a news conference for later on Wednesday.
Tierney will be joined by victims’ family members and members of the Gilgo Beach Homicide Investigation Task Force, which cracked the case with the help of clues that included DNA lifted from a discarded pizza crust.
The investigation began in earnest in 2010 after police found numerous sets of human remains while searching for a missing woman along Long Island’s South Shore, setting off a search for a potential serial killer that attracted global interest and spawned a Hollywood movie.
Remains of six victims – Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Lynn Costello, Valerie Mack, Jessica Taylor and Megan Waterman – were found in the scrub along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach. The remains of another victim, Sandra Costilla, were found more than 100 kilometres away in the Hamptons.
Police also identified an eighth woman, Karen Vergata, whose remains were found on Fire Island, more than 232 kilometres west, in 1996, and near Gilgo Beach in 2011. Heuermann was not charged in Vergata’s killing.
More to come
AP
Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.
