How the Gilgo Beach Suspect Was Undone by a Pizza Box and a Tinder Account

A bail application for Rex Heuermann, the New York City architect arrested Thursday night on accusations he murdered at least three sex workers and dumped their bodies near Gilgo Beach on Long Island, revealed that his own wife’s hair and a discarded pizza box linked him to the slayings after 13 years.

The bail document, obtained by The Daily Beast, said detectives were able to trace hair left behind on three of the murder victims to Heuermann’s wife, who has not been charged with a crime. The wife’s DNA was gathered from a swab of bottles that she left outside for trash collection.

A single strand of Heuermann’s hair was also found on one victim, the document said. That hair was matched to Heuermann’s DNA when undercover cops were able to snatch a discarded pizza box and test a pizza crust left behind by Heuermann, prosecutors said.

Heuermann, a 59-year-old Massapequa Park resident, faced court Friday on murder charges for the deaths of Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Costello, and Megan Waterman. He has not been charged in the murder of a fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, but prosecutors said he was “the prime suspect in her death and the investigation, which is continuing and is expected to be resolved soon.”

Dressed in casual-business attire, Heuermann reportedly “smirked throughout” his arraignment, which ended with a judge denying him bail.

The small Gilgo Beach community has become infamously associated with the string of slain sex workers, deemed the “The Gilgo Four,” since their bodies were discovered strangled and wrapped in burlap in 2010. Six more bodies were later discovered in the area.

In a chilling twist, Barthelemy’s sister began receiving phone calls from a mystery man shortly after Barthelemy disappeared in 2009, the New York Post reported in 2011. The man would taunt her, calling her sister “a whore.” The calls were reportedly traced to locations in Times Square, Madison Square Garden, and Massapequa—but they suddenly stopped months later.

Heuermann was nabbed less than a year after the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office set up a new task force to probe the killings. Within months, he was ID’d as a person of interest because he owned a Chevrolet Avalanche truck at the time of the murders—the same type of truck spotted by a witness at a victim’s home just before she was killed.

After the discovery of the Avalanche registered to Heuermann, detectives issued more than 300 subpoenas to connect more dots.

Among other things, investigators say they obtained phone billing records and cell-site locations that linked Heuermann to burner phones used to set up meetings with three of the four victims, to make the taunting calls to Barthelemy’s sister, and to check Brainard-Barnes’ voicemail after she disappeared.

As investigators dug into Heuermann’s life, they obtained his American Express records, which turned up recurring payments via Google Pay to maintain a Tinder online-dating account. They subpoenaed Tinder for the account’s subscriber info, which revealed he signed up using the alias “Andrew Roberts,” and linked to a burner phone under the same name, using an AOL email account, “Springfieldman9.”

The Springfieldman9 account had been set up in 2011 in the name of “John Springfield,” using a second burner phone with no named subscriber, according to the filing. However, a search warrant conducted on the fictitious Springfieldman9 AOL account uncovered selfies taken by Heuermann, seemingly confirming his connection to the alias.

A review of Verizon and T-Mobile call records for the two burner phones revealed that both were “used extensively between 2021 and 2023 for prostitution-related contacts (either with sex workers or massage parlors),” the filing continues. It also said cell-site warrants showed both phones had activity on cellular towers that provided coverage to Heuermann’s home.

Detectives subpoenaed Google for any records associated with the unique device ID codes on the two burner phones. This uncovered a burner email account, “thawk080672,” under an account in the name “Thomas Hawk.” According to the filing, a review of the Thomas Hawk account showed it had been “used to conduct thousands of searches related to sex workers, sadistic, torture-related pornography and child pornography.”

Remarkably, it had also been used in more than 200 searches between March 2022 and June 2023 “related to active and known serial killers, the specific disappearances and murders of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello, and the investigation into their murders,” the filing states.

Search terms about the case allegedly included: “Why could law enforcement not trace the calls made by the long island serial killer,” “why hasn’t the long island serial killer been caught,” and “Long Island killer.”

The filing said the account also sought out “a number of podcasts and/or documentaries regarding this investigation,” adding that Heuermann “repeatedly” viewed hundreds of images depicting the murdered victims and their family members online.

On May 19, Heuermann was spotted on surveillance at a T-Mobile store in Manhattan, where he purchased additional minutes for one of the two burner phones, the filing says. Cops were tailing Heuermann, says the filing, which includes photographs of him looking casual in a polo shirt and sunglasses.

In at least three of the murders, Heuermann’s wife was out of town when the slayings occurred, according to travel records and cellphone data cited by prosecutors.

When Barthelemy disappeared on July 8, 2009, Heuermann’s wife was on a trip to Iceland, the filing states. When Megan Waterman vanished on June 6, 2010, she was in Maryland. And when Amber Costello went missing on Sept. 2, 2010, she was in New Jersey, returning to New York three days later.

Other disturbing details emerged in the filing, including that Heuermann allegedly made “thousands” of perverted Google searches in search of child porn and other “sadistic” media, like people being sexually abused.

Among the alleged searches were the phrases, “10 year old school girl” and “girl begging for rape porn.” These searches were also tied to a burner phone and email linked to Heuermann, prosecutors said.

While not directly related to the murder charges, prosecutors argued Friday that the creepy searches emphasized the need for Heuermann be held without bail.