OAN’s Abril Elfi
5:02 PM – Friday, July 14, 2023
The suspect accused of killing four women as part of the Gilgo Beach serial killer investigation, pled not guilty to the six charges held against him.
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After being detained in Manhattan on Thursday night, the alleged suspect Rex Heuermann appeared in court in Yaphank, New York, on Friday afternoon. He entered a not guilty plea to six charges. According to court documents, he is accused of three crimes of murder in the first degree and three instances of murder in the second degree.
About a 25-minute drive from where New York officials found 11 sets of human remains scattered along a suburban coastal highway in 2010 and 2011, investigators are currently searching his residence in Massapequa Park in Long Island. His Manhattan work office is additionally being searched.
Cellphone pings of calls the suspect made to one of the victim’s families that were connected to the Massapequa region were among the case’s breaks that helped investigators to zero in on the suspect.
According to two senior law enforcement officials briefed on the case, Long Island was the suspected killer’s hometown because the cellphone tower ping, which came from one of the victims’ phone after she died, was from the Massapequa region.
Investigators discovered that several of the calls originated at or close to the architectural business where Heuermann worked.
Heuermann is accused of meeting his victims via burner phones and buying the phones in cell phone stores as seen on surveillance footage. Prosecutors claimed that he even took two cellphones from the victims and used one of them to insult the victim’s relatives.
Investigators were able to get Heuermann’s DNA by swabbing some leftover pizza crust from a pizza box that he had thrown away. Documents stated that the DNA from the pizza crust can be compared to a male hair strand that was also discovered on the tape used to restrain one of the victims Megan Waterman. The DNA test results purportedly connected Heuermann to the bodies at Gilgo Beach were 99.96% accurate.
Heuermann said nothing at his arraignment other than his statement of innocence.
Heuermann’s attorney, Michael Brown, said after the court hearing that the evidence against his client is “extremely circumstantial in nature.” He also described Heuermann as in tears as he told him “I didn’t do this,” denying the charges made against him.
If Heuermann is convicted he would face life in prison without possibility of parole.
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