Markets 
The saga of the Gilgo Beach serial murders that haunted Long Island for more than three decades is set to come to a close Wednesday — when confessed killer Rex Heuermann is shipped off to prison for life.
Heuermann, a 62-year-old architect from Massapequa Park, is scheduled to be sentenced to three life terms after he pleaded guilty in April to the brutal slayings of eight Long Island sex workers between 1993 and 2010.
His sentencing will be the final chapter in one of the most notorious serial-killing cases in the New York metro area.
“We’re close,” Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney told The Post on Tuesday. “I’m looking forward to wrapping it up so we can take the resources dedicated to this case and dedicate them to some of our other cases.
“The defendant is about to be held responsible for all that he’s done.”
For the families of the victims, the sentencing finally gives them closure.
“Justice finally found its way to you,” said Melissa Cann, the sister of Gilgo victim Maureen Brainard-Barnes, after Heuermann’s guilty plea.
“Your voice was never silenced. Your story never forgotten, and your life will always mean more than the tragedy that took you,” she said of her tragic sibling.
In a newly released mug shot, the killer is seen with a chilling stare that stands in sharp contrast to the sinister smirk he flashed in court as he answered “strangulation” when asked how he killed his victims.
The grisly murders remained unsolved for decades. It wasn’t until 2022 when former NYPD Chief Rodney Harrison took over as Suffolk County police commissioner and reopened the case that cops were able to link Heuerman to the slayings.
In April, the 6-foot-4 architect confessed to killing 25-year-old Brainard-Barnes, Amber Lynn Costello, 27; Megan Waterman, 22; and Melissa Barthelemy, 24, who were famously known as the “Gilgo Four” — as well as Valerie Mack, 24; Jessica Taylor, 20; and Sandra Costilla, 28, the first victim killed in 1993.
In a stunning development, he also admitted to killing Karen Vergata, 34, in 1996, a case that had not been previously linked to him.
Prosecutors have released sick details of the murders, including Heuermann’s meticulous four-day system for preparing and carrying out the sadistic killings, and how to best dispose of the bodies.
He also kept a Tinder account and buzzed prostitutes on burner phones more than 500 times while making “significant searches for pornography related to bindings, torture, rape, snuff videos, crying, bruised and impaled women and/or girls,” authorities said.
Some of the women were dismembered and wrapped up in burlap and dumped along desolate stretches of Long Island — where the first of the bodies were discovered in December 2010.
Heuermann was arrested in July 2023 outside his office and charged with three of the cold-case killings, with DNA evidence later linking him to four more women — and later another in a surprise development.
He was nailed partly by DNA evidence left on a pizza box he tossed in the trash outside his Manhattan work place.
Stay up to date on the Gilgo Beach murders:
His lawyer, Michael Brown, said his client was not behind two other unsolved murders — Shannon Gilbert, a sex worker who disappeared in 2010, and an unidentified victim known as “Asian Doe.”
Tierney said that means his work might not be over just yet.
“It’s never really over because there are still more bodies on Gilgo,” the prosecutors said. “There are more unsolved murders in Suffolk County in general. Quite a few actually. So that work will continue.”
Suffolk County officials said Heuermann has been on solitary confinement at the county lockup since his arrest, whittling away his time with books and the occasional solo outdoor time jail yard.
After sentencing, he will be transported to a state prison to serve it.
Sources revealed that the killer has also found a sympathetic pen pal while locked up — Keith Jesperson, the notorious “Happy Face Killer,” who is serving a life sentence at the Oregon Correctional Facility.
Jesperson, a truck driver who got the moniker for signing taunting letters to cops and media outlets with a smiley face, was arrested in 1995 and confessed to killing eight women between 1990 and 1995 in California, Washington, Oregon, Florida, Nebraska and Wyoming.
Jesperson said he advised Heuermann “not to go to trial” following the hulking architect’s 2023 bust, and urged him not to waste time going through a high-profile trial, The Daily Mail reported.
Read the full article here
