Southampton Police Chief James Kiernan Applauds Suffolk D.A. Ray Tierney's 'Grand Slam' in Gilgo Beach Serial Killer Case

The story is making international headlines while the subject of the story is locked up locally at the Suffolk County Jail in Riverside: A 13-year search for the Gilgo Beach serial killer may have ended on July 12 with the arrest of Rex Heuermann of Massapequa Park.

Heuermann, 59, a married-with-children architect, was arrested near his office in midtown Manhattan on July 13 and charged with six counts of first- and second-degree murder by the Suffolk County district attorney’s office. Investigators swarmed his Massapequa Park home the following morning to gather evidence.

He was arraigned at the Arthur M. Cromarty Criminal Court Complex in Riverside on July 14. He pleaded not guilty to all the charges and was remanded without bail to the maximum security section of the Riverside jail following his plea.

In advance of the arraignment, prosecutors had filed an extensive bail report detailing Heuermann’s alleged and brutal criminal activities; the presiding judge, Richard Ambro, cited the “extreme depravity” of the crimes he is charged with in denying bail for Heuermann.

Heuermann is alleged to have killed Megan Waterman, Amber Costello and Melissa Barthelemy between 2007 and 2010. Their bound remains were recovered along the South Shore’s outer beach in Babylon in 2010, prompting a years-long manhunt into the sadistic killings of the three victims, who were sex workers. The women were described in court filings as being “petite” in stature and each of the young women was bound with camouflage burlap typically used to conceal duck blinds.

Thirteen fearful and anguished years after the bodies were first discovered, Heuermann was charged in each of those deaths with one count of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder. He is a suspect in numerous other unsolved Long Island homicides.

Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney led a multi-agency press conference at the Suffolk County Police Headquarters in Yaphank late on the afternoon of July 14 to announce the arrest and to highlight that the investigation was ongoing.

Surrounded by family members of the victims and a slew of other law enforcement officials from various agencies, Tierney detailed efforts he undertook to reinvigorate an investigation that he said had lagged by the time he was elected to his post in 2021.

“Ray Tierney called a Babe Ruth grand slam,” Southampton Town Police Chief James Kiernan said by phone this week, referring to the baseball icon’s legendary habit of pointing his bat at the outfield bleachers to signal to opposing pitchers that he was about to hit a home run. “He said he was going to do this, and he just cemented himself in and he did it.”

In February 2022, Tierney created a Gilgo Task Force dedicated to tracking down the killer. The task force included members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Suffolk County Police Department, the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department, the New York State Police, and investigators from his office.

Only six weeks after it was created, the task force got a huge break last March 13, when a state investigator was able to tie Heuermann to a Chevrolet Avalanche in South Carolina that he had previously owned, and that was connected to his alleged involvement in the death of Amber Costello.

That breakthrough helped investigators to pinpoint an address in Massapequa Park, where Heuermann lived, and where, using cell towers to ping a general location, the FBI had previously scoped out an area where burner cell phone calls had been made to his sex-worker victims.

The suspect also is alleged to have made calls from an area in Midtown Manhattan where Heuermann’s architecture firm was located.

That investigative coup prompted Tierney’s office to impanel a grand jury. Working in secrecy, the grand jury went on to issue 300 subpoenas and search warrants targeting Heuermann, Tierney said.

And, thanks to advances in DNA testing technology between 2010 and 2022, investigators were able to tie the suspect to body hairs recovered from each of the three victims back in 2010.

Secrecy was the key to bringing Heuermann into custody last week, said Tierney, along with the “sweeping powers” of the grand jury to issue those subpoenas without tipping him off.

“We knew the person responsible would be looking at us,” Tierney said.

And indeed, the suspect’s internet searches indicated that he clearly was tracking the Task Force’s activities, or trying to: One of Heuermann’s Google searches plainly asked, “How is Task Force using cell phones.”

Tierney said that even as there is now some closure at hand for the families of the victims, the investigation into Heuermann is ongoing, given that he is suspected of killing numerous other women who have disappeared on Long Island.

He is also the named prime suspect in the “disappearance and murder” of Maureen Brainard-Barnes in 2007, according to court documents.

Tierney highlighted that the Task Force moved to arrest Heuermann out of a growing concern that he might try to solicit and kill another victim. Even as investigators closed in on their prime suspect, Heuermann continued to patronize sex workers, using his standard practice of contacting them via fictitious email accounts and the burner phones.

“Eventually,” said Tierney of the decision to arrest Heuermann, “the balance tips in favor of public safety.”

Tierney demurred when asked by a reporter at the July 14 press conference to describe Heuermann in personal terms, but Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison had no such qualms when he addressed reporters.

The alleged killer, said Harrison, is a “demon that walks among us.”

Southampton Town Attorney James Burke related the high-profile case to his experiences stemming from 9/11 in a poignant email in which he recalled losing his firefighter brother that day. “I have personal knowledge of what it is like to lose a loved one in such a public event,” Burke wrote, adding that the inter-agency effort to nab Heuermann was also reminiscent of 9/11 to the extent that it highlighted “the extreme importance of all agencies involved to have the ability to work together.”

Chief Kiernan said the arrest means that, “I imagine all of us can breathe a little easier — he was here, he was on Long Island. And as far as Ray Tierney — he does pay attention to crime, and we are appreciative of it out here.”