Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect Rex Heuerman may have ties to Atlantic City, police said.
Police are investigating whether the 59-year-old Long Island resident worked in the New Jersey area and are interviewing incarcerated sex workers who contacted him.
‘He was reaching out to them for sex,’ Suffolk County Police Department Sheriff Errol Toulon told Good Morning America of prostitution officials. ‘They took the phone but didn’t meet him.’
Atlantic City is a coastal tourist center known as a hotspot for gambling and sex workers.
The Gilgo Beach murders are similar to the ‘Eastbound Strangler’ murders in the area.
Officials are investigating whether Gilgo Beach murder suspect Rex Heurman Rex was operating in the New Jersey area.
Investigators believe the NYC architect targeted sex workers he met online
Police are interviewing incarcerated sex workers who had contact with the suspect (Atlantic City, pictured above)
Investigators believe the architect targeted sex workers he met online.
The investigation now covers four states — Heuerman owns a time-share in Las Vegas and a property in South Carolina — and police are investigating whether he may be connected to any unsolved murders there.
Heuerman was arrested and charged last week in the 2010 murders of three of the ‘Gilgo Four’, a group of women discovered near Gilgo Beach on Long Island.
He has pleaded not guilty to the murders of Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello.
Heuerman is the prime suspect in the 2007 disappearance and subsequent murder of a fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, although he has not yet been charged in the case.
He is also being investigated for the 2011 murders of six other women near Gilgo Beach.
It has also been revealed that new evidence from the Gilgo Beach murders has some similarities to the ‘Eastbound Strangler’ murders near Atlantic City.
All four were female sex workers strangled in the case, which took place in a township known as Egg Harbor, about 20 minutes west of Atlantic City.
In the Long Island case, most of the victims were also female sex workers, and several of them were strangled.
A former sex worker previously claimed she went on a date with the accused killer but left when she felt uncomfortable.
Nicole Brass, 34, said she met the alleged killer sometime between 2014 and 2016 at a seafood place in Port Jefferson, Long Island.
The sex worker says the conversation quickly turns to true crime documentaries, and Heuerman asks if she knows about the 11 unsolved Gilgo Beach murders.
Brass said he had uncovered details – including another death – that had not been reported on the news and that he was ‘surprised’ by how thrilled he seemed. Escort claimed that Heuerman indicated that others had participated in the murder.
Heuerman’s wife broke cover on Wednesday as she filed for divorce. She is pictured with daughter Victoria, 22 (centre).
The first victim, Melissa Barthelemy, 24, was discovered by Suffolk County police on Dec. 11, 2010. Megan Waterman, 22, was found two days later.
Maureen Brainard-Barnes was 25 when she disappeared (left). Amber Lynn Costello was 27 years old. Their bodies were found near Barthelemy on the same day
After dinner, Heuerman told her to ‘get in my car’ and invited her back to his Massapequa home. Detectives believe some of the prostitutes at the Manhattan architect’s property were killed before being dumped on the beach.
Describing their date on TikTok, Brass said: ‘I was like, “I don’t feel comfortable getting in the car with you. I don’t know you.” And he was almost excited and angry that I wouldn’t go in the car with him, and it made me feel more like, “I’ve got to get out of here.” So I walked away, thank God I trusted my gut, when that check came I walked away.’
Meanwhile, Heuerman’s wife broke cover on Wednesday as she filed for divorce.
Asa Ellerup, 59, was married to Heuerman for decades, and the pair raised two grown children.
Ellerup’s lawyer, Robert Macedonia, told Newstimesuk.com on Wednesday that police executed a search warrant at the family’s New York home when they arrested Heuerman in Manhattan.
“He was in complete shock,” the lawyer said. ‘Their whole life has been turned upside down.’
Ellarup immigrated to the United States from Iceland as a child and grew up near Heuerman, Long Island.
He was away when the women were killed and neighbors said the couple were rarely seen together.
The couple also raised his son from a previous marriage.
Former escort Nicole Brass, 34, discussed her date with alleged Gilgo Beach murder suspect Rex Heuerman, who excitedly detailed the mysterious 2015 killings to her.
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