Suspected Long Island serial killer Rex Heuerman was indicted today on a seventh murder charge for the 2000 killing of Valerie Mack, The New York Times reports.
Mr. Heuerman appeared in court in Riverhead, New York, on Tuesday, December 17, and pleaded not guilty to the new charges. Mack was a sex worker from New Jersey whose partial body was first discovered in 2000 in Manorville, New York. Later, in 2011, additional bodies belonging to Mack were discovered along Gilgo Beach, where many of the other victims were also found.
Authorities charged Heuerman after conducting DNA tests on human hair found with Mack’s body. The hair was found to likely match the genetic profile of Mr. Heuerman’s daughter, but because she was only 3 or 4 years old when Mack died, police did not charge her with any wrongdoing. .
Investigators also used phone records and Heuerman’s internet activity to link him to Mack’s murder. They said the cut wound on Ms. Mack’s chest and the marks left by the rope ostensibly on her body were among the bondage and violent pornographic images that Mr. Heuerman is accused of downloading at the time. He said it looked similar to the department. Heuerman is accused of using similar tactics on another alleged victim.
A press conference regarding the new charges is scheduled for later this morning.
Heuerman has already been charged with murder in connection with the deaths of six women and has pleaded not guilty to all charges. He was originally arrested in July 2023 and charged with the murders of three of the so-called “Gilgo Four” victims: Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello. Charges involving a fourth victim, Maureen Brainard Burns, were filed in January.
And in June, authorities charged Heuerman with killing two more victims, Jessica Taylor and Sandra Costilla. Taylor had been missing since 2003, and part of her body was found near Gilgo Beach. However, Ms. Costilla’s partial body was found in the Hamptons in 1993, and her unsolved murder had not previously been linked to the Long Island serial killer investigation.
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When Heuerman was charged with the murders of Taylor and Costilla, investigators appeared to be preparing to charge Heuerman with Mack’s death as well. Investigators had long believed that Mack and Taylor were victims of the same killer because their bodies were disposed of in a similar manner in Manorville. Mack was mentioned multiple times in Heuerman’s bail application this summer, drawing parallels between her death and Taylor’s.
The Gilgo investigation dates back to 2010, when investigators discovered the bodies of 10 victims along Long Island’s south coast. The investigation largely focused on the “Gilgo Four,” as all four victims were sex workers at the time of their deaths and were also found wrapped in burlap. (The other six victims included four women, including Taylor, one man, and an infant.)
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After more than a decade as a cold case, investigators finally zeroed in on Heuerman as a suspect in 2022 after discovering that Heuermann once owned a Chevrolet Avalanche. This was the same model of vehicle that witnesses said they saw in connection with Costello’s murder. Police were then able to connect a series of “burner” phones and email addresses to Heuerman, which they claimed Heuerman used to contact sex workers. One of those accounts led investigators to a trove of evidence that included “sex worker, sadistic, torture-related pornography, and child pornography,” and led to more than 200 searches related to the unsolved Long Island serial murders. went.
The final piece of evidence before Heuerman’s arrest came from a discarded pizza peel. Investigators used this to obtain DNA evidence that matched hair from a man found in the burlap bag containing Waterman’s body. DNA evidence also linked Heuerman to male hair recovered from Costilla and Taylor’s bodies.
