Alleged Gilgo Beach Serial Killer Scores Small Victory Tied To Death Of Eighth LI Sex Worker In DNA Twist

Rex Heuermann, the accused man in the Gilgo Beach murder case, has secured a minor victory ahead of his upcoming trial.

The alleged killer is on trial for the murder of seven sex workers on Long Island, which occurred from 1993 to 2010. A convict had tried to connect Heuermann to the strangulation death of another woman, but recent DNA testing has determined otherwise.

Rex Heuermann has pleaded not guilty to all charges related to the murders of the seven sex workers and is expected back in court on December 17.

According to the New York Post, Rex Heuermann will not face any charges in connection with the 1994 strangulation death of Colleen McNamee.

The architect came under scrutiny for the murder after a convicted killer, John Bittrolff, who is currently serving a sentence for murdering McNamee and another woman, attempted to pin the crime on him.

McNamee's body was found near the William Floyd Parkway in Shirley, which is also located on Long Island, just like the other victims in Heuermann's ongoing murder trial.

However, DNA testing performed at Bittrolff's request has now cleared Heuermann of any possible involvement.

"A comparison between Cybergenetic's developed profile, 'unknown male A,' and the DNA profile of Rex Heuermann was performed," read a coroner report obtained by the outlet.

"Assuming that the 'unknown male A' profile is a mixture without any allelic dropout and strictly based on possible genotypes present in the profile, Rex Heuermann is excluded as 'unknown male A,'" the report further read.

Heuermann is currently facing charges for the murders of Amber Costello, Melissa Barthelemy,  Megan Waterman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Sandra Costilla, Jessica Taylor, and Valerie Mack.

The murders of the women are said to have occurred between 1993 and 2010, with their bodies found along Ocean Parkway in December 2010.

The cases remained cold for years until a strand of hair found on one of the victims' remains was submitted for further DNA analysis in 2020.

In 2022, Heuermann was identified as a potential suspect after investigators linked him to a pickup truck that a witness reported seeing near the scene when Costello was murdered.

From that point, the architect came under investigation. The investigation ultimately revealed that DNA from the recovered hair matched a swab taken from a pizza box belonging to Heuermann in 2023.

That same year, Heuermann was arrested in connection with three of the victims, and further investigations led to the other four murders being added.

Heuermann pleaded not guilty to all the charges, a move that suggests he is determined to fight for his innocence.

For now, a trial date has yet to be set, although it is believed one could be set as early as December.

"He understands he's going to have his day in court, but it's just going to take a while to get to that point. I've told him it's going to be a long process," Heuermann's attorney Michael Brown said about his client, per Fox5 New York.

He added, "There's a tremendous amount of discovery that they have to provide us and that we have to review still, but we're moving forward and moving towards that endpoint."

Heuermann currently remains in detention at the Riverhead Correctional Facility in Suffolk County, New York.

When Heuermann's trial date finally arrives, he is expected to face an uphill battle in defending himself, as the judge has already ruled that DNA evidence will be admissible in court.

The DNA evidence in question reportedly links the accused directly to six of the seven women he is believed to have killed.

Before the ruling, Heuermann's defense team attempted to have the evidence dismissed, arguing that the technology used to obtain it had never been admitted in a New York court.

However, the prosecutors fired back with the claim that the technique is not only "generally accepted in the scientific community," but that the technology it is derived from is "relied upon in a wide variety of scientific and forensic settings."

The judge ultimately ruled in favor of the prosecution, basing the decision on expert testimony, peer-reviewed research, and the technology's use in other states.

During an interview in the Peacock docuseries "The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets," Heuermann's wife, Asa Ellerup, insisted that her alleged serial killer husband was not capable of harming another human being.

"I know what bad men are capable of doing," she said in a clip from the show, per The Blast. "I've seen it, and I've heard it from other men. Not my husband. You have the wrong man."

She further claimed she couldn't see how anyone would suspect her husband to be a murderer, reminiscing about the daily activities they partook in that made it impossible for Heuermann to be the killer.

"I don't believe he did this. I don't see what everybody else is saying. I don't see phone calls to sex workers," Ellerup stated. "I picked him up from the train station every single day. He was home here on the weekends. He smoked a cigar in the garage."

She then stressed that she wants her husband "back home" as "he's a family man, period."