District Attorney Tierney to Prosecute Accused Gilgo Killer

The suspect in one of Long Island’s most disturbing murder mysteries will be prosecuted by the man whose unwavering focus propelled the cold case toward a sensational arrest. Suffolk District Attorney Raymond Tierney said he will try the suspect in the infamous Gilgo Beach murders himself to bring closure to the families of three of the victims and justice to a county that was unnerved by the case for more than a decade.

Immediately following his election in 2022, Tierney made solving the Gilgo case a top priority. He assembled a special task force and opened the door to assistance from outside agencies, including the FBI, that were turned away by a previous administration. A reexamination of the clues led to a name, Rex Heuermann, a 59-year-old architect from Massapequa Park, and dogged work by the investigative team that pieced together the evidence Tierney said is enough for him to win a conviction.

Rex Heuermann leaving the precinct File Photo

“I made a commitment to the families that we would do everything possible to solve this case,” Tierney said in an exclusive interview with the South Shore Press. “I know the facts as well as anyone and had put the case before the Grand Jury. I feel an obligation to finish what I started.”

The district attorney pointed to five hairs found with the bodies that matched Heuermann and his wife as compelling evidence, as well as phone records investigators were able to trace to the suspect showing he made contact with the victims. A witness provided a description of the hulking 6’4” Heuermann from an incident with a sex worker and noted his vehicle, a dark Avalanche pickup truck. Intense police work matched Heuermann to the Avalanche and investigators were able to pull his DNA from a pizza box he discarded. They scored a match.

“We brought in a great team and the skills and resources of a lot of different agencies,” Tierney explained. “That's the only way that you could go through this amount of evidence quickly. We had 13 years worth of evidence to go through.”

Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney File Photo

Heuermann stands accused of killing Amber Lynn Costello, Melissa Barthelemy, and Megan Waterman, and Tierney said he is a prime suspect in the death of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, another of the 11 bodies found in the heavy brush near the Babylon Town beach. “We’re expanding the investigation into the other bodies that were found on Gilgo Beach,” the prosecutor said, referencing a large amount of information obtained from search warrants that need to be cataloged and analyzed. “It’s a painstaking process; we’re looking for hair, fibers, traces of DNA.” Investigators had gone through Heuermann’s home with a fine-tooth comb and brought in heavy equipment to dig up his backyard. The Avalanche was found in South Carolina and was scoured, as well as storage facilities and other places Heuermann was found to have visited.

Tierney said he is also working with investigators on other missing person cases that could also lead to Heuermann. “We want to be good partners with everyone, so on a daily basis we speak with investigators from other jurisdictions, if not on this case, than other cases as well,” Tierney said. “And we're ready, willing and able to provide our information to those jurisdictions,” he noted, adding, “If a jurisdiction has a confidential investigation that they reach out to us on, we will maintain confidentiality in the same way we would ask that they do for us.”

Tierney said he has been in close contact with the families of the victims. “These folks have waited patiently for 13 years for some small measure of justice,” he said. “We're just at the beginning, we have a lot of work to do. But I was really inspired and honored to have met them.”

The Gilgo case faltered under the previous administration of District Attorney Tom Spota as the Suffolk police chief at the time, Jim Burke, iced out other agencies. He was later convicted on federal charges for beating a suspect who stole pornography and sex paraphernalia from his unmarked police car. Burke served time for the crime, while Spota and his deputy, Chris McPartland, are currently incarcerated for trying to cover up the beating. The succeeding district attorney, Tim Sini, who Tierney defeated in his reelection, was also unable to solve the murder mysteries. “I think there was a lot of dysfunction in the leadership,” Tierney stated in commenting on why the case sat unsolved for 13 years.

With years of evidence to sift through and turn over to the defense, Tierney could not give a date when he expects the trial to begin.

“I’ll say this about two groups of people involved in the case,” Tierney concluded: “First, my task force members, I always forget to thank my own people; they are absolutely unbelievable. Next, Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison and his department’s crime lab, Suffolk Sheriff Errol Toulon, the New York State Police, FBI, and we're even bringing in the Secret Service to help us analyze some of the instruments we've recovered. So we've got a great many talented people working on this case, along with the resources of their various agencies. That's why we've had success because we've all been able to work together.”