Rex Heuermann, the man accused in Long Island’s Gilgo Beach serial killings, is expected to change his plea to guilty at a court appearance scheduled for April 8, according to two people familiar with his decision. The two people, who said they have been involved in the case, spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the plea has not been entered in court. Prosecutors and defense lawyers did not immediately provide additional comment through the time of the report; the people involved said Heuermann’s family and the victims’ families had already been notified.
Heuermann, 62, had previously told the court he was not guilty and was set to go on trial in September. Under the schedule described in the report, the April 8 hearing would be the next opportunity for him to change his plea from not guilty. The report also noted that a defendant could still change his mind before the court date and that any guilty plea would have to be accepted by a judge.
Prosecutors allege the evidence tying Heuermann to the killings includes DNA evidence, cellphone data, and material investigators found during a search of his home in Massapequa, New York. Prosecutors say the victims were all young women involved in sex work. The report listed the victims as Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Lynn Costello, Sandra Costilla, Valerie Mack, Jessica Taylor and Megan Waterman.
Some of the victims’ remains were found on an isolated stretch of the shoreline parkway, while investigators also found that remains were scattered in other remote areas, the report said. The case has focused on multiple discoveries of human remains tied to an investigation that began publicly in 2010, when police searching for a missing woman found numerous sets of human remains in the scrub along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach.
The initial identification work took years, the report said, as investigators used DNA analysis and other clues to identify the victims and, in some cases, connect them to remains found elsewhere on Long Island in earlier years. The renewed investigation later identified Heuermann as a potential suspect in 2022, after detectives linked him to a pickup truck that a witness reported seeing when one of the victims disappeared in 2010.
The report described additional links investigators made, including an episode in which detectives, while surveilling Heuermann, recovered a pizza crust he discarded in the trash and used it to link DNA from a hair recovered from one of the victims’ bodies. Investigators also said cellphone data showed Heuermann was in contact with some of the victims shortly before their disappearances, and that reviews of his internet searches showed a history of viewing violent torture pornography and searching for information about the investigation into the killings.
In what prosecutors described as part of their case theory, investigators recovered files from Heuermann’s computer last year that they described as a “blueprint” for the killings. The files, prosecutors said, included checklists with reminders to limit noise, clean the bodies and destroy evidence. In the months leading up to the next court dates, the report said a judge rejected motions from Heuermann’s lawyers seeking to exclude certain DNA evidence and seeking to break up the case into multiple trials.
Separately, when asked for comment late Thursday, Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney declined to comment, according to the report, and Gloria Allred, a California lawyer representing some of the families, also declined to comment. The lawyers for Heuermann did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment in the report.
As the case proceeds, whether Heuermann does in fact plead guilty—rather than sticking with his not-guilty plea—will be determined by what he does in court and what the judge accepts. For readers following the next steps in the matter, MSI previously reported on the Gilgo Beach case as it developed into a guilty plea process.