Two victims of the New York Gilgo Beach serial killer — a Black mother and her 2-year-old child — stand out as the only African-Americans connected to the case that was blown wide open with the arrest of a New York architect this month, and now police in South Carolina are investigating whether there are links between the suspect and a missing Black teenager.
An unidentified woman only known as “Peaches” or “The Girl with the Peach Tattoo” was found in Lakeview, New York, near Hempstead Lake State Park in June 1997. Peaches was decapitated, and only her torso was found. The remains of her 2-year-old daughter were found in 2011 along with more of Peach’s remains. They are believed to be victims of the Gilgo Beach killer.
The bodies of three more women, Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello, were found in December of 2010 on Long Island along Ocean Parkway, but the killer was not caught at the time.
The Suffolk County Police finally arrested a suspect, 59-year-old New York City architect Rex Heuermann, on July 13. He was charged in connection with the murders of Barthelemy, Waterman and Costello on July 21 after two of the victims’ cellphones were used by Heuermann, police say.
The three victims reportedly were sex workers, and following Barthelemy’s death, Heuermann taunted her family with phone calls in 2009 on several occasions and admitted to killing and raping her, police claim. He is also a suspect in the death of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, who disappeared in 2007. There were ten bodies found in total near Gilgo Beach.
Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison called Heuermann “a demon,” according to ABC News.
“Rex Heuermann is a demon that walks among us,” said Harrison. “A predator that ruined families.”
Heuermann became the prime suspect after a male hair found in the burlap Waterman’s body was wrapped in was matched to the DNA lifted from a pizza crust thrown away…
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