Seven months passed before the police’s first finding: remains of four women on Gilgo Beach on the South Shore of Long Island. But none of them was Gilbert. The “Gilgo Four”—identified as Barthelemy, Brainard-Barnes, Costello and Waterman— were all described by police as petite, in their 20s and working as online escorts.
Over the next 11 months, police found the remains of another six people, but Gilbert’s remains weren’t recovered till December 2011, over a year-and-a-half after she disappeared. Police ruled that she had not been murdered.
"It's an unfortunate incident, but right now we believe that she just ran into the marsh and unfortunately drowned," Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison told Erin Moriarty. Gilbert’s mother, Mari, disagreed, threatening to sue the department. She obtained an independent autopsy that revealed Gilbert was possibly strangled.
Twelve years passed after the police’s first finding without any real movement in the investigation. Suffolk County Police Chief James Burke, who supervised the Gilgo Beach case, is said by colleagues to have discouraged collaboration with the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI).
A department detective claimed Burke denied subpoenas for records related to cell phone towers, and a police commissioner said detectives were prevented from sharing information with an FBI unit that could help profile the killer.
He denied all allegations via his lawyer, including those concerning the Gilgo Beach investigation, per a 2025 documentary on the case.
The Probe Continues
That probe into the Gilgo Beach murders was revived in 2018 by the new Suffolk County Police Commissioner, Geraldine Hart, who was convinced by victims’ families. In 2022, the Suffolk County district attorney created a dedicated multi-agency Gilgo Beach Homicide Task Force.
Looking at the case files, investigators noted that 27-year-old victim Costello’s roommate had described one of her clients as an “ogre-like” man who drove a first-generation Chevrolet Avalanche; the roommate said that before Costello’s disappearance, she got repeated calls from a client.
Costello was one of four victims who had been contacted from burner phones; the FBI had previously helped the police connect most of these calls to cell towers in a small area, about a 20-minute drive from Gilgo Beach.
Police were now able to narrow their case to at least one suspect: Rex Heuermann.
Heuermann’s phone records showed his cell was in the same area as the burners when the victims were contacted. The burners also often called victims from near Heuermann’s office in Midtown Manhattan or his home on Long Island. Police saw the suspect go into a store to purchase such a phone, one of which was found linked to his Tinder account.
A crime lab matched DNA on Heuermann’s discarded pizza crust—gathered from when he was being surveilled—to that from male hair found on one of the victim’s remains.
The forensic evidence combined with phone records led to Heuermann’s arrest.
Later, investigators found that hair on other victims' remains matched either Heuermann, his wife or his daughter’s DNA. Prosecutors believe all hair found on the victims was transferred from Heuermann himself. The rest of the family was out of town when the Gilgo Four were murdered.
This was one reason, police say, Heuermann had opportunity to kill: His wife took their children to her home in Iceland over summers, during which time the murders occurred.
A search of Heuermann’s home revealed, among other things, 46 cell phones, a collection of violent, bondage pornography and a Microsoft Word Document where he had allegedly planned the crimes in what the task force describes as "excruciating detail.” In a press conference, the District Attorney said the way in which some of the women were murdered is identical to what is described in the document.
Nevertheless, Heuermann pleaded not guilty on all charges. The defense asked that the trial be split into multiple and challenged the admissibility of the DNA evidence on the grounds that the technology behind it had never been used in a New York court. The judge denied both motions.
On April 8, 2026, Heuermann changed his plea to guilty of all seven murders. In exchange for this plea, he also admitted to intentionally causing the death of an eighth woman named Karen Vergata, who disappeared in 1996, but will not be charged in connection with her death.
Two months later, a judge sentenced Heuermann to three consecutive terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole for killing Barthelemy, Costello and Waterman, and four consecutive terms of 25 years to life imprisonment for murdering Brainard-Barnes, Costilla, Mack and Taylor.
