23 July 2023 , 23:19
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Cops have found a soundproof room in the basement of an accused serial killer's home and believe one woman was killed there.
New York State troopers and Suffolk County police searched alleged Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann’s home with cadaver dogs earlier this week.
Ground penetrating radar and a digger were also used in the search at the accused killer’s family home.
Items including a child-sized doll with blonde braids and up to 300 guns have been recovered from the property. Nearby storage units were also searched for possible human remains.
Heuermann, an architect, was arrested for the thirteen-year-old killings on July 13 in connection with the deaths of Amber Costello, Melissa Barthelemy and Megan Waterman in 2010.
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The father of two was arrested outside his office in Midtown Manhattan.
Ground penetrating radar and a digger were used in the search (AP)He is the prime suspect in the death of a fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes. The women became known as the 'Gilgo Four' since the bodies of four women - all of them sex workers - were found wrapped in burlap in a marshy area near Gilgo Beach.
Within months, the remains of six other bodies, including a toddler, were discovered elsewhere along the same beach highway. Heuermann has not been accused in any of those cases. Police have said the deaths may be the work of multiple killers.
Heuermann denies the charges against him and pleaded not guilty.
The 'Gilgo Four': Melissa Barthelemy, top left, Amber Costello, top right, Megan Waterman, bottom left, and Maureen Brainard-Barnes (AP)Local Kathy Huber said the neighbours didn't mind the disruption.
"We don’t care how long this has to be here,” Huber, 57, said to the New York Post. "This is a big community of cops and firemen, and I find it hard to believe that anybody here will be angry that cops are taking their time and doing a good job.
She added: "With these girls, with these victims, please, take your time and get justice for these women and these families.
"We don’t care how long this has to be here."
13 years of waiting
Families of the victims are reported to be relieved an arrest has finally been made as the case went cold, but questions have been raised over the way police handled the original investigation.
Dave Schaller, Amber Cotello's roommate, provided detectives with a description of the person he believed to be the killer and described his truck.
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He came home to find a stranger threatening Costello, who had locked herself in the bathroom.
Schaller and the stranger came to blows and the latter eventually left.
Police have been searching Heuermann's house since his arrest on July 13 (Getty Images)Prosecutors say Costello was last seen alive on Sept. 2, 2010, as she left her home to meet that same client. A witness saw a dark-coloured truck drive by the house again shortly after she left.
“When they told me she was dead, he was the first person who jumped in my head,” Schaller said. “I’ve been picturing his face for 13 years.”
There remain questions over if investigators pursued the lead given to them by Schaller, who lamented the lead he gave not being adequately followed up.“I gave them the exact description of the truck and the dude,” he said. “I mean come on, why didn’t they use that?"
Law enforcement officials spoke on condition of anonymity and two high-ranking officials who attended briefings between 2011 and 2013 said they never heard anything about a witness statement describing the suspect and his vehicle.
Schaller, Costello's roommate, said he came to blows with a large man (JMP/ABACA/REX/Shutterstock)“This was crucial information, and I don’t know why they didn’t share it,” said Rob Trotta, a county legislator who worked as a Suffolk County Police detective until 2013. “They made some serious blunders here.”
Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney inherited the case in 2022. He said the description of the truck was vital to the unravelling of the case.
Heuermann bought the Chevrolet in 2002, before giving it over to his brother 10 years later.
Tierney also said he was unsure why the search on the truck was not performed earlier, but suggested it could have been “lost within a sea of other tips and information.”
When they ran it through a vehicle records database, one of the results turned up a hit: A man who owned a Chevy Avalanche lived in a neighbourhood that investigators were already zeroing in on as the suspect’s likely location because of a sophisticated analysis of cellphone location data and call records.
Heuermann fits the physical description provided by Schaller, listed as 6ft 4ins.