White tents set up by law enforcement fill the front yard of Rex Heuermann’s home, Monday, in Massapequa Park, N.Y. Investigators returned Monday to the home of the New York architect charged in a string of slayings known as the Gilgo Beach killings. Phil Marcelo/Associated Press
MASSAPEQUA PARK, N.Y. — Investigators returned Monday to the home of a New York architect charged in a string of slayings known as the Gilgo Beach killings.
State and county police officials descended on Rex Heuermann’s dilapidated, single-family home in Massapequa Park on Long Island sometime before 7 a.m.
Megan Waterman with her daughter Lily.
They used their vehicles and set up barriers to cordon off the block and raised white tents in front of the red house.
Officers removed boxes and bags of evidence from the house as forensic and crime lab units spent much of the day on site. Officials from the Suffolk County medical examiner’s office also visited.
Spokespersons for the New York State Police and Suffolk County Police Department deferred questions to Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney’s office, which declined to comment.
“As District Attorney Tierney has previously stated, the work of the Gilgo Beach Homicide Task force is continuing,” his spokesperson Tania Lopez said in an emailed statement. “We do not comment on investigative steps while ongoing.”
Heuermann has been in custody since his arrest last July, and has maintained his innocence.
His lawyer didn’t respond to calls and emails seeking comment Monday, but a lawyer representing his two adult children confirmed that Heuermann’s wife and son were on vacation in South Carolina while his daughter was at the Long Island house Monday morning.
“My clients have, understandably a visceral chagrin vis a vis a police presence in their home; they have been repeatedly excluded as having any involvement in any alleged act, and today is unfortunately another mile marker in the grim marathon that is their existence,” attorney Vess Mitev wrote in an email.
Last July, police spent nearly two weeks scouring the home, located in a suburban town about 40 miles east of Manhattan.
The search of what Tierney has described as a “very cluttered environment” turned up more than 200 firearms, including dozens stored in a basement vault. Investigators also tore up a wooden deck, used an excavator to dig up the backyard and scanned for buried objects with specialized equipment.
Monday’s search also comes about a month after authorities spent more than a week searching in a wooded area in Manorville. The remains of two women were found years earlier in the area, located about 40 miles east of Heuermann’s home, though he hasn’t been charged in those killings.
Heuermann, 60, is expected to be back in Riverhead court June 18 for a status hearing. No trial date has been set.
In January, he was charged in the death of a fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, who vanished in 2007 and whose remains were found more than three years later along a coastal highway on Long Island.
The formal charges came months after authorities labeled him the prime suspect in the Connecticut mother’s death.
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