Long Island serial killer? Police charge man with multiple counts of murder

globalnews.ca:

It’s been more than a decade since the bodies of several young women were found wrapped in burlap and buried in a Long Island marsh, and now there’s been an arrest in the case that’s linked to three of the deaths.

Police say suspect Rex Heuermann, 59, an architect in Manhattan, has been taken into custody.

The killings, often referred to as the “Long Island Serial Killer” case, were first revealed in December 2010, when the bodies of Amber Costella, Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainard-Barnes and Megan Waterman were found in a marsh along Gilgo Beach in Babylon, Long Island.

The women had all worked as online escorts and went missing between 2007 and 2010. Their bodies were discovered accidentally as police searched for Shannan Gilbert, a 24-year-old escort who went missing after meeting up with a client and fleeing the man’s home.

The bodies of six more people, including a toddler and an Asian person — possibly a transgender woman — were found buried in the area in March of 2011. Gilbert’s remains were later found in December of 2011, approximately five kilometres from the area where the other 10 bodies were found.

According to his bail application, obtained by NBC, Heuermann is charged with three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of Barthelemy, 24; Waterman, 22; and Costello, 27.

Though Heuermann was not charged with crimes in connection with the disappearance and murder of Brainard-Barnes, 25, he is the “prime suspect in her death” and the investigation is ongoing, the document states.

Heuermann was arrested late Thursday in Massapequa amid a renewed investigation that tied him to a pickup truck that a witness reported seeing when one of the victims disappeared in