Gilgo case: Police expand Manorville search deeper into woods

The police search of Manorville and its surrounding areas continued into a fifth day Saturday, with Suffolk County police and New York State K-9 units searching deeper into the woodlands than they had in previous days as the Gilgo Beach investigation continues to expand to new areas.

Four Suffolk K-9 teams were spotted near the power lines west of Nugent Drive in Calverton not far from the Suffolk County Jail, where suspected Gilgo Beach killer Rex A. Heuermann has been housed since his arrest last July. New York State Police were also spotted south of the Long Island Expressway again, beginning their morning in the woods east of Chapman Boulevard and County Road 111.

This was the second straight day police crossed over the LIE after focusing their efforts the first three on portions of the woods to the north. On Friday, county police also searched woods 20 miles away in North Sea, a hamlet in Southampton Town, at the site of a 1993 unsolved murder.

The lengthy search is part of the Gilgo Beach homicide investigation, sources have told Newsday.

Police and prosecutors have declined to discuss specifics of the cadaver dog search, including what, if anything, has been found related to the case since the multiagency effort began Tuesday.

"We do not comment on investigative steps while they are underway," read a statement from Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney's office. "We will make further statements when appropriate."

On Saturday afternoon, Suffolk County crime scene investigators removed a safe and other items from a robbery that state police found while patrolling the woods south of Mill Road in Manorville.

On Friday evening, an NYPD pickup truck that spent the entire day in the woods returned to the Manorville firehouse and parked in front of the mobile Command Center Suffolk police have had set up on the property for several days. Officers put on rubber gloves and removed several items from a lock box on the truck. It wasn't clear what they brought back.

Police have to date searched much of the woodlands north of the LIE's Manorville exits and south of Middle Country Road, including sections of Calverton, Ridge and even a federal preserve on Brookhaven National Laboratory property in Upton. Manorville itself has more than 6,900 acres of core pine barrens, preserved forestland.

A rural hamlet with all 25 square miles situated in the Central Long Island Pine Barrens, Manorville is where the partial remains of two women named as victims in the Gilgo Beach investigation were found more than 20 years ago.

In November 2000, partial remains of Valerie Mack, a New Jersey native, were found in a wooded area west of Halsey Manor Road near Mill Road.

In 2003, partial remains of Jessica Taylor, who lived for a time in the Bronx, were located about a mile south near the LIE.

Other remains of both women, who had been sex workers, were later found along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo. No arrests have been made in the killings of Taylor and Mack.

Heuermann, an architect from Massapequa Park, was charged in four other Gilgo Beach homicide cases. None of his alleged victims had remains located in Manorville.

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.