Who Were Long Island Serial Killer Rex Heuermann's Victims?

The man believed to be the Gilgo Beach serial killer admitted in April 2026 that the bodies of four women found throughout a quarter-mile stretch of Ocean Parkway on Long Island, N.Y., weren’t his only victims. 

Rex Heuermann admitted he strangled eight women and discarded their remains, marking the end of a three-decades-old unsolved case. Heuermann has been in custody since 2023, pleaded guilty on April 8 and will be sentenced in Suffolk County Court on June 17.

Investigators said they zeroed in on Heuermann using cell tower records, a description of the suspect and his green pickup truck, credit card billing records and computer records. However, the road to Heuermann began in 2010 during the unrelated search of a missing woman named Shannan Gilbert, who was eventually found deceased. While police searched for Gilbert, they found the bodies of four other women known as the “Gilgo Four,” who received that name because of their bodies’ proximity to Gilgo Beach.

All of the women were sex workers who were similar in height, weight, hair and eye color. None of them knew each other.

Heuermann contacted three of the Gilgo Four victims on burner phones and lured them with money, he said in court. When a judge asked how he killed the women, Heuermann said he strangled them and then bound their heads and legs and wrapped their bodies in burlap, confirming how police found each woman.

The eight women he confessed to killing are the Gilgo Four (Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Costello and Megan Waterman) and four others (Sandra Costilla, Valerie Mack, Jessica Taylor and Karen Vergata).

Heuermann is expected to be sentenced to three consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole for killing Barthelemy, Costello and Waterman. He is also expected to receive a sentence of 100 years to life imprisonment for killing Brainard-Barnes, Costilla, Mack and Taylor. Heuermann will not be charged with Vergata’s murder per his plea agreement. 

Missing: July 9, 2007 Found: December 13, 2010

Brainard-Barnes left Norwich, Conn., for New York City on July 9, 2007, to make money as a sex worker after her landlord threatened to evict her; she feared losing custody of her child if they were kicked out.

Sara Karnes, her friend and fellow sex worker, said Brainard-Barnes hoped to make $3,000 that day by advertising on Craigslist and other websites using the names Juliana or Marie. When Karnes decided to go home for the night, she said Brainard-Barnes stayed in the city to continue seeking clients. When Brainard-Barnes finished working, she took a train back to Connecticut. She was reported missing to police that day after no one could get in touch with her.

Two weeks later, Karnes got a call from a blocked number. The caller described Brainard-Barnes and claimed to have seen her in Queens. 

On December 13, 2010, Brainard-Barnes’ remains were among the first to be discovered along Ocean Parkway as police searched for Gilbert. Police found DNA belonging to Heuermann's then-wife in hair recovered from a belt used to restrain Brainard-Barnes, according to an indictment.

"She had bright, blue eyes. She was very outgoing, very outspoken," Karnes told ABC News. "Every time I talk about it, it doesn’t get any easier."

Missing: July 10, 2009 Found: December 11, 2010

Almost exactly two years after Brainard-Barnes disappeared, Barthelemy vanished.

Barthelemy, a hairdresser and sex worker, told friends she was leaving her basement apartment in the Bronx and traveling to Long Island to see a client. She was never seen again.

Soon after her disappearance, her teenage sister received taunting calls from an unidentified man. Police traced the calls to midtown Manhattan.

Barthelemy’s body was found on December 11, 2010, bound and wrapped in burlap by Suffolk County Police Officer John Mallia, who was conducting a training exercise with his cadaver dog, Blue. This area was along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach. 

Two days later, police returned during their search for Gilbert and found three more sets of remains within a quarter-mile radius of where Barthelemy was found. 

Missing: June 6, 2010 Found: December 13, 2010

Waterman, originally from Maine, turned to sex work to support herself and her young daughter. 

On June 6, 2010, Waterman’s family became worried when their frequent phone check-ins suddenly stopped. They reported her missing immediately, and investigators found surveillance footage from the Holiday Inn Express on Long Island where Waterman was staying. 

The footage showed that she left the hotel around 1:15 a.m., likely to meet with a client. Her remains were eventually found along Ocean Parkway along with the rest of the Gilgo Four. 

“I would do anything to bring her back, but I can’t,” Lily Waterman, her now-teenage daughter said on 48 Hours in 2020. “And, it just, like, frustrates me so bad.”

Missing: September 2, 2010 Found: December 13, 2010

Costello was living with friends on Long Island when she went missing in September 2010. 

Her roommates were aware that she did sex work and once stepped in to protect her from a client when she called them for help. On the last night she was seen alive, Costello left the apartment without her purse or cell phone to meet with a client who offered a higher fee if she stayed with him for 24 hours.

When she didn’t return, her roommates gave police a description of the man with whom she previously had a run-in. Years later, the description of the client and his car led police directly to Heuermann.

Missing: July 21, 2003 Found: July 2003 and March 29, 2011

Taylor went missing from New York City on July 21, 2003. Taylor was a sex worker who frequented Midtown Manhattan. Her partial remains were found in Manorville, N.Y., by a woman who was walking her dog. 

During the March 2011 search of Gilgo Beach, police found additional remains that were determined to belong to Taylor.

Missing: 2000 Found: 2000 and April 4, 2011

For more than a decade, Mack was known as Jane Doe No. 6. It wasn’t until 2020 and advancements in DNA testing that she was identified. Mack spent time in New Jersey and Philadelphia and had been arrested several times for charges related to sex work. 

Mack’s partial remains were found at two separate times and in different places: Manorville in 2000, and along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach in 2011.

Missing: November 1993 Found: November 21, 1993

Costilla was originally from Trinidad and Tobago before moving to New York. Soon after she went missing, her body was found by hunters in the woods near Southampton, Long Island. Initially, convicted murderer John Bittrolff was suspected of killing Costilla, but once Heuermann was arrested, they charged him with her murder.

Heuermann told his family Costilla was his first victim and that she was a sex worker he had arranged to meet.

“He said he killed Sandra Costilla in the Dodge—that was his first murder, before I married him,” his wife said in the documentary The Gilgo Beach Killer.

Missing: 1996 Found: 1996 and April 11, 2011

Vergata was known until October 2022 as Jane Doe No. 7.  She lived in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood when she went missing.

Some of her remains were discovered in 1996 on Fire Island, N.Y. During the Suffolk County police’s second search for Gilbert, more of Vergata’s remains were found near Gilgo Beach.