Cops scouring accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann’s home in search of evidence tying him to new victims: sources
Cops scouring the Long Island home of accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann are using body parts from potentially other victims to try to tie him to those murders, too, police sources say.
Authorities aren’t just looking for more links to the deaths of the four sex workers Heuermann is already accused of butchering — they also are trying to nail him on other murders that he hasn’t previously been publicly associated with, sources told The Post on Tuesday.
“They’re looking to match up previously recovered body parts but that didn’t match any of the identified victims,” a source familiar with the probe said.
The shocking revelation came as Suffolk County and state police investigators searched the 60-year-old married architect and dad of two’s disheveled Massapequa Park home, where he had been living with his wife and son and daughter, for a second straight day.
Photos show Suffolk County cops and state troopers stacking dozens of large brown cardboard boxes on the front porch of the home and inside two white tents erected on the front lawn — as vans and a trailer sat along the curb waiting to cart away the potential evidence.
A coroner’s van that was at the scene Monday had not returned as of midday Tuesday.
Heuermann’s wife and son “told me that [cops] tore the place apart the first time, that there was no stone unturned,” longtime next-door neighbor Etienne DeVilliers, 68, said to The Post on Tuesday.
“I don’t know what they could possibly be looking for or they could find this time,” she said. “You got to move on.
“To see the kids going through this, it’s a sad thing to see,” DeVilliers said. “When I see [the son] Chris walking down the street with his dog, even to this day, he still says to me, ‘My father didn’t do this.’ And I say, ‘It’s OK, Chris. It’s OK to feel that way.’ ‘Cause you know, nothing is his fault.
“So I hope they got the wrong guy but you know, we’ll see.”
Authorities have been tight-lipped about the search warrant that sent cops back to the house.
But a source said the new search also seeks to build on the evidence prosecutors already have on Heuermann in the death of the four women he’s charged with killing.
“The problem with the case they have is it’s largely circumstantial,” the source told The Post.
“The physical evidence, meaning the mitochondrial DNA, is not 100%. You still need to be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Rex Heuermann was with these victims at a time, a certain location, and you have to put him at the scene wherever that scene may be and doing the act.
“That is what they are searching for, new evidence for the theory that one or more may have been murdered in his home while his family was away,” the source said. “But right now, that’s the piece that is missing.”
The source said the current theory of the crimes “lays out a roadmap,” but “it’s actually not a great theory.”
Investigators arrived at the single-story red house armed with a search warrant shortly after 8 a.m. Monday, with the operation taking place while Heuerman”s wife, Asa Ellerup, and their two adult children, Christopher and Victoria, are in South Carolina.
Heuermann remains in the Riverhead Correctional Facility in Suffolk, where he’s been since his arrest in July 2022.
Police had already spent nearly two weeks combing through the house and basement at the family’s property in July 2023. They found a concrete gun vault where the accused killer stashed more than 300 guns, among other things.
The search extended to a nearby storage locker, with cops reportedly looking for body parts.
Authorities never revealed what if anything they found at the time.
The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office has declined to comment on the new search.
Despite DNA evidence, cell-phone records and years-old eyewitness identification, investigators have never determined where Heuermann’s alleged victims — known collectively as the “Gilgo Four” — were actually killed.
The slain women — Amber Lynn Costello, 27, Melissa Barthelemy, 24, Nicole Brainard-Smith, 24, and Megan Waterman, 22 — were sex escorts who solicited clients on Craig’s List and other online sites.
Their bodies were found along a desolate stretch of waterfront along Ocean Parkway between 2010 and 2011, along with more than a half-dozen other corpses whose deaths remain unsolved.
The case sat dormant for over a decade until police reopened it in 2022 and identified Heuerman as a suspect about two months into the new probe.
According to documents filed by prosecutors, the hulking Manhattan architect frequented online sites to solicit prostitutes and was obsessed with the progress of the Gilgo Beach investigation.
Suffolk County prosecutors have not linked Heuermann to the other bodies — something sources told The Post they are attempting to do now.
