MASSAPEQUA — A suspect has been taken into custody in Long Island in connection with a long-unsolved string of killings, known as the Gilgo Beach murders, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press on Friday.
The case has drawn immense public attention since human remains were found along a New York beach highway more than a decade ago. The remains included those of Shannan Gilbert, a sex worker and former resident of the Ulster County village of Ellenville. The mystery attracted national headlines for many years and the unsolved killings were the subject of the 2020 Netflix film “Lost Girls.”
Rex Heuermann, 59, was taken into custody in Massapequa late Thursday, near where investigators were seen Friday searching his home, according to a law enforcement official who was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the investigation and did so on condition of anonymity.
Heuermann, an architect, was scheduled to be arraigned Friday in state court in Riverhead. A message seeking comment was left with his lawyer. Voice and email messages were left at Heuermann’s Manhattan office and at possible numbers for his home and family Friday.
Heuermann lives in Massapequa Park, a community just north of South Oyster Bay and the sandy stretch known as Gilgo Beach, where skeletal remains were found along a remote oceanfront highway in 2010 and 2011. The deaths have long stumped investigators. Most of the victims were young women who had been sex workers.
Determining who killed them, and why, has vexed a slew of seasoned homicide detectives through several changes in police leadership. Last year, an interagency task force was formed with investigators from the FBI, as well as state and local police departments, aimed at solving the case.
The formation of the Gilgo Beach task force represented a renewed commitment to investigating the unsolved killings of mostly young women whose…
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