Gilgo Beach killings: Who was victim Valerie Mack?

Valerie Mack was just 24 years old when she was killed 24 years ago.

The mother of a young son, Mack was trying to turn her life around, relatives said, before she was killed.

On Tuesday, alleged Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex A. Heuermann was charged with her slaying, after investigators linked him to the crime through hairs found on Mack’s remains, court papers show. Mack is the seventh victim whose killing Heuermann has been charged with. He pleaded not guilty at his arraignment on second-degree murder charges Tuesday morning.

Mack, who authorities have said was working as a sex worker in Philadelphia, lived a life of fractured family relationships. In interviews with Newsday, her family described Mack as being shuttled between various foster homes, until finally settling with Edwin and JoAnn Mack, to live in southern New Jersey.

Mack’s birth mother was Patricia Fulton, a woman who had substance abuse and alcohol problems and was diagnosed with AIDS, her relatives told Newsday. Fulton lost custody of her children, including Valerie, the family members said. Fulton’s body was found in 2002 floating in a boat basin in Chicago, where she had been living, according to court records.

Valerie Mack "was a wonderful girl, a quick sense of humor, vivacious," JoAnn Mack told Newsday in a 2022 interview.

With the Macks, Valerie seemed to thrive, living in a spacious home in a bucolic setting near the New Jersey pine barrens and pristine marshlands. She did well in school and participated in plays at the local church and had a prized possession in a upright piano that still graces the family home.

But at age 14, Valerie’s life seemed to unravel, her family said.

She sometimes ran away, hung out with the wrong crowd and began skipping school, the Macks remembered. The family tried counseling at a New Jersey crisis center specializing in children. But counseling didn’t work and at age 17, the state social service system determined Valerie should be treated as an adult and trusted to make her own decisions.

In the early 1990s, Valerie moved in with a sister, Dierdre Gimmillaro, in Wildwood, New Jersey. In 1994, Valerie gave birth to son, Benjamin, and started living with the boy’s father, the Macks said. But Valerie told her parents she didn’t feel she was capable of being a good mother and left her son and his father.

A number of prostitution and drug arrests followed in the Philadelphia area, sometimes under the name Melissa Taylor, court records show.

But after a heart inflammation in the fall of 1999, Valerie returned to live with the Macks and seemed to be getting her life together, even getting a job at a local dollar discount store, family members said.

However, plagued by anxiety and other problems, she left the Macks again. The last family members remembered hearing about her was around late September or October 2000, when she was going to New York with a "guy," recalled JoAnn Mack.

The next time the Macks heard news about Valerie Mack was in February 2020, when the FBI and Suffolk County police told them her dismembered remains were found in Manorville and later along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach and had been identified through genetic genealogy.

In recent weeks, the Macks said investigators with Suffolk police visited their home to try as best as they could to retrace Valerie’s steps in the weeks and months before she disappeared. The family said one sister, Gimmillaro, who seemed close to Valerie and might have known more about her whereabouts and later part of her life, died a few years after Valerie went missing.

After the detectives started visiting recently, the Macks sensed their daughter’s death might finally be tied to the Heuermann case, relatives said.

On Tuesday morning, at least one relative said the family is finally getting some closure. Tricia Hazen, Valerie Mack's sister, said she was gratified to hear about the new charges.

"That is awesome," said Hazen, of New Jersey. "I am very happy he was indicted for the murder and glad he will pay for another one" of the alleged victims.

By Anthony M. DeStefano

tony.destefano@newsday.comtonynewsday

Anthony M. DeStefano has been a reporter for Newsday since 1986 and covers law enforcement, criminal justice and legal affairs from its New York City offices.