Suspected Long Island Serial Killer Charged With Seventh Murder

Rex Heuermann, the suspected Long Island Serial Killer, was charged today with a seventh murder for the 2000 killing of Valerie Mack, The New York Times reports.

Heuermann appeared in court Tuesday, Dec. 17, in Riverhead, New York, where he pleaded not guilty to the new charge. Mack was a sex worker from New Jersey, whose partial remains were first discovered in Manorville, New York in 2000. Additional remains belonging to Mack were later found in 2011 along Gilgo Beach, where many of the other victims were discovered. 

Authorities brought the charge against Heuermann after doing a DNA test on human hair discovered with Mack’s remains. While the hair was found to be a likely match with the genetic profile of Heuermann’s daughter, police did not accuse her of any wrongdoing as she would have been three or four-years-old when Mack died.

Investigators also used phone records and Heuermann’s internet activity to link him to Mack’s killing. They said mutilation wounds on Mack’s breast, as well as marks ostensibly left by a rope on her body, appeared similar to some of the bondage and violent pornography images Heuermann has been accused of downloading at the time. Heuermann is accused of using similar techniques on another one of his alleged victims.

A press conference on the new charge is scheduled for later this morning.

Heuermann is already facing murder charges connected to the deaths of six women, and has pleaded not guilty over all charges. He was originally arrested in July 2023 and charged with murdering three of the so-called “Gilgo Four” victims, Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello. Charges pertaining to the fourth victim, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, were brought in January of this year.

Then, in June, authorities charged Heuermann with the murders of two additional victims, Jessica Taylor and Sandra Costilla. Taylor had been missing since 2003, and her partial remains were discovered near Gilgo Beach. But Costilla’s partial remains were found in 1993 in the Hamptons, and her unsolved murder had not been previously associated with the Long Island serial killer investigation. 

When Heuermann was charged with Taylor and Costilla’s murders, investigators seemed to suggest they were preparing to charge him in Mack’s death as well. Investigators had long believed Mack and Taylor were victims of the same killer, as their remains were disposed of in a similar manner in Manorville. Heuermann’s bail application from this summer also mentioned Mack multiple times, noting the similarities between her death and Taylor’s.

The Gilgo investigation dates back to 2010, when investigators discovered the bodies of 10 victims along a stretch Long Island’s southern coast. The investigation largely centered around the “Gilgo Four,” as all four victims were sex workers at the time of their deaths and found wrapped similarly in burlap. (The other six victims included four women — Taylor among them — a man, and a toddler.) 

After more than a decade as a cold case, investigators finally zeroed in on Heuermann as a suspect in 2022 after discovering that he’d once owned a Chevrolet Avalanche — the same car model a witness had mentioned seeing in connection to the Costello murder. After that, police were able to connect a series of “burner” phones and email addresses to Heuermann, alleging he used those to contact sex workers. One of those accounts led investigators to a trove of evidence, including to “sex workers, sadistic, torture-related pornography and child pornography,” as well as more than 200 searches related to the unsolved Long Island serial killer case. 

The final piece of evidence preceding Heuermann’s arrest came from a discarded pizza crust. Investigators used it to obtain DNA evidence, which matched male hair found in the burlap sack that contained Waterman’s remains. DNA evidence also tied Heuermann to male hair recovered from the bodies of Costilla and Taylor.