“What solved this case was a lot of dedicated investigators, analysts and attorneys from a bunch of agencies getting together and collaborating,” he said.īut for Schaller, any feelings of relief over the arrest were soon eclipsed by anger and confusion. He stressed there were other elements that ultimately helped investigators arrest Heuermann, including new technology that helped match samples of DNA to the suspect. Tierney told the AP he did not know why police had not run a search earlier, but suggested the piece of information may have been “lost within a sea of other tips and information.” Heuermann fit the physical description provided by Schaller, too: He was 6 feet, 4 inches (193 centimeters) tall and weighed 240 pounds (109 kilograms). 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 neighborhood 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. Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney, who inherited the investigation when he took office in 2022, said the key to unraveling the case was the description of the truck, discovered by a state investigator after the launch of a new task force formed to take a fresh look at the evidence. “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. But as new details emerge about how police finally caught the alleged killer, they’ve also raised questions about whether investigators adequately pursued a key lead - Schaller’s description of the stranger and his truck -that may have helped solve the case sooner. The arrest has brought a measure of relief to families of the victims at a moment when the trail appeared to have gone cold. Police have said the deaths may be the work of multiple killers. Heuermann has not been accused in any of those cases. Within months, the remains of six other bodies, including a toddler, were discovered elsewhere along the same beach highway. The arrest marked a stunning breakthrough in the hunt for a serial killer who had eluded investigators and whose crimes gripped Long Islanders since the bodies of four women - all of them sex workers - were found wrapped in burlap near Gilgo Beach. Heuermann, an architect who worked in Manhattan, has pleaded not guilty to the charges. He is the prime suspect in the death of a fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes. On July 14, police arrested Rex Heuermann on charges of killing Costello and two other women, Melissa Barthelemy and Megan Waterman.
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