Rex Heuermann stood in a Suffolk County courtroom in Riverhead on April 8, 2026, and admitted that he had strangled eight women. He was 62, an architect who had commuted for decades from Massapequa Park, on the South Shore of Long Island, to an office in Midtown Manhattan. He pleaded guilty to murdering seven of the women: Sandra Costilla, Valerie Mack, Jessica Taylor, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Lynn Costello. He also admitted killing Karen Vergata, who disappeared in 1996 and with whose death he was never charged. Prosecutors described most of the women as sex workers or escorts. He contacted them on phones bought for the purpose, wrapped their bodies in burlap, dismembered some of them, and left their remains in scrub along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach and in other remote places on Long Island.
The plea ended one of the longest murder investigations in the region. The first four bodies were found in December 2010, and for more than a decade no one was charged. A new task force formed in 2022 identified Heuermann within weeks, through a pickup truck that a witness had described in 2010. He was arrested in July 2023, charged in stages with seven murders, and on June 17, 2026, was sentenced to three consecutive terms of life without parole and four consecutive terms of 25 years to life. He waived his right to appeal.
Reliable public records say little about Heuermann's early life. He told a court in a 2018 deposition that he still lived in the Massapequa Park house where he was raised, CNN reported after his arrest. He was large and noticeable: the prosecution's 2023 bail application described him as about six feet four inches tall and more than 240 pounds, with dark, bushy hair and large eyeglasses.
He worked as an architect and building consultant. In a 2022 interview quoted by Patch, he said he had worked in Manhattan since 1987 and that he helped clients through the city's Department of Buildings process. His firm's website, Patch reported, listed clients including Nike, Target, Cipriani, Burlington Coat Factory, Catholic Charities and American Airlines. During the years of several of the killings his office was on West 36th Street in Midtown, according to the bail application.
CNN found a career with some friction. In September 2007 fire officials declared unsafe a Harlem apartment building he had been hired to renovate and evacuated about two dozen families; the city looked into whether he had falsely listed the building as vacant, but an audit of his filings found no pattern of false filings and no disciplinary action followed. Between 2010 and 2021 the IRS filed six tax liens against him in Nassau County, for more than 425,000 dollars in unpaid taxes going back to 2005, about 215,000 dollars of which was later repaid or released. From 2014 to 2022 he filed four lawsuits against drivers he said had struck him with their cars. In the 2018 deposition, CNN reported, he said the only competitive sport he took part in was competition rifle.
He was married, and he had a family. Prosecutors said his family was away from home at the times of several of the killings, and both prosecutors and the family's lawyer said that no member of his family knew of or had any part in the crimes.
Sandra Costilla was 28. She was born in Trinidad and Tobago and had moved to the United States; a court filing quoted by the Trinidad Express described her as a native of Trinidad and Tobago who had been living in New York before she disappeared. Police said she had lived in Ridgewood, Queens. In 1993 a Suffolk detective lieutenant told reporters that police had no recent address for her and did not know where her family was. Her fingerprints, on file from a minor arrest in 1992, helped identify her.
On the morning of November 20, 1993, two hunters found her body in a field off Old Fish Cove Road in North Sea, a hamlet of Southampton on the South Fork, more than 60 miles from Gilgo Beach. For three decades her death was not connected with the Gilgo Beach cases. Another man, later convicted of killing two other Long Island women, was at one time considered a suspect, but he was never charged in her death. Forensic investigators had kept hairs recovered from her body, and in February 2024, the Trinidad Express reported, testing matched a male hair to Heuermann. Her case pushed the known span of the killings back to 1993.
Karen Vergata was 34 and worked as an escort in Manhattan. Her family last heard from her on February 14, 1996. On April 20, 1996, partial remains were found on Fire Island; they went unidentified for decades and were known as "Fire Island Jane Doe." More of her remains were found on April 11, 2011, along the parkway several miles west of Gilgo Beach, near Tobay Beach in Nassau County. DNA analysis identified her in 2022, according to the Associated Press, and her identity was made public in August 2023. Heuermann was never indicted for her death. At his plea he admitted that he had intentionally caused it.
Valerie Mack was 24. She was the adopted daughter of Edwin and JoAnn Mack and had a son. From about 1996 to 2000 she worked as an escort, mainly in Philadelphia and Atlantic City, sometimes under the name Melissa Taylor. Her family last saw her in the spring or summer of 2000 in Port Republic, New Jersey, and she was never reported missing.
On November 19, 2000, hunters found partial remains in woods off Mill Road in Manorville, in central Suffolk County. More of her remains were found on April 4, 2011, near Ocean Parkway, about 50 miles to the west. For two decades she was known as Jane Doe No. 6, until genetic testing identified her in 2020. At the news conference where Heuermann's indictment for her death was announced in December 2024, other victims' families handed roses to her parents. At his sentencing her adoptive father told the court that Heuermann had never touched her soul.
Jessica Taylor was 20 and had worked as an escort in New York City. Partial remains were found in Manorville on July 26, 2003, and more were found along Ocean Parkway on March 29, 2011. Prosecutors later said a hair linked to Heuermann had been found with her remains. Her mother, Elizabeth Baczkiel, attended the court hearings. On the day of his sentencing her cousins told the court that she would have turned 43 that day and that the family had called her "pure sunshine."
Maureen Brainard-Barnes was 25 and lived in Norwich, Connecticut. She was the mother of a daughter who was seven when she died, and she was close to her sister, Melissa Cann. She had lost a seasonal telemarketing job and was facing eviction, CNN reported. District Attorney Raymond Tierney called her intellectual and artistic, "a devoted sister, a devoted mother, a devoted daughter." Her sister said Maureen never got the chance to show the world how talented she was.
She traveled to New York City to work and was last heard from on July 9, 2007, when she left a hotel to meet a client. According to the bail application, a burner phone had called her 16 times between July 6 and July 9. Her own phone was last located near the 59th Street Bridge in Midtown that night, and on July 12 it was used to check voicemail from a cell site near the Long Island Expressway in Islandia. She was reported missing on July 14, 2007. Her remains were found along Ocean Parkway on December 13, 2010. At the sentencing her sister recalled the last words Maureen said to her: "I love you. I'll see you tomorrow."
Melissa Barthelemy was 24 and lived in a basement apartment in the Bronx. Her mother, Lynn Barthelemy, kept a notebook about the case for years and stayed in touch with the other families; she told CNN that she still did not sleep through the night. Melissa had a younger sister.
She was last seen on July 10, 2009. A burner phone had contacted her on July 3, 6, 9 and 10, and her own phone moved that night between Massapequa and Midtown, the bail application said. Over the following weeks, on July 17 and 23 and August 5, 19 and 26, 2009, someone used her phone to make taunting calls to her family, in one of which the caller said he had killed her. Prosecutors said the phone was in Midtown during those calls, and one was placed near Heuermann's office. Her remains were found on December 11, 2010. Her sister, Amanda Funderburg, told the court at the sentencing that Heuermann had called to taunt her.
Megan Waterman was 22 and came from Scarborough, Maine. She had a young daughter, whom her family looked after while she was away, and her family said it was unlike her not to call to check on the child. When she vanished, her family used money from a nonprofit human rights organization to hire private investigators.
She was last seen at about 1:30 a.m. on June 6, 2010, leaving a Holiday Inn in Hauppauge, an exit captured on video. A burner phone activated the day before had contacted her a minute later, and then went silent. Her phone's last location, at about 3:11 a.m., was in Massapequa Park, near Heuermann's home, according to the bail application. Her remains were found on December 13, 2010. At the sentencing her daughter, Liliana Waterman, told the court she had spent 16 Mother's Days without her.
Amber Lynn Costello was 27 and lived in West Babylon. She had moved to Long Island from Clearwater, Florida, and struggled with heroin addiction; she had relapsed after a 28-day rehabilitation program, Fox 5 New York reported. Her sister, Kim Overstreet, told CNN that what happened to Amber ate at her every day.
The evidence about her last two days later identified Heuermann. On the night of September 1, 2010, a burner phone called her, then traveled to West Babylon. A witness at her home described a client that night as a large white man, about six feet four to six feet six, in his mid-forties, with dark bushy hair and large old-fashioned glasses, and saw a first-generation Chevrolet Avalanche pickup in the driveway. The client left after a staged confrontation. Early on September 2 the burner sent her a message from Massapequa Park, and that evening it contacted her again and moved from Midtown to Massapequa and then West Babylon. The phone arrived near her home at about 11:17 p.m. She left her own phone behind, walked out of the house and was not seen again. Her remains were found on December 13, 2010.
Ocean Parkway runs along a narrow barrier island on Long Island's South Shore, across the bay from Massapequa Park. In December 2010 police were searching the area for Shannan Gilbert, a young woman who had disappeared from Oak Beach that May. On December 11, during a training exercise, a police officer and his dog found Melissa Barthelemy's remains in the brush. Two days later police found the bodies of Amber Lynn Costello, Maureen Brainard-Barnes and Megan Waterman on the same quarter-mile stretch. Prosecutors later noted that all four lay within about a quarter mile of one another, 22 to 33 feet from the road, and that all were wrapped in burlap. The four became known as the Gilgo Four.
On December 14, 2010, Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer announced the discoveries and said a serial killer might be responsible. The search widened. On March 29, 2011, remains later identified as Jessica Taylor's were found several miles east. On April 4, more of Valerie Mack's remains were found, with the remains of a female toddler and of an unidentified man. On April 11, remains of Karen Vergata and of another woman were found across the county line in Nassau. By then police had found 10 sets of human remains along the parkway.
Not all of them proved to be connected. In April 2025 Nassau County police identified the woman known as "Peaches," whose partial remains had first been found in a plastic tub in a West Hempstead state park in 1997, as Tanya Jackson, a 26-year-old Army veteran living in Brooklyn, and the toddler as her daughter, Tatiana Dykes. Officials said then that they did not know whether Heuermann was responsible for their deaths. In December 2025 the Associated Press reported, citing people familiar with the investigation, that a man had been charged in Nassau County with Tanya Jackson's murder under a sealed indictment; it reported no link between him and Heuermann. The man found in April 2011 has never been identified.
Shannan Gilbert disappeared on May 1, 2010, after visiting a client's house in Oak Beach. In a 911 call she said people were after her; those who saw her told police that she seemed disoriented and ran off on her own. Her skeletal remains were found in a tidal marsh near Oak Beach on December 13, 2011. Police said she most likely drowned by accident. Her family has never accepted that, and an independent autopsy the family commissioned in 2016 found her death consistent with strangulation, their lawyer said. Her mother, Mari Gilbert, who accused police of mishandling the investigation, died in 2016.
Heuermann was never charged with Shannan Gilbert's death and did not admit it. After his plea his lawyer, Michael Brown, said that Heuermann had nothing to do with her, and that the homicide squad and the district attorney's office agreed. The search for her led police to the other women, and her name stayed attached to the case.
The investigation went cold for more than a decade. Theories multiplied. In 2015, CBS New York reported, then District Attorney Thomas Spota believed as many as three killers might be responsible, while others suspected one.
The Suffolk County Police Department itself was in turmoil. Its chief of department, James Burke, was arrested on December 9, 2015, and pleaded guilty in federal court in February 2016 to a civil rights violation and conspiracy to obstruct justice. He had beaten a handcuffed man in a precinct interrogation room in December 2012 and then pressured detectives to hide it. He was sentenced on November 2, 2016, to 46 months in prison. Spota and his chief of investigations were later convicted over the same cover-up. On December 11, 2015, days after Burke's arrest and five years after the first bodies were found, CBS New York reported that the FBI had agreed to assist Suffolk police in the Gilgo Beach investigation, and the department's new leadership promised a fresh look.
Little changed in public for several years. In January 2020 police released photographs of a black leather belt embossed with the letters "WH" or "HM," found at one of the scenes, and opened a website for tips. In May 2020 they announced that Jane Doe No. 6 was Valerie Mack. The families of the women, and journalists such as Robert Kolker, whose 2013 book Lost Girls argued that the women had been overlooked because they were sex workers, kept the case in view. A 2020 Netflix film of the same name told the story of Shannan Gilbert's mother.
In early 2022 a new multiagency task force was formed, with the Suffolk County Police Department, the New York State Police, the Suffolk County Sheriff's Office, the FBI and the district attorney's office. Accounts differ on the month and on who formed it: the 2023 bail application says January 2022 and names the district attorney's office, the district attorney's own 2024 statement says February 2022 and credits Tierney, and CNN and the Associated Press credit the newly appointed police commissioner, Rodney Harrison.
The break came quickly. On March 14, 2022, a New York State Police investigator searching vehicle registration records found that Heuermann had owned a first-generation Chevrolet Avalanche at the time of the killings, the model the witness at Amber Lynn Costello's home had described in 2010. He also fit her description of the man. Investigators began pulling his records. A grand jury eventually authorized more than 300 subpoenas, search warrants and other legal process.
The historical cell-site records for Heuermann's own phone no longer existed, so investigators used billing records, which gave general locations. According to the bail application, they found no occasion on which Heuermann's phone was somewhere different from the burner phones or the victims' phones when those phones were in use. His records placed him in Midtown on days the burners were active, and the burners and the victims' phones moved between Midtown and Massapequa Park.
Investigators also traced newer accounts. Prosecutors said an email account in the name "Thomas Hawk" had been used for thousands of searches for sex workers and violent pornography and, between March 2022 and June 2023, for more than 200 searches about serial killers, the Gilgo Beach victims and their relatives, and the task force itself. One search, on March 28, 2022, concerned the new task force. Other burner phones and accounts were used to arrange meetings with sex workers into 2023. On May 19, 2023, surveillance showed Heuermann buying minutes for one of those phones at a Midtown store, the bail application said.
Hairs recovered with the bodies years earlier became the forensic core of the case. Investigators had found a man's hair on the bottom of the burlap used to wrap Megan Waterman, and female hairs on Waterman, Costello and Brainard-Barnes. Prosecutors argued that the female hairs had been carried from Heuermann's home, and stressed that no member of his family was suspected of anything.
The male hair needed a sample of Heuermann's DNA. On January 26, 2023, investigators watching him in Manhattan saw him throw a pizza box into a trash can outside his office on Fifth Avenue. They retrieved it and swabbed the crusts. On June 12, 2023, a laboratory reported that Heuermann could not be excluded as the source of the male hair on Waterman's burlap, a result that, prosecutors said, excluded 99.96 percent of the population.
Suffolk County police arrested Heuermann on the evening of July 13, 2023, in Midtown Manhattan near his office. One of the burner phones was in his possession, according to the bail application. Investigators searched his Massapequa Park home the next morning.
He was arraigned on July 14, 2023, at the Arthur M. Cromarty court complex in Riverhead, on six counts: murder in the first degree and murder in the second degree for each of Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Lynn Costello. He pleaded not guilty. Judge Richard Ambro denied bail, citing what the Southampton Press reported as the "extreme depravity" of the crimes alleged, and Heuermann was held in the maximum-security section of the Suffolk County jail. The bail application named him as the prime suspect in the death of Maureen Brainard-Barnes. Prosecutors asked for him to be held without bail, citing among other things his use of false names and burner accounts, his searches about the investigation and what they said was his access to firearms.
The case grew over the next 18 months through superseding indictments. On January 16, 2024, Heuermann was charged with the murder of Maureen Brainard-Barnes. In late April 2024 investigators searched the Manorville woods where Mack's and Taylor's first remains had been found and the place in North Sea where Costilla's body had been found in 1993, and in May 2024 they searched his home again for nearly a week.
On June 6, 2024, Tierney announced charges for the 1993 murder of Sandra Costilla and the 2003 murder of Jessica Taylor. Heuermann pleaded not guilty. At a news conference in Riverhead, with Taylor's family present, the district attorney described the evidence. The case now reached back to a body found by hunters in Southampton three decades earlier.
On December 17, 2024, an indictment was unsealed charging him with the murder of Valerie Mack, the seventh woman. "Your Honor, I am not guilty of any of these charges," Heuermann told Justice Timothy Mazzei, who now presided over the case. By then he faced, among other counts, three counts of murder in the first degree. Tierney said that the lives of the women mattered and that Mack, like the others, had been an extraordinary person. The defense lawyer, Michael Brown, argued that the DNA method linking the victims to his client had never been found reliable in a New York case and that prosecutors had not shown any victim's DNA was found in Heuermann's home, including on the weapons and tools seized. He said he would seek a hearing on the science and separate trials, arguing that each case should rise and fall on its own.
The newer filings described a document prosecutors called a blueprint. Investigators said they recovered it from a hard drive in the basement of Heuermann's home. According to prosecutors, it was a word-processing file that contained checklists of supplies, notes on preparation and on destroying evidence, reminders to limit noise, and notes of lessons for "next time." The December 2024 filing said the file had been created in 2000, the year of Valerie Mack's death, and that it listed "Mill Road," near where her first remains were found, under a heading prosecutors read as "dump site." Prosecutors also cited phone records showing two calls to a Long Island plumbing company in October 2000, and a payment the next month to another company to check the main drain at his home.
Searches of his home and office also turned up old magazines and newspapers about the Gilgo Beach investigation, which prosecutors said he had kept as mementos, among them a 2003 newspaper article about the discovery of Mack's and Taylor's remains. Tierney said the evidence pointed to Heuermann's home as the place where the killings took place, mostly when his family was away.
The defense's main challenge was to the science. Prosecutors had used whole genome sequencing to build nuclear DNA profiles from rootless hairs, which older methods could not test. The technique had never been used in a New York court. After a hearing under the Frye standard, Judge Mazzei ruled on September 3, 2025, that the method was generally accepted in the relevant scientific community, citing expert testimony, peer-reviewed articles and its use in California and Idaho. He admitted the results from hairs recovered with six of the seven women: Brainard-Barnes, Waterman, Costello, Costilla, Taylor and Mack. "We won. The evidence is admissible," Tierney said. "Full speed ahead for trial."
On September 23, 2025, the judge ruled that the seven murders would be tried together, rejecting the defense request for separate trials. He also declined a renewed defense bid to exclude the DNA evidence as improperly collected. The district attorney's office posted the severance decision and a second decision under Public Health Law section 570 that day. A trial was later set for September 2026.
In March 2026 the Associated Press reported that Heuermann intended to plead guilty. On April 8, 2026, in a courtroom packed with the victims' relatives and investigators, he did. He wore a dark suit, his hands shackled behind him. Judge Mazzei read the terms and went through the charges victim by victim, and Heuermann answered "guilty" each time in an even voice. Asked whether pleading guilty rather than going to trial was in his best interest, he said, "Yes, your honor."
Tierney then questioned him. Heuermann admitted that he had strangled all eight women, that he had used burner phones and offers of money to lure them, that he had bound the bodies and wrapped them in burlap, and that he had dismembered Valerie Mack, Jessica Taylor and Karen Vergata. Asked whether each victim had been killed the same way, he said yes.
He pleaded guilty to three counts of murder in the first degree, for Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Lynn Costello, and four counts of murder in the second degree, for Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Jessica Taylor, Sandra Costilla and Valerie Mack. He admitted intentionally causing the death of Karen Vergata, for which he had not been charged. Under the agreement he would receive three consecutive life sentences without parole followed by four consecutive terms of 25 years to life, would face no further prosecution for the eight deaths, and waived his right to appeal. He also agreed to cooperate fully with the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, described as an academic and scientific exercise. He could still face new charges if other victims were later linked to him, amNewYork reported.
Brown said the decision to plead was Heuermann's own, made partly to spare the victims' relatives and his family a trial, and that the judge's ruling on the DNA evidence had been "monumental" for the chance of success at trial. Tierney said Heuermann had "walked among us play-acting as a normal suburban dad." Melissa Cann spoke of a long journey of hope. Elizabeth Baczkiel said the plea took a big chunk of stress off her family. The lawyer Gloria Allred, who represented several families, said that some of the women had been young mothers trying to earn money for their children.
Heuermann was sentenced on June 17, 2026, at the Arthur M. Cromarty Court Complex in Riverhead. Relatives of seven of the women spoke for about 75 minutes in all.
Danielle Mack, Valerie's sister, called him a selfish, entitled man who thought the women were his to destroy. Melissa Cann said the burden belonged to him alone, and told him that his name would never rise above the names of the women he killed. Maureen's daughter, who had been seven when her mother was killed, called him a coward who took out his own shortcomings on others. Violet Swager, a cousin of Jessica Taylor, called him a weak, disgusting coward who had chosen small women, and told him: "You hunted her, and I hunted you." Benjamin Torres said Heuermann had caused insurmountable pain. Megan Waterman's aunt, Elizabeth Meserve, spoke, and so did Liliana Waterman. Amanda Funderburg spoke for Melissa Barthelemy.
Heuermann spoke briefly. "I am responsible for all that was said in this room," he said, adding that the words he might say had no meaning. Judge Mazzei asked whether he was at least a little sorry, and Heuermann nodded. The judge, who was seen wiping away tears during one of the statements, told him he was "a disgusting and small man, if you're a man at all. You're a coward." He imposed the agreed sentence: three consecutive terms of life without parole for the murders of Barthelemy, Waterman and Costello, and four consecutive terms of 25 years to life, 100 years to life in all, for the murders of Brainard-Barnes, Taylor, Costilla and Mack. Then he told the court officers to take him out. The families applauded.
After the hearing Tierney told News 12 Long Island that Heuermann would not have admitted guilt without the weight of the evidence, which he said included phone and financial records, the planning document and the mementos as well as the DNA. He said it was the first time that form of DNA analysis had been admitted in a New York court. He acknowledged failures in the earlier investigation and apologized on behalf of Suffolk County. He had met Heuermann only once, at a session before the plea, and described him as a man used to hiding parts of himself. "There will never be closure for these families," he said. With the appeal waived, he added, the case was over unless an unlikely reversal occurred.
Fox News reported on the day of the sentencing that Heuermann was expected to be moved to a state prison by the end of that week. News 12 reported in late June 2026 that he had gone first to Green Haven Correctional Facility in Dutchess County and then to Clinton Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in Dannemora. The Department of Corrections and Community Supervision said he was being held at Clinton while his classification and assessment continued, with his records kept at Elmira Correctional Facility, which processes the records of people entering the state system. On August 11, 2026, News 12 reported that DOCCS had confirmed his assignment to Clinton. As of October 21, 2026, no later transfer, new charge or court proceeding had been reported.
The plea settled eight deaths. It did not settle the others found along Ocean Parkway. Through his lawyer Heuermann has denied any involvement in the deaths of Shannan Gilbert and of the unidentified man found in 2011, and no prosecutor has attributed either to him. Officials said in April 2025 that they did not know whether he had killed Tanya Jackson and her daughter, and a different man has since been charged in Tanya Jackson's death. Any further cases that investigators link to Heuermann would be outside the plea agreement. No report of what the FBI interview produced had been published by October 2026.
Proven by final judgment (plea, appeal waived): the first-degree murders of Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Lynn Costello, and the second-degree murders of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Jessica Taylor, Sandra Costilla and Valerie Mack.
Admitted but never charged: the killing of Karen Vergata, which he admitted in court as part of the plea; by the terms of the agreement he will not be prosecuted for it.
Not attributed to him: the deaths of Shannan Gilbert, whose death police have called a probable accidental drowning and her family calls a homicide; Tanya Jackson and her daughter, Tatiana Dykes, in whose case another man stands accused; and the unidentified man found in 2011. Heuermann denies involvement in the Gilbert and unidentified-man cases.
Details that differ between sources: the date Melissa Barthelemy was last seen (July 10, 2009, in the bail application and Associated Press accounts; July 12 in Fox 5 New York and CNN accounts); when Valerie Mack's first remains were found (November 19, 2000, in the reporting of the December 2024 filing and in CNN's timeline; September 2000 in Associated Press timelines); when the task force was formed and by whom (January or February 2022; credited to the district attorney or to Commissioner Rodney Harrison); and Shannan Gilbert's age (23 or 24). Some reports gave the year of Vergata's identification as 2023, when it was announced; the Associated Press said DNA identified her in 2022.
1987: by his own account, begins working in Manhattan.
November 20, 1993: two hunters find Sandra Costilla's body in North Sea, Southampton.
February 14, 1996: Karen Vergata's last contact with her family; partial remains found on Fire Island on April 20, 1996.
2000: Valerie Mack is last seen by her family in New Jersey; partial remains found in Manorville on November 19, 2000.
July 26, 2003: Jessica Taylor's partial remains found in Manorville.
July 9, 2007: Maureen Brainard-Barnes is last heard from.
July 10, 2009: Melissa Barthelemy is last seen; taunting calls to her family follow through August 26, 2009.
May 1, 2010: Shannan Gilbert disappears in Oak Beach.
June 6, 2010: Megan Waterman is last seen leaving a Hauppauge hotel.
September 2, 2010: Amber Lynn Costello is last seen leaving her West Babylon home.
December 11 and 13, 2010: the remains of Barthelemy, Costello, Brainard-Barnes and Waterman are found along Ocean Parkway.
March 29 to April 11, 2011: more remains found, including those of Taylor, Mack and Vergata.
December 13, 2011: Shannan Gilbert's remains found in a marsh near Oak Beach.
December 2015: Police Chief James Burke is arrested; the FBI agrees to assist the investigation.
November 2, 2016: Burke is sentenced to 46 months in federal prison.
January 2020: police release photos of a belt found at a scene; Valerie Mack identified in May 2020.
Early 2022: the Gilgo Beach task force is formed.
March 14, 2022: Heuermann identified through his Chevrolet Avalanche.
January 26, 2023: investigators collect pizza crusts he discards in Manhattan.
June 12, 2023: laboratory report links him to the male hair on Waterman's burlap.
July 13, 2023: arrested in Midtown Manhattan; arraigned July 14 on charges covering Barthelemy, Waterman and Costello; held without bail.
January 16, 2024: charged with the murder of Maureen Brainard-Barnes.
June 6, 2024: charged with the murders of Sandra Costilla and Jessica Taylor.
December 17, 2024: charged with the murder of Valerie Mack.
April 23, 2025: Nassau police identify Tanya Jackson and Tatiana Dykes.
September 3, 2025: whole genome sequencing evidence ruled admissible.
September 23, 2025: request for separate trials denied.
April 8, 2026: pleads guilty to seven murders and admits killing Karen Vergata.
June 17, 2026: sentenced to three consecutive terms of life without parole and four consecutive terms of 25 years to life.
June 2026: moved to Green Haven, then Clinton Correctional Facility.
August 11, 2026: DOCCS confirms his assignment to Clinton.
October 21, 2026: serving his sentence; no later development reported.