The man charged in the Gilgo Beach serial killers may have started preying on young women earlier than initially thought — and not just on Long Island’s south shore.
Rex Heuerman was 29 years old and three years away from becoming a licensed architect when the body of Sandra Costilla, one of two women he was charged with killing Thursday, was discovered in 1993 in a wooded area near Fish Cove Road in Southampton, on the eastern end of Long Island.
The bodies of the five other women Heuerman is charged with killing were all discovered since about 2010 in and around Gilgo Beach, about 70 miles west of Southampton.
The fact that Heurman has been charged with a murder that occurred more than 30 years ago is an ominous sign to expert criminologists such as Joseph Giacalone, an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former NYPD sergeant who once headed the Bronx’s cold case unit.
“Before this is all over, he may be one of the most prolific serial killers in Long Island history,” Giacalone said. “Based on the time period and the modus operandi he used, there may be another 50 unsolved murders linked to him.” [modus operandi]. “
According to the indictment, Heuerman is also under investigation for the 2000 death of another woman, Valeria Mack.
Police said Heurman, 60, had lived a quiet life with his family since 1987, commuting from his home in Massapequa Park to his Manhattan office.
“They say beware the quiet ones,” Mr. Giacalone said. “He was in and out, trying not to draw attention to himself, while the women disappeared.”
The Costilla case is the oldest murder case in which prosecutors have charged Heurman. Prosecutors say the 28-year-old woman was killed on either Nov. 19 or 20, 1993, and her badly mutilated body was discovered by a hunter. DNA from a hair found on the body matched Heurman’s.
According to Heurman’s indictment, Costilla was originally from Trinidad and Tobago and lived in New York City, but the indictment provided little other information about her.
Police said Costilla was living on Gates Avenue in the Ridgewood neighborhood of Queens at the time of his disappearance and that he sometimes went by the surname Catello. Costilla had been arrested in 1992 for jumping a subway ticket barrier and had fingerprints on him, Newsday reported at the time.
But reporters who visited her neighborhood in Queens at the time could not find anyone there who knew her.
“That’s all we can do until someone comes forward and expresses concern for her,” Detective Lt. John Gierasch, then commander of the Suffolk Homicide Unit, was quoted as saying. “We don’t know her most recent address, we don’t know where her family is.”
Heuerman was also charged Thursday with second-degree murder in the death of Jessica Taylor, a 20-year-old New York City escort whose body was found dismembered in a wooded area near Ocean Parkway east of Gilgo Beach on Long Island’s south shore in 2011. Hair from Heuerman was also found on the body.
According to the indictment, Taylor was working as a prostitute in the Midtown Manhattan area and had been talking to her mother on a cell phone before leaving for her final date: She was scheduled to fly to Poughkeepsie, New York, for her mother’s birthday on July 25, 2003.
“When her daughter did not show up to her home in Poughkeepsie or answer her phone calls, Ms. Taylor’s mother called police,” the charging documents state.
Last year, Heurman was indicted in the long-unsolved murders of three female prostitutes, Melissa Barthelemy, 24, Megan Waterman, 22, and Amber Lynn Costello, 27, whose bodies were found abandoned on a Long Island beach.
Earlier this year, Heurman was also charged in the murder of 25-year-old Maureen Brainard Barnes.
According to the indictment, Taylor and Mack’s bodies were found near other women known as the “Gilgo Four.”
The search for the Gilgo Beach murders began in 2010 after 11 bodies were discovered in and around the beach on Long Island’s South Shore during a search for missing prostitutes.
But the case quickly stalled amid accusations that cultural bias against sex workers was slowing detectives down, and it was only reopened in 2022 when Suffolk County’s new police chief, Rodney Harrison, put together the Gilgo Beach Homicide Task Force, made up of federal and state investigators and local detectives.
Heuerman, on the other hand, was, at least on the surface, just an ordinary Long Island family man who minded his own business: The architect lived in the modest home he grew up in with his wife, Asa Ellerup, his daughter, Victoria, and his son-in-law, Christopher Sheridan, and rarely socialized with his neighbors.
Other than one interview in his Manhattan office posted to YouTube by Bonjour Reality in 2002, Heuerman maintained a low professional profile.
In the video, Heuerman, who records show he qualified as an architect in 1996, details his work as a consultant helping clients navigate New York City’s arcane building codes, and how he learned to make furniture in his father’s workshop.
In one now particularly chilling segment of the interview, Heuermann talked about his favorite tool: a cabinetmaker’s hammer.
“If you ever need to convince someone, this is pretty persuasive,” he can be heard saying.
“Nobody?” the interviewer asks.
“There is something,” Heuerman replies, “and it always produces great results.”
Heurman had another interest that was not revealed until police searched his house: unsolved murders.
According to the indictment, police found a copy of a book in his office titled “The Case That Had Us” by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker.
