Gilgo Beach suspect Rex Heuermann in court for first time since indictment for fourth slaying
The lawyers for Gilgo Beach accused serial killer Rex Heuermann will parse the nearly 3,000 tips that cops received since 2010 about the 11 bodies found on the Long Island beach over 13 years ago – including of the so-called “Gilgo Four” – to help build their defense case.
Heuermann’s lawyer Michael Brown told reporters after a brief court hearing Tuesday that he wants to ensure that the police followed up on every lead they received over the 13-year period when the case went cold.
And he said the fact that the prior district attorney almost charged another person is going to be “extremely important for this case.”
“If they didn’t do anything we’ll see the lack of effort and the lack of investigation on any potential lead,” Brown said. “That could be very problematic for them and that could help support our position.”
But Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said he wasn’t surprised or phased by whatever defense Heuermann’s side is working on.
“We’ve been doing this a while,” Tierney told reporters at a press conference after. “We pretty much know what they’ve proposed or potential defenses.”
Heuermann, 60, appeared in Suffolk County Courthouse in Riverhead Tuesday morning with his hands cuffed behind his back and wearing a black suit, a white shirt and blue tie.
The five-minute-long court appearance was to update the judge on the status of the case and it marked the first time that Heuermann was back before Justice Timothy Mazzei since he pleaded not guilty Jan. 16 to an indictment charging him with a fourth murder of sex worker Maureen Brainard-Barnes, a 25-year-old mom of two, in 2007.
He remained silent and expressionless other than briefly whispering something into Brown’s ear when he was first escorted into the courtroom.
Prosecutor Nicholas Santamarino informed the judge that they would be turning over 2,944 tips they received dating back to 2010 and the entire log of leads law enforcement accumulated from that time through Jan. 2 of this year.
The DA’s office was also turning over 2,500 pages of lab reports and three terabytes of data they collected from Heuermann’s electronic device, Santamarino told the judge.
Brown had been seeking the records for tips and leads for months prior and he said after, that the information is “going to be important to us in the defense of this case.”
“We want to see those leads and we want to see the credibility of those leads,” he added.
Brown said he’ll be particularly interested in going through the information related to someone he was informed “the prior DA of this County was prepared to charge with these crimes.”
“We haven’t received any of that documentation. We expect that it will be forthcoming. But that’s very important, extremely important for this case,” Brown said.
Heuermann — an architect and married father of two — had already been behind bars since his July arrest for the killings of Amber Lynn Costello, 27, Melissa Bethelemy, 24, and Megan Waterman, 22, — who along with Brainard-Barnes make up the tragic so-called “Gilgo Four.”
Brown told reporters that his client has been kept in isolation in jail for his safety so that other inmates don’t have the opportunity to try to hurt him in a bid to “get their 15 minutes of fame.”
Still, the lawyer said Heuermann is “not getting any kind of social interaction with anyone else other than a correction officer.”
Heuermann was tied to the murders of the first three women through DNA found on a discarded pizza box. He was connected to the July 9, 2007, slaying of Brainard-Barnes — the first of the “Gilgo Four” to go missing while working as a call girl — through DNA evidence taken off of the Monster energy beverage from which his 26-year daughter Victoria drank, officials said last month.
He’s charged with three counts of first-degree murder and four counts of second-degree murder. He has pleaded not guilty.
From December 2010 through April 2011, 11 bodies including the “Gilgo Four” were found along a quiet stretch of Ocean Parkway, shaking the local community and beyond — all while cops went 13 years without a suspect to pin the crimes on.
Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney last month said a grand jury probe involving the remains of the other seven dead people is still ongoing.
After the new indictment from last month, Heuermann’s alleged sick online search history was exposed in court papers — which showed his twisted searches had included: “Tied up fat girl porn,” “Skinny white teen crying porn,” “medieval torture of women” and “skinny black slave girl.”
Heuermann allegedly made the searches under the Gmail account “sandbagger303,” which he created in 2017 with the false name “Andrew Robert.”
In April 2021, he continued his stomach-turning Google searches using a T/Hawk email account, prosecutors said at the time.
He also searched dozens of times for updates on the Gilgo Beach murders and looked for law enforcement techniques used to track cellphones and the use of DNA evidence to solve crimes, court papers revealed at the time.
Heuermann’s lawyer, Michael Brown, last month defended his client’s alleged “sadistic” search history, arguing that most people have done questionable Web sleuthing.
“One thing leads to another – you see a show about something, you start searching, and they talk about how somebody got killed,” Brown said at the time. “You start searching, and then they talk about another way, and you start searching. Think about if they looked at your own personal search history, how all of a sudden you’re guilty because of your search history?”
Tierney has said Heuermann waited for his daughter and his now-estranged wife Asa Ellerup to be out of town to carry out his killings, but victim lawyer John Ray said at an event over the weekend that the spouse may have been in town longer than investigators think.
Ray — who reps the families of Shannan Gilbert and Jessica Taylor — said he spoke with a hotel manager in Atlantic City who told him Ellerup, Victoria and the couple’s son arrived later than law enforcement believe — and they could have been around for at least one of the murders.
But Ellerup’s lawyer Bob Macedonia said he believes Tierney wouldn’t have gotten such a crucial fact wrong.
Heuermann is due back in court on April 17.
