Arrest of suspect in Lengthy Island serial killings brings each ache and aid to victims’ households

NEW YORK — The path had gone chilly as clues all of the sudden dwindled. For a time, doubts swirled about whether or not a killer who dumped the stays of his feminine victims alongside distant stretches of shoreline on New York’s Lengthy Island would ever be caught.

Then lastly, after greater than a dozen lengthy years, bereaved households of the victims have been supplied with a whiff of aid Friday when authorities introduced the arrest of a 59-year-old architect who they consider is accountable for their deaths.

The arrest rekindled anger and grief — but in addition introduced the prospect of closure — for members of the family together with Amy Brotz, whose cousin, Melissa Barthelemy, was the primary of the victims to be found, discovered by chance throughout a seek for one other lady.

“I can’t wrap my head round this,” Brotz mentioned, simply hours after being startled by the surprising information of an arrest. “God has introduced peace to the households,” she mentioned. “Possibly we will begin the therapeutic.”

The yearslong ordeal was particularly unnerving for Brotz and her household as a result of prosecutors say the suspect used Barthelemy’s cellphone to torment her kin with calls quickly after her disappearance, together with one during which he mentioned he’d killed her.

To speed up the seek for Barthelemy’s stays, her household employed a psychic who offered tantalizing clues that may show prophetic: She could be present in a shallow grave alongside the shore, close to an indication with the letter G.

Gilgo Seaside would change into the focus of the long-stalled investigation into the invention of 11 units of stays, together with that of a toddler, all discarded alongside the parkway that cuts the size of a skinny strip of white sand, grime, brambles and marshes generally known as Jones Seaside Island. The toddler and three different victims have but to be recognized. All 10 grownup victims, together with the toddler’s mom, have been intercourse staff, police mentioned.

However investigators say the suspect, Rex Heuermann, 59, won’t be accountable for all the deaths. Along with the Barthelemy case, he has up to now solely been accused of killing two others, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello, who have been reported lacking in 2010. He’s additionally the prime suspect within the demise of a fourth lady who disappeared that very same 12 months, Maureen Brainard-Barnes. Heuermann says he’s harmless, in response to his lawyer.

Barthelemy, who grew up in Buffalo, New York, was discovered on December 11, 2010, greater than a 12 months after she went lacking. Two days later, the our bodies of three different younger ladies have been discovered close by.

The killer offered clues, together with strands of hair, the burlap used to wrap the our bodies and a belt embossed with attainable initials.

And there have been the telephone calls, together with one comprised of Barthelemy’s cellphone on the day she was final seen alive that may be traced to the Lengthy Island city of Massapequa, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the place her physique would later be discovered, not removed from Heuermann’s home.

“I’d like him to undergo by the hands of different inmates,” the sufferer’s mom, Lynn Barthelemy, instructed NBC Information.

“Dying is simply too good for him,” she mentioned.

However she additionally expressed aid {that a} suspect was lastly in custody.

A key query lingers, nevertheless: Why did it take so lengthy? That was a query the suspect apparently had too, when prosecutors say he went on-line to ask, “Why hasn’t the lengthy island serial killer been caught.”

Waterman was discovered close to Gilgo Seaside in December 2010, six months after she boarded a bus from Maine to New York. However her mom, Lorraine Ela, died final 12 months by no means figuring out if her daughter’s killer would ever be discovered.

Ela’s hopes have been buoyed three years in the past when investigators found new proof: a belt embossed with two letters which may have belonged to the suspect.

“I can solely be optimistic about all of it,” she instructed Portland TV station WGME in January 2020.

Nicole Haycock, one in all Waterman’s longtime buddies and her brother’s former girlfriend, was stunned by the announcement of Heuermann’s arrest Friday. At first, she thought it was a hoax.

“There’s so many questions I nonetheless have,” she mentioned, together with, “Why her?”

Seven of the 11 victims whose stays have been discovered on Jones Seaside Island weren’t talked about within the charging paperwork for Heuermann. Amongst them: Jessica Taylor, a 20-year-old Washington, D.C., lady who went lacking in New York in July 2003.

Outdoors the courthouse the place Heuermann was arraigned Friday, her cousin Jasmine Robinson remarked that “full justice” will probably be achieved solely when all of the instances are solved.

Robinson additionally hoped Taylor could be “remembered as a gorgeous younger lady, not what her occupation was at the moment.”

One other unmentioned sufferer was Valerie Mack, who was 24 when she final left her household’s house in Port Republic, New Jersey.

Initially generally known as “Jane Doe No. 6,” a few of her stays have been first found in 2000 in Manorville, New York, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of the place extra of her stays have been found on Gilgo Seaside greater than 10 years later. She remained unidentified till genetic testing revealed her id simply three years in the past.

The household tried to report her as lacking, however police satisfied them that she in all probability ran off and didn’t need to be discovered.

“So far as we knew, she was nonetheless lacking,” mentioned her sister Danielle Mack. “We knew that one thing was flawed as a result of … we simply don’t consider she would have by no means come again after 20 years.”

Mack mentioned the household was surprised by the information of an arrest.

“It is quite a bit to course of,” she mentioned, including that she does not know what to make of the truth that Heuermann wasn’t charged in Valerie’s demise.

“I’m simply ready for all the opposite info to come back out for us to actually perceive what occurred and who’s accountable,” she mentioned, “and hopefully the best particular person is being dropped at justice.”

There have been conflicting theories about whether or not Shannan Gilbert, one other 24-year-old intercourse employee, was killed or drowned in a marsh whereas working away from a beachfront house.

Her frantic name to police earlier than her disappearance in Could 2010 triggered a search that by probability led to the invention of the primary 4 our bodies, generally known as the Gilgo 4, and different stays quickly after.

Though all the instances haven’t been solved, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul mentioned many affected communities could be “sleeping quite a bit simpler” after Heuermann’s seize.

“A whole lot of households whose lives have been simply turned the other way up, all the time questioning, questioning what occurred and can the perpetrator ever be dropped at justice — hopefully … the reply will probably be sure,” she mentioned Friday at an unrelated occasion on Lengthy Island.

Whereas closure could possibly be close to for Brotz and her household, the ordeal shouldn’t be but over. She worries that prosecutors will not be capable of show their case past an affordable doubt, and he or she is cautious of the emotional toll and relived trauma that’s nonetheless to come back ought to the case go to trial.

“The truth that my household goes to have to sit down and hearken to all this, to each particular, tiny little element is making me sick,” Brotz mentioned.