Long Island Serial Killer Caught?!

According to a law enforcement source for People on Friday, police now have a suspect in custody for the Long Island serial killer case! A man has been arrested in connection to multiple murders of young women around the Gilgo Beach area in Long Island, New York, more than a decade ago.

The insider revealed the suspect’s identity: Rex Heuermann, an architect who worked out of an office in Manhattan (above, inset). His exact charges are unknown at this time, but this is a huge development in the case!

For those who don’t know, the mystery began in December 2010 when police accidentally found the bodies of four women wrapped in tarps and buried within roughly 500 feet of one another in the marsh on Gilgo Beach. The remains were identified as Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Costello, and Megan Waterman — all of whom worked as online escorts and went missing between 2007 and 2010.

Law enforcement had been searching for 24-year-old escort Shannan Gilbert when they happened to stumble across the grisly scene. She disappeared after leaving a client’s house in the Oak Beach community. Her remains were eventually discovered, too, in December 2011.

And two months after police identified the bodies of the four women, six more human remains were found along the beach in March 2011. Awful. Four of the bodies were women, one was an Asian male, and one was — unimaginably — a female toddler. Two sets of the remains were also linked to dismembered torsos of women found 40 miles away in Manorville.

For years, the case left investigators completely baffled. No arrests were ever made for over a decade after the discovery. And it wasn’t until January 2020 that they made another big development in the case. Police shared pictures of a black leather belt discovered at one of the crime scenes that they believed belonged to the killer. Suffolk County Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart said that the belt was “handled by the suspect and didn’t belong to any of the victims.” The belt had the letters “WH” or “HM” imprinted on it, depending which side was up. Officers believed the letters to be the suspect’s initials. Obviously Rex Heuermann doesn’t have the initials WH. Hmm…

Is he the killer? Is there more to it??

Per NBC New York, Heuermann is expected to appear in court on Friday, where we will learn more about the charges against him. We cannot imagine what the victims’ families must be feeling right now after waiting for so long to find out who potentially committed these heinous murders. Reactions to the case, Perezcous readers? Let us know in the comments below. You can see more details about the investigation and a press conference from law enforcement officials (below):