Gilgo Beach killings: Police expand search of human remains from Manorville to North Sea

Police have expanded their K-9 search for body parts in the Gilgo Beach homicides investigation that began Tuesday in Manorville to the site of a decades old unsolved murder in North Sea on Friday, a source told Newsday.

A Suffolk Police K-9 unit arrived in the Southampton town hamlet with cadaver dogs at 5 a.m., a source said. The North Sea site is about 19 miles from where cadaver dogs from three police agencies continue to search the woods in Manorville.

The latest development in the search comes as the K-9 police search of Manorville woodlands continued into a fourth day Friday and officers headed south of the Long Island Expressway for the first time. New York State Police were spotted combing the woods west of Halsey Manor Road from County Road 111 to the Expressway, just south of where two sets of partial remains related to Gilgo Beach were found more than 20 years ago.

The Suffolk County District Attorney's Office, which is leading the investigation, and the Suffolk police, both declined to comment on the daylong search.

Sandra Costilla, 28, was found in a wooded area in North Sea in November 1993. Prosecutors have linked her death to two homicide cases Manorville carpenter John Bittrolff was later convicted of in 2017. Bittrolff was convicted of second-degree murder in the killings of both Rita Tangredi and Colleen McNamee and sentenced to 50 years to life in prison.

Following Bittrolff's 2014 arraignment, former Suffolk prosecutor Robert Biancavilla told reporters Costilla's body was posed similarly to the Bittrolff victims and wood chips were present at all three crime scenes.

Reached by telephone Friday, Biancavilla, who has since retired as a prosecutor, declined to comment on his remarks from a decade ago or the police investigation Friday.

Bittrolff lived on Silas Carter Road, where police have set up a mobile command center behind the Manorville Firehouse this week.

Tangredi’s murder remained unsolved for two decades until Suffolk homicide detectives obtained a Bittrolff DNA sample that matched semen recovered from both her and McNamee, 20, a fellow sex worker from Holbrook who was killed in a similar fashion three months after Tangredi.

Bittrolff was arrested in 2014 and charged with the murder of both women, whose bodies were posed similarly, with their clothes nearby, except for one shoe each and their underwear.

Bittrolff is appealing his conviction.

Police said at the time of her death that Costilla's last known address was on Gates Avenue in Ridgewood, Queens.

Police linked her death to McNamee and Tangredi soon after all three were killed in southeastern Suffolk County within about three months of each other.

The three women had certain similarities: all were around five feet tall, and no more than 125 pounds. And all were murdered, their nude bodies found in wooded areas.

Suffolk's homicide commander at the time said the killings could all be related to each other.

“The investigation has definitely linked two victims, Colleen McNamee … and Rita Tangredi Beinlich,” Det. Lt. John Gierasch told reporters in May 1994. “Additionally, we have reason to believe Sandra Costilla . . may possibly be linked as well. We believe, based on the totality of the circumstances, they were most likely sexually motivated homicides.”

No one was ever charged in Costilla's murder but former Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota said in 2014 that the investigation into her killing was still active.

Costilla has never been linked to the Gilgo Beach investigation.

Suffolk County and New York State Police could also be seen searching areas north and south of Mill Road near Calverton Friday. Officers were less visible on the search's fourth day as they moved deeper into the woods in certain areas.

Other areas covered Friday include Connecticut Avenue and River Road. The NYPD also continued to assist in the search.

Police and prosecutors have declined to say what has prompted the intense search of the hamlet more than two decades after partial remains of Gilgo Beach victims Valerie Mack and Jessica Taylor were found in the woods near Halsey Manor Road.

The Suffolk County District Attorney's Office has said only that the search relates to an ongoing investigation, though other sources have connected it to the work of the Gilgo Beach Task Force.

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

In 2003, partial remains of Taylor, who lived for a time in the Bronx, were located about a mile south of Mack's near the Long Island Expressway.

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.

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

Heuermann has pleaded not guilty to first- and second-degree murder in the killings of Megan Waterman, Amber Lynn Costello and Melissa Barthelemy, and second-degree murder in the slaying of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, collectively known as the “Gilgo Four.” The victims, whose remains were discovered in 2010, also were sex workers.

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.