Gilgo Beach LISK Serial Killer, Rex Heuermann, charged with 6 murders, July 2023 #15

[Passeridae]

There is a similar batch update to missing persons in Manhattan on Aug. 5, but nothing sticks out as it being related at all to the LISK case. Most of the victims seem like they wouldn't be targets of Heuermann, at least based on what is public information at this time.

However, I ran across a profile for Connie Esposito, entered by Nassau County PD late last month, just two weeks before the big batch update for the UID profiles. She disappeared in March of 1995 from Uniondale, which is not very far from where Peaches was found in 1997, and about the same distance from Heuermann's home as Babylon (where Amber Costello was abducted), but in the other direction. This was before Heuermann remarried, so he likely would have still lived alone at that time. At 31, she is a bit older than most of the victims Heuermann is charged with, but Sandra Costilla (1993) was 28. Connie Esposito was not added to Namus until this past August, with no explanation why she's been missing close to 30 years before being entered and very sparse details about her disappearance. In her photo, she looks strikingly like Amber Costello and Maureen Brainerd-Barnes to me.

The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)

By bringing people, information, forensic science and technology together, NamUs helps resolve cases.

www.namus.gov

EDIT: Connie has a thread here: NY - NY - Connie Esposito, 31, Uniondale, 17 March 1995

 

[Ruminations]

Neither one of those does are in NamUs

I think this detail might be significant.

MOO

 

[Ruminations]

I'm not at all an expert, so definitely take this with a grain of salt (and if someone who knows more than I do can weigh in, I'd appreciate it), but I would be kind of surprised if a hyoid bone could be drilled into without shattering. Maybe they're a bit tougher when it's not skeletal remains, but I majored in anthropology and spent a lot of time in the forensic anthro lab as an undergrad, and most of the remains we worked with didn't even have extant hyoid bones anymore because they're so fragile, and when we did find one we had to be so careful to keep it from breaking just from being handled.

Again, not an expert, and the remains I worked with were a few hundred years old or older, plus it's been 20 years, so maybe I'm way off here.

As another non-expert, experienced only in the behavior of paediatric bones around 9-12 years old that I have driven with various fractures and breakages in mini-vans to emergency rooms and having seen the x-rays, live bones are not brittle. They bend a lot, at least on tweens.

Shannan was a young adult, so the age is different. and my kiddos never drove a bike hyoid-bone first into a tree, thank goodness. I'm experienced with arms (even the big one in the upper arm) shoulders and toes.

I also have handled non-human bones when cooking, and I find that bones left out to the elements, like a turkey wish bone, seem much more brittle than the bones in meat cuts about to be roasted.

Without expertise, I would think a live bone could be punctured or drilled without shattering it more easily than a dried bone. I also think that carefully damaging a live bone on a human would be something only a person capable of torture could do.

The charging documents do suggest Rex Heuermann is capable of torture.

MOO

 

[Ruminations]

Poignant statements! She's very open about her many feelings, even the ones that are conflicting at times.

I haven't seen this level of insight from AE. It may be there. I'm only saying that I haven't seen it. For many reasons, an adult can lose or relinquish some of their insight for a time. AMOO

She was roasted for this when it was first published. I felt a bit bad for her. I thought it was refreshing that she was concerned with the well being of others. True, her statements were about her process. But her process did take her beyond herself.

She has been closer to Rex's wife and daughter than she makes public, it seems IMO. But I don't see why she should have to hide that. It's her family! There is nothing wrong with family support when it is not enabling. And there is no evidence that she has ever enabled anyone.

MOO

 

[Ruminations]

I just logged onto Namus for the first time since before this all happened, and I think it might legitimately have just been a mistake.

I track Asian Doe and Lattingtown Jane Doe in addition to Peaches and her baby, and all four of them had been modified, so I went to look at some others. Almost every single unidentified person in Nassau and Suffolk counties was modified on Sept. 5, and three others between Aug. 23 and 30.

My guess is that they are reviewing cases and taking notes of things like items that might potentially have suspect DNA (stray hairs, etc.) for testing against Heuermann/other potential suspects. This does seem to be something they do every few months, as others have noticed it before. But it doesn't seem like Peaches was singled out at all, just maybe something got misclicked when they were updating (although that could mean they have her name, and what got misclicked was that she was no longer unidentified, I guess).

That said, I vaguely remember another big batch modification right before they re-searched Manorville and North Sea, so maybe they've gotten more files from his devices and are reviewing to see if any cases match up. I could absolutely be wrong on that, and it's hard to check because so many of the profiles were just updated, but of those that weren't, three of them were modified between March 27 and April 9. And the remainder were all updated in October and November of 2023, right before charges were filed in January 2024 for Maureen's murder. So maybe there is news/new charges coming in a few weeks, and they're doing a review for anything that they can potentially add?

I do really hope that some of these Does get their names back soon. If he was searching known victims I'm positive he was searching others as well. Given that he apparently hired lots of sex workers without murdering them I'm sure police have had a hell of a time figuring out who among those he searched are still alive and who is missing, but I'm sure there are clues there.

ETA: Still glancing through to see if anything sticks out, but most of the cases I'm looking at from the batch edited on 9/5 had some clothing or fabric recovered with the victim. A few don't say, but some of them (Asian Doe, Baby Peaches) we know were found with fabric based on previous information about the case.

Well, putting her back in can't be a mistake, can it? Nor can choosing to do so silently after the mistake being noticed.

I'm taking this as uplifting news that Peaches and Peaches Jr. will be remembered for who they were before they died. That, plus the expectation of many journalists/documentarians and content creators that Peaches name would soon be known around the time that Karen Vergata was named, make me feel that progress we don't know about has been made and some humanity will be gained for these victims.

MOO

 

[AppleTreeGreen]

Is my memory correct that after the taunting calls to Melissa's sister, photos of ?was it Times Square ? were obtained at the time the calls were made hoping to spot someone on the phone.

HK document from around 2000 that makes it clear he'd killed before and hadn't yet selected Ocean Parkway as a graveyard - opens him up as a potential suspect in dozens of murders

Basically between the document and him being connected to the Manorville site

I also think about how the parks represent safe or familiar spaces in his own backyard. For example, volunteering at Jones Beach may have given him some insight into area along the strip that is heavily dense, provides soft or muddy ground for some further coverage of remains and the scents and are not heavily trafficked by pedestrians, cops, landscapers, conservationists or dog walkers who could come across the remains. Low traffic and lighting in the dark early morning hours with also helped prevent him from attracting notice or suspicion as well and with the length of the strip and proximity to his house and Sunrise HGWY it was a feasible long-term resource unfortunately that would further enable him to continue his crimes.

Considering his love of hunting and being near the route to his alma mater, He may have already become familiar with the park in Manorville during his enrollment at Westbury’s CW Post. This unfortunately could have given him the advantage of already being comfortable transversing the park day or night and already even knew of spots in which he intended to hide his victims. Perhaps though LE’s fortitous discovery of Sandra Costillo and Jessica Taylor in this area inspired in part the creation of his disturbing HK document which outlined both how to further violate his victims and their remains but also how to pick areas to hide them.

 

[AppleTreeGreen]

Is my memory correct that after the taunting calls to Melissa's sister, photos of ?was it Times Square ? were obtained at the time the calls were made hoping to spot someone on the phone. Unfortunately, IIRC, the location was packed with people on the phone and there was no way to tell who the killer might be.

I just heard about this on a documentary on LISK too. His phone pinged at Penn, Times Square, the Port Authority and midtown in general. However, like you mentioned surveillance or CCTV footage was not helpful because the streets were not only packed but the crowd was packed with cell phone users.

However, a short time later the pings in Massapequa Park were able to narrow down the home location of RH to First Avenue and boxing his midtown pings again helped them locate both the area he likely worked and the exact store he bought his burner phones from and obtain surveillance footage of his most recent purchase.

Gilgo Beach murders: Timeline shows what led to arrest of suspect Rex Heuermann in Long Island

A timeline of events shows what led to Rex Heuermann’s arrest. He's charged with 3 killings known as the Gilgo Beach murders in Long Island, New York.

www.usatoday.com

LI Serial Killer Case: Newly Released Details Offer Fresh Insight Into the ‘Gilgo Four'

The 2010 disappearance of Shannan Gilbert, a 24-year-old escort from Jersey City, triggered a hunt that exposed a much larger mystery — and the discovery of many more bodies on a remote stretch of Long Island.

www.nbcnewyork.com

The Polygon and the Avalanche: How the Gilgo Beach Suspect Was Found (Published 2023)

As investigators spent years looking for a suspect, a key clue was buried in their files. Could they have solved the case years earlier?

www.nytimes.com

 

[Charlot123]

Ok, so, I am going to say I'm a little skeptical that Heuermann was killing so early or so frequently.

That said, by 1982 he was working at Jones Beach. This was two years after Richard Cottingham was arrested, and he faced trials in 1981 and 1982. He strangled several women and dismembered several more in New York and New Jersey through 1980. Cottingham couldn't have been responsible for the string of 1982 murders as he was in prison, but the fact that one of the victims was found in North Bergen, which was just a couple miles from his home, is very creepy. (EDIT: I misread, she was from there and found in Manhattan. Still a weird coincidence.). Also creepy: he left one of his victims wrapped in plastic at a bus stop at Jones Beach, though she was not officially connected to him until two years ago.

I've long suspected, due to the similarly of their crimes and the fact that several of Cottingham's victims were found in Long Island locations Heuermann would have been familiar with, that Cottingham may have been one of his inspirations - both the man himself and his Times Square and New Jersey murders, and the unknown Long Island serial murderer that turned out to be Cottingham, even though he was only officially linked to those crimes in 2022. Especially when you consider how Heuermann treated his earliest known victim, Sandra, compared to the torture Cottingham put his victims through. Cottingham's surviving victims spoke to the media and testified in court, so details would have been out there in the news during a pretty formative time for Heuermann, and he clearly was reading about and taking inspiration from other killers (I think he was a Rifkin fan, too, tbh).

If those murders had NOT been committed in 1982, I'd say they were Cottingham 100%. If all five were committed by the same person, I'd wager they were a copycat. They sound very much like his crimes.

I'm still skeptical they were Heuermann just because it seems like he would be too young and inexperienced for so many murders so close together, but I can't say I would be shocked to be proven wrong on that. If he's truly responsible for the crimes he's charged with, the dude is a grade A sociopath. I hope police are looking at those cases again and comparing any DNA evidence that still exists.

He was about 18 in 1982. I would say, probably not frequently but absolutely could have started. Both TB and GRK had an unresolved case of a peer murder/disappearance in the vicinity when they were around 13.

 

[Passeridae]

Considering his love of hunting and being near the route to his alma mater, He may have already become familiar with the park in Manorville during his enrollment at Westbury’s CW Post. This unfortunately could have given him the advantage of already being comfortable transversing the park day or night and already even knew of spots in which he intended to hide his victims.

Do you mean the park in Hempstead where Peaches was found? Manorville and Westbury really aren't all that close to each other, and the pine barrens in the Manorville area are huge, like 100,000 acres.

 

[Passeridae]

He was about 18 in 1982. I would say, probably not frequently but absolutely could have started. Both TB and GRK had an unresolved case of a peer murder/disappearance in the vicinity when they were around 13.

Definitely, and he might have even had some incidents earlier. But I would be surprised if he successfully killed five people in just a few months at that age. It's possible but not super likely.