Gilgo Beach killings: Alleged serial killer Rex Heuermann to be charged in two more killings, sources say

Alleged Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex A. Heuermann has been indicted in the killings of two additional women, including a Queens resident whose remains were found in Southampton Town more than 30 years ago and had only recently been connected to the Gilgo Beach investigation, sources told Newsday.

Heuermann, 60, of Massapequa Park, will be arraigned before State Supreme Court Justice Timothy Mazzei in Riverhead Thursday in the July 2003 dismemberment death of Jessica Taylor and the November 1993 death of Sandra Costilla, whose killing Suffolk police and prosecutors had long associated with a different suspect.

Newsday first reported the new indictment, which remains under seal, on Monday. Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney declined to comment on the indictment, confirming only that Heuermann will return to court at 9:30 a.m. Thursday and that he will be joined by additional law enforcement for a press briefing at 11 a.m.

Heuermann, who was 30 years old when Costilla’s remains were found on Cove Road in North Sea on Nov. 20, 1993, had previously not been charged in a killing committed earlier than 2007.

Taylor and Costilla also represent the first alleged victims tied to Heuermann whose remains were discovered somewhere other than Ocean Parkway, expanding the area in which he allegedly dumped bodies by more than 40 miles.

The four previous killings he was charged with also did not include dismemberment, as was the case with Taylor, whose torso was found in Manorville days after she disappeared, before her head, hands and forearm were found in March 2011 along Ocean Parkway near Cedar Beach.

Costilla, who also used the last name Cutello and was 28 when she was killed, had lived on Gates Avenue in Ridgewood, Queens, until around 1992, police said at the time. She also previously lived in an apartment in Flushing, Queens, property records show.

Costilla’s death had not been tied to the Gilgo Beach investigation until K-9 units spent five hours in April searching the wooded North Sea property where her remains had been found.

Since as early as 1994, police had said Costilla’s death may have been linked to the killings of Colleen McNamee and Rita Tangredi, a narrative that continued through the 2014 arrest of John Bittrolff, who was eventually convicted in the other two murders.

Costilla was strangled and might have been raped, police said shortly after her remains were discovered. Similar to McNamee and Tangredi, her body was found nude, with her arms behind her back and wood chips present at the crime scene, the prosecutors who tried Bittrolff’s case said. But the DNA linking Bittrolff to the other two victims was not present at Costilla’s scene, former Suffolk Assistant District Attorney Robert Biancavilla told reporters in 2014.

Detectives attempted to elicit a confession from Bittrolff in Costilla’s killing, according to court records, showing him her headshot and a photograph of her crime scene.

Ultimately, Bittrolff was never charged in Costilla’s death, and he is now serving a 50-years-to-life sentence at Clinton Correctional Center in upstate Dannemora. He is appealing his conviction. 

Police in 1993 asked the public for help finding Costilla’s family, saying they needed more information to aid in the investigation. Unlike the other alleged victims in the case, law enforcement has never described Costilla as a sex worker.

Taylor grew up in Poughkeepsie and lived in New York City before she disappeared. She was 20 when she was reported missing, having last been seen at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan.

Taylor was a sex worker who was in a relationship with a man believed to be her pimp and boyfriend, though her family believes she had run away from the man shortly before she died. Her remains were identified in part by a tattoo that included the man’s name.

Taylor’s torso was found off Halsey Manor Road in Manorville about a mile south of where Valerie Mack’s remains were discovered near the Long Island Expressway. Mack’s death is not a part of the new indictment, sources said.

Gilgo Beach Task Force investigators searched the portion of Manorville where the remains of Taylor and Mack were discovered for nine days in April. Tierney called the search, and an additional six-day search of Heuermann’s home, a “necessary investigative step.”

“On Thursday, you will see the fruits of that investigation,” Tierney told reporters in Riverhead Monday.

Heuermann defense attorney Michael J. Brown, of Central Islip, declined to comment on the eve of the arraignment.

Heuermann previously pleaded not guilty in the deaths of four women — Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Lynn Costello and Maureen Brainard-Barnes — who were the first of 10 sets of remains found near each other along Ocean Parkway between late fall 2010 and early spring 2011.

The Manhattan architect has been held without bail since his July 13 arrest on first- and second-degree murder charges in the killings of Waterman, Barthelemy and Costello. He was charged in January with second-degree murder in the killing of Brainard-Barnes. All four women worked as sex workers and Heuermann had hundreds of contacts with sex workers in the years before he was arrested, prosecutors have said.

Prosecutors believe Heuermann acted alone in the first four killings he was charged with and that the cause of each woman’s death was “homicidal violence.” Their bodies were found nude and bound, and they were contacted by burner phones consistent with Heuermann’s locations, prosecutors have said. Five hairs connected to Heuermann or a family member were recovered from three of the four sets of remains, according to prosecutors.

Heuermann was connected to the case primarily through cell site data, burner phone records and DNA evidence linking him to the women and the location where the bodies were found, prosecutors have said. A witness in Costello’s disappearance also provided a description of a truck linked to Heuermann, which helped establish him as a suspect and was later recovered from his brother’s property in South Carolina, prosecutors have said.

A cheek swab, obtained from Heuermann by court order since he’s been in custody, matched a mitochondrial DNA profile authorities who were surveilling Heuermann developed from a pizza crust and used napkin that allegedly were discarded in Manhattan, prosecutors have said.

The mitochondrial DNA profile developed from the pizza and napkin could not be excluded as a match to a hair found at the bottom of burlap used to “restrain and transport” the remains of Waterman, according to prosecutors.

Prosecutors said in court papers filed in March they had turned over 12 terabytes of data to Heuermann’s defense, including a transcript of the grand jury presentation, 85 grand jury exhibits, autopsy reports, photographs from the crime scene and the medical examiner’s office, search warrants and affidavits. Prosecutors said the defense also has been given paperwork from the Suffolk County Police Department and its crime lab, as well as outside laboratory documentation. 

At Heuermann’s most recent court appearance in April, Tierney and Suffolk Assistant District Attorney Nicholas Santomartino said prosecutors also recently turned over nearly 400 complete leads, a total of more than 7,000 other persons of interest in the 13-year investigation.

With Michael O'Keeffe, Nicole Fuller and Anthony M. DeStefano

By Grant Parpan

grant.parpan@newsday.com@GrantParpan

Grant Parpan covers Suffolk County courts and federal courts for Newsday. A Long Island native, he joined Newsday in 2022.