(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 rundown, single-family home in Massapequa Park on Long Island sometime before 7 a.m.
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.”
Lawyers for Heuermann and his family didn’t respond to calls and emails seeking comment Monday, but told local news outlets that his wife and two adult children were not in the home at the time. Heuermann has been in custody since his arrest last July and has maintained his innocence.
Police searched the home, located in a suburban town about 40 miles (64 kilometers) east of Manhattan, for about two weeks after his arrest.
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 (64 kilometers) east of Heuermann’s home, though he hasn’t been charged in those killings.
Heuermann, 60, is expected to be back in court June 18 for a status hearing in Suffolk County Criminal Court in Riverhead. 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 when he was arrested in July in the deaths of three other women.
