New York

Suspect Arrested in Serial Killings of Women Near Gilgo Beach

Published

1 year ago

July 16, 2023

Suspect Arrested in Serial Killings of Women Near Gilgo Beach

The bodies were unearthed near remote Gilgo Beach on Long Island’s South Shore more than a decade ago, terrifying residents and leaving the victims’ families bereft. In all, the remains of nine women, a man and a toddler were discovered.

Since then, investigators have tried to determine whether the killings had been committed by one person or by multiple attackers. But for more than a decade the cases went unsolved.

Then Rex Heuermann, an architect who had lived most of his life in Nassau County and worked in Manhattan, was taken into custody on Thursday, accused of killing three women and is suspected in the murder of a fourth. Before his arrest, investigators had sifted through clues as simple as a monogrammed belt wrapped around one of the victims and as sophisticated as the electronic signals of disposable mobile phones.

Mr. Heuermann was charged with three counts of first degree murder and three counts of second degree murder in the killings of Amber Lynn Costello, Megan Waterman and Melissa Barthelemy, whose bodies were found wrapped in hunting camouflage burlap within a quarter mile of each other on a stretch of beach. All had been in their 20s, petite and working as escorts. They disappeared between 2009 and 2010.

The remains of a fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, who went missing in July 2007, were also found alongside their bodies and buried in a similar way.

Prosecutors said Rex Heuermann took selfies that he sent to help arrange sexual assignations. Credit…Suffolk County District Attorney

Mr. Heuermann was not charged with the killing of Ms. Brainard-Barnes, but he “is the prime suspect in her death,” according to the bail application filed by Allen Bode, the chief assistant district attorney in Suffolk County. The evidence in her case “fits the modus operandi of the defendant.”

Prosecutors asked in the court papers that Mr. Heuermann be held without bail based on circumstances including “the serious, heinous nature of these serial murders,” the planning that went into them, the suspect’s history of firearm possession and “his recent searches for sadistic materials, child pornography, images of the victims and their relatives.”

Mr. Heuermann, who had been arrested in Midtown Manhattan on Thursday night, appeared Friday afternoon in a Suffolk County courthouse, where he spoke in a low voice only to identify himself.

Handcuffed, his hair disheveled, he grimaced and sighed as District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney described DNA evidence linking him to the crime, gathered from pizza crust, bottles and human hairs.

Mr. Tierney said Mr. Heuermann had licenses for 92 guns and an “irresistible” motive to flee.

Judge Richard Ambro said he was ordering him held “because of the extreme depravity of the allegations.”

Outside the courthouse, Michael Brown, Mr. Heuermann’s lawyer, said the evidence was circumstantial and that his client had wept, telling him, “I didn’t do this.”

“We’re looking forward to fighting this case in a court of law, not the court of public opinion,” he said.

Investigators said they linked Mr. Heuermann to the killings using not only DNA, but technology that pinpointed the locations of disposable cellular phones they believed the killer used to contact the victims in the hours before they disappeared.

“Rex Heuermann is a demon that walks among us, a predator that ruins families,” said Rodney K. Harrison, the Suffolk County commissioner. Despite criticism over the long investigation, he said, investigators had never been discouraged.

The body of Ms. Barthelemy was the first that was discovered, on Dec. 11, 2010, when a police officer conducting a training exercise with his canine partner found her remains. Two days later, the police found the remains of the three other women.

Later that year, they found the remains of Valerie Mack, a 24-year-old mother from southern New Jersey who had paid the bills as an escort and had been missing for 20 years. The remains of six other people — four women, one man and a 2-year-old girl who was the daughter of one of the women — were also unearthed in the months that followed. Those six deaths remain unsolved.

“The work is not done, but this is a major, major step forward,” said Steve Bellone, the Suffolk County executive.

The families of some victims said the arrest of Mr. Heuermann made them feel optimistic that their loved ones’ cases would also be solved.

“I’m grateful for the hard work that has been done,” said Jasmine Robinson, a cousin of Jessica Taylor, a 20-year-old woman who had worked as an escort in New York. Some of her remains were found in 2003, soon after she went missing. More were found along Ocean Parkway around Gilgo Beach in early 2011.

“I’m grateful that today is happening,” Ms. Robinson said. “And I’m hopeful for the future.”

Prosecutors laid out an intricate investigation that saw a break in March 2022 when investigators discovered that Mr. Heuermann had owned a Chevrolet Avalanche truck at the time of the killings. A witness had seen an Avalanche parked in one of the murdered women’s driveways shortly before she disappeared, Mr. Bode, the prosecutor, wrote in his filing.

By the time detectives learned of the truck, they had already narrowed their search to several men who were in a small area of Massapequa Park where cell-site information had led them to believe that the killer lived, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

Investigators learned that the killer had used burner phones to contact victims in the hours before they disappeared. Using mapping technology, they found that the calls to the victims originated from two key locations connected to Mr. Heuermann: near his home on First Avenue in Massapequa Park and parts of Midtown Manhattan near his office at Fifth Avenue and 36th Street.

It was near that office that a series of “taunting” calls was made to Ms. Barthelemy’s family, using her phone, according to the court filing. One came in July 2009 to Ms. Barthelemy’s sister, Amanda.

“Do you think you’ll ever speak to her again?” a bland, calm voice said to her, according to a person with knowledge of the call.

When she told the caller that she hoped to talk to her sister again, he replied that he had killed her after having sex with her. Several seconds later, the caller hung up.

Investigators learned that Mr. Heuermann used burner phones to contact prostitutes or massage parlors and used false names to set up an email account to search for “sex workers, sadistic, torture-related pornography” and imagery and videos of women and children being sexually assaulted.

The account was also used to send selfies “to solicit and arrange for sexual activity” and to search for podcasts and documentaries related to the investigation. He “repeatedly” viewed “hundreds of images depicting the murdered victims and members of their immediate families,” Mr. Bode wrote.

Mr. Heuermann also searched for articles about a task force set up in 2022 to investigate the killings.

But while he was finding out about the task force, it was finding out about him. In July 2022, a detective took 11 bottles from a trash can outside Mr. Heuermann’s house. Investigators compared DNA from the bottles to DNA extracted from hairs found on some of the bodies.

It was an apparent match for Mr. Heuermann’s wife, who had been out of the country or out of state when each of the three women disappeared. Detectives concluded that Mr. Heuermann had somehow transferred his wife’s hair to the victims.

By January 2023, Mr. Heuermann was under regular surveillance, and investigators saw him throw a pizza box into a sidewalk garbage can outside his office building. The Suffolk County Crime Laboratory swabbed the discarded crusts for DNA, which in June matched with a hair found on Ms. Waterman’s body.

Mr. Tierney said that the task force used a grand jury to issue more than 300 subpoenas and search warrants. The grand jury helped investigators quietly pursue Mr. Heuermann, Mr. Tierney said during a news conference.

“We knew this one person would be watching,” he said.

Mr. Heuermann lived most, if not all, of his life in a tidy working-class suburb roughly an hour by train or car from Midtown Manhattan.

Neighbors said he had attended Alfred G. Berner High School and lived in his longtime family home, which had vegetation on a roof that was partly supported by bare wood. With its cracked and faded shingles and unkempt yard, the small house stood out from the neatly kept homes on the block.

Neighbors said they avoided it on Halloween.

Residents described Mr. Heuermann as an “average” man who went to the Massapequa Park station every day, wearing a suit and toting a briefcase. “You’d never think he was anything but a businessman,” said a neighbor, Barry Auslander.

In a February 2022 interview, Mr. Heuermann described himself as an architect and consultant who closely read building and administrative codes and kept an “extensive library of obsolete books.”

“I’m a troubleshooter, born and raised on Long Island, been working in Manhattan since 1987 — very long time,” he said in the 18-and-a-half-minute interview with Antoine Amira, a real estate agent and host of a show called Bonjour Realty on YouTube, who spoke with Mr. Heuermann at his office.

On Friday, police officers and reporters swarmed the white and beige brick building where Mr. Heuermann worked. Around 3:15 p.m., law enforcement officers left carrying boxes, a mallet and other large tools as curious passers-by stared.

In the interview with Mr. Amira, Mr. Heuermann said his father was an aerospace engineer who helped build satellites and crafted furniture at home. Mr. Heuermann said he also built furniture out of a workshop at his house.

Sitting at a desk and dressed in a light blue button-down shirt, Mr. Heuermann described the “patience” and “tolerance” needed to deal with out-of-town architects intimidated by New York’s byzantine building regulations.

His job, he said, taught him more about “how to understand people.”

At the end of the interview, Mr. Amira asked Mr. Heuermann to pose for a selfie. Mr. Heuermann, a 6-foot-4, heavyset man who towered over Mr. Amira, put on a pair of black sunglasses.

“Can you smile?” Mr. Amira asked.

Mr. Heuermann replied that he was smiling.

Andy Newman, Nate Schweber, Erin Nolan and Ellen Yan contributed reporting. Jack Begg contributed research.

New York

New York’s Chinese Dissidents Thought He Was an Ally. He Was a Spy.

Published

4 hours ago

January 10, 2025

Press Room

New York’s Chinese Dissidents Thought He Was an Ally. He Was a Spy.

The Chinese government’s paranoia about overseas dissidents can seem strange, considering the enormous differences in power between exiled protesters who organize marches in America and their mighty homeland, a geopolitical and economic superpower whose citizens they have almost no ability to mobilize. But to those familiar with the Chinese Communist Party, the government’s obsession with dissidents, no matter where in the world they are, is unsurprising. “Regardless of how the overseas dissident community is dismissed outside of China, its very existence represents a symbol of hope for many within China,” Wang Dan, a leader of the Tiananmen Square protests who spent years in prison before being exiled to the United States in 1998, told me. “For the Chinese Communist Party, the hope for change among the people is itself a threat. Therefore, they spare no effort in suppressing and discrediting the overseas dissident community — to extinguish this hope in the hearts of people at home.”

To understand the party’s fears about the risks posed by dissidents abroad, it helps to know the history of revolutions in China. “Historically, the groups that have overthrown the incumbent government or regime in China have often spent a lot of time overseas and organized there,” says Jessica Chen Weiss, a professor of China studies at Johns Hopkins University. The leader Sun Yat-sen, who played an important role in the 1911 revolution that dethroned the Qing dynasty and led eventually to the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, spent several periods of his life abroad, during which he engaged in effective fund-raising and political coordination. The Communist Party’s own rise to power in 1949 was partly advanced by contributions from leaders who were living overseas. “They are very sensitive to that potential,” Weiss says.

“What the Chinese government and the circle of elites that are running China right now fear the most is not the United States, with all of its military power, but elements of unrest within their own society that could potentially topple the Chinese Communist Party,” says Adam Kozy, a cybersecurity consultant who worked on Chinese cyberespionage cases when he was at the F.B.I. Specifically, Chinese authorities worry about a list of threats — collectively referred to as the “five poisons” — that pose a risk to the stability of Communist rule: the Uyghurs, the Tibetans, followers of the Falun Gong movement, supporters of Taiwanese independence and those who advocate for democracy in China. As a result, the Chinese government invests great effort in combating these threats, which involves collecting intelligence about overseas dissident groups and dampening their influence both within China and on the international stage.

Controlling dissidents, regardless of where they are, is essential to China’s goal of projecting power to its own citizens and to the world, according to Charles Kable, who served as an assistant director in the F.B.I.’s national security branch before retiring from the bureau at the end of 2022. “If you have a dissident out there who is looking back at China and pointing out problems that make the entire Chinese political apparatus look bad, it will not stand,” Kable says.

The leadership’s worries about such individuals were evident to the F.B.I. right before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Kable told me, describing how the Chinese worked to ensure that the running of the Olympic flame through San Francisco would not be disrupted by protesters. “And so, you had the M.S.S. and its collaborators deployed in San Francisco just to make sure that the five poisons didn’t get in there and disrupt the optic of what was to be the best Olympics in history,” Kable says. During the run, whose route was changed at the last minute to avoid protesters, Chinese authorities “had their proxies in the community line the streets and also stand back from the streets, looking around to see who might be looking to cause trouble.”

New York

Hochul Seeks to Limit Private-Equity Ownership of Homes in New York

Published

12 hours ago

January 9, 2025

Press Room

Hochul Seeks to Limit Private-Equity Ownership of Homes in New York

Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York on Thursday proposed several measures that would restrict hedge funds and private-equity firms from buying up large numbers of single-family homes, the latest in a string of populist proposals she intends to include in her State of the State address next week.

The governor wants to prevent institutional investors from bidding on properties in the first 75 days that they are on the market. Her plan would also remove certain tax benefits, such as interest deductions, when the homes are purchased.

The proposals reflect a nationwide effort by mostly Democratic lawmakers to discourage large firms from crowding out individuals or families from the housing market by paying far above market rate and in cash, and then leasing the homes or turning them into short-term rentals.

Activists and some politicians have argued that this trend has played a role in soaring prices and low vacancy rates — though low housing production is widely viewed as the main driver of those problems.

If Ms. Hochul was inviting a fight with the real estate interests who have backed her in the past, she did not seem concerned. She even borrowed a line from Jimmy McMillan, who ran long-shot candidacies for governor and mayor as the founder of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party.

“The cost of living is just too damn high — especially when it comes to the sky-high rents and mortgages New Yorkers pay every month,” Ms. Hochul said in a written statement.

James Whelan, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, said his team would review the proposal, but characterized it as “another example of policy that will stifle investment in housing in New York.”

The plan — the specifics of which will be negotiated with the Legislature — is one of several recent proposals the governor has made with the goal of addressing the state’s affordability crisis. Voters have expressed frustration about the high costs of housing and basic goods in the state. This discontent has led to political challenges for Ms. Hochul, who is likely to face rivals in the 2026 Democratic primary and in the general election.

In 2022, five of the largest investors in the United States owned 2 percent of the country’s single-family rental homes, most of them in Sun Belt and Southern states, according to a recent report from the federal Government Accountability Office. The report stated that it was “unclear how these investors affected homeownership opportunities or tenants because many related factors affect homeownership — e.g., market conditions, demographic factors and lending conditions.”

Researchers at Harvard University found that “a growing share of rental properties are owned by business entities and medium- and large-scale rental operators.”

State officials were not able to offer a complete picture of how widespread the practice was in New York. They said local officials in several upstate cities had told them about investors buying up dozens of homes at a time and turning them into rentals.

The New York Times reported in 2023 that investment firms were buying smaller buildings in places like Brooklyn and Queens from families and smaller landlords.

Ms. Hochul’s concern is that these purchases make it harder for first-time home buyers to gain a foothold in the market and can lead to more rental price gouging.

“Shadowy private-equity giants are buying up the housing supply in communities across New York, leaving everyday homeowners with nowhere to turn,” she said in a statement on Thursday. “I’m proposing new laws and policy changes to put the American dream of owning a home within reach for more New Yorkers than ever before.”

Cracking down on corporate landlords became a prominent talking point in last year’s presidential election. On the campaign trail, Vice President Kamala Harris called on Congress to pass previously introduced legislation eliminating tax benefits for large investors that purchase large numbers of homes.

“It can make it impossible then for regular people to be able to buy or even rent a home,” Ms. Harris said last summer.

In August, Representative Pat Ryan, Democrat of New York, called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate price gouging by private-equity firms in the housing market. He cited a study that estimated that private-equity firms “are expected to control 40 percent of the U.S. single-family rental market by 2030.”

Statehouses across the country have recently looked at ways to tackle corporate homeownership. One effort in Nevada, which passed the Legislature but was vetoed by Gov. Joe Lombardo, proposed capping the number of units a corporation could buy in a calendar year. It was opposed by local chambers of commerce and the state’s homebuilders association.

A bill was introduced in the Minnesota State Legislature that would ban the conversion of homes owned by corporations into rentals. It has yet to come up for a vote.

At the federal level, Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, and Representative Adam Smith, Democrat of Washington, introduced joint legislation that would force hedge funds to sell all the single-family homes they own over 10 years.

New York

N.Y. Prosecutors Urge Supreme Court to Let Trump’s Sentencing Proceed

Published

20 hours ago

January 9, 2025

Press Room

N.Y. Prosecutors Urge Supreme Court to Let Trump’s Sentencing Proceed

New York prosecutors on Thursday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to deny President-elect Donald J. Trump’s last-ditch effort to halt his criminal sentencing, in a prelude to a much-anticipated ruling that will determine whether he enters the White House as a felon.

In a filing a day before the scheduled sentencing, prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office called Mr. Trump’s emergency application to the Supreme Court premature, saying that he had not yet exhausted his appeals in state court. They noted that the judge overseeing the case plans to spare Mr. Trump jail time, which they argued undermined any need for a stay.

The prosecutors, who had secured Mr. Trump’s conviction last year on charges that he falsified records to cover up a sex scandal that endangered his 2016 presidential campaign, implored the Supreme Court to let Mr. Trump’s sentencing proceed.

“There is a compelling public interest in proceeding to sentencing,” they wrote, and added that “the sanctity of a jury verdict and the deference that must be accorded to it are bedrock principles in our Nation’s jurisprudence.”

The district attorney’s office has so far prevailed in New York’s appellate courts, but Mr. Trump’s fate now rests in the hands of a friendlier audience: a Supreme Court with a 6-to-3 conservative majority that includes three justices Mr. Trump appointed. Five are needed to grant a stay.

Their decision, coming little more than a week before the inauguration, will test the influence Mr. Trump wields over a court that has previously appeared sympathetic to his legal troubles.

In July, the court granted former presidents broad immunity for official acts, stymying a federal criminal case against Mr. Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election. (After Mr. Trump won the 2024 election, prosecutors shut down that case.)

The revelation that Mr. Trump spoke this week by phone with one of the conservative justices, Samuel A. Alito Jr., has fueled concerns that he has undue sway over the court.

Justice Alito said he was delivering a job reference for a former law clerk whom Mr. Trump was considering for a government position. But the disclosure alarmed ethics groups and raised questions about why a president-elect would personally handle such a routine reference check.

It is unclear whether Justice Alito will recuse himself from the decision, which the court could issue promptly.

Mr. Trump’s sentencing is scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. Friday in the same Lower Manhattan courtroom where his trial took place last spring, when the jury convicted him on all 34 felony counts.

If the Supreme Court rescues Mr. Trump on Thursday, returning him to the White House on Jan. 20 without the finality of being sentenced, it will confirm to many Americans that he is above the law. Almost any other defendant would have been sentenced by now.

“A sentencing hearing more than seven months after a guilty verdict is aberrational in New York criminal prosecutions for its delay, not its haste,” the prosecutors wrote.

The prosecutors also noted that Mr. Trump would most likely avoid any punishment at sentencing. The trial judge, Juan M. Merchan, has signaled he plans to show Mr. Trump leniency, reflecting the practical impossibility of incarcerating a president.

Still, Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued that the sentencing could impinge on his presidential duties. It would formalize Mr. Trump’s conviction, cementing his status as the first felon to occupy the Oval Office.

That status, Mr. Trump’s lawyers wrote in the filing to the Supreme Court, would raise “the specter of other possible restrictions on liberty, such as travel, reporting requirements, registration, probationary requirements and others.”

The court’s immunity ruling also underpinned Mr. Trump’s request to halt his sentencing. In the application, Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued that he was entitled to full immunity from prosecution — as well as sentencing — because he won the election.

“This court should enter an immediate stay of further proceedings in the New York trial court,” the application said, “to prevent grave injustice and harm to the institution of the presidency and the operations of the federal government.”

Mr. Trump’s application was filed by two of his picks for top jobs in the Justice Department: Todd Blanche, Mr. Trump’s choice for deputy attorney general, and D. John Sauer, his selection for solicitor general.

“Forcing President Trump to prepare for a criminal sentencing in a felony case while he is preparing to lead the free world as president of the United States in less than two weeks imposes an intolerable, unconstitutional burden on him that undermines these vital national interests,” they wrote.

Whether that argument will prevail is uncertain. Some legal experts have doubted the merits of Mr. Trump’s application, and lower courts have greeted his arguments with skepticism.

Earlier Thursday, a judge on the New York Court of Appeals in Albany, the state’s highest court, declined to grant a separate request from Mr. Trump to freeze the sentencing.

Prosecutors noted that Mr. Trump had yet to have a full appellate panel rule on the matter, and that he had not mounted a formal appeal of his conviction. Consequently, they argued, the Supreme Court “lacks jurisdiction over this non-final state criminal proceeding.”

Also this week, a judge on the First Department of New York’s Appellate Divison in Manhattan rejected the same request to halt the sentencing.

That judge, Ellen Gesmer, grilled Mr. Trump’s lawyer at a hearing about whether he had found “any support for a notion that presidential immunity extends to president-elects?”

With no example to offer, Mr. Blanche conceded, “There has never been a case like this before.”

In their filing Thursday, prosecutors echoed Justice Gesmer’s concerns, noting that “This extraordinary immunity claim is unsupported by any decision from any court.”

They also argued that Mr. Trump’s claims of presidential immunity fell short because their case concerned a personal crisis that predated his first presidential term. The evidence, they said, centered on “unofficial conduct having no connection to any presidential function.”

The state’s case centered on a sex scandal involving the porn star Stormy Daniels, who threatened to go public about an encounter with Mr. Trump, a salacious story that could have derailed his 2016 campaign.

To bury the story, Mr. Trump’s fixer, Michael D. Cohen, negotiated a $130,000 hush-money deal with Ms. Daniels.

Mr. Trump eventually repaid him. But Mr. Cohen, who was the star witness during the trial, said that Mr. Trump orchestrated a scheme to falsify records and hide the true purpose of the reimbursement.

Although Mr. Trump initially faced sentencing in July, his lawyers buried Justice Merchan in a flurry of filings that prompted one delay after another. Last week, Justice Merchan put a stop to the delays and scheduled the sentencing for Friday.

Mr. Trump faced four years in prison, but his election victory ensured that time behind bars was not a viable option. Instead, Justice Merchan indicated that he would impose a so-called unconditional discharge, a rare and lenient alternative to jail or probation.

“The trial court has taken extraordinary steps to minimize any burdens on defendant,” the prosecutors wrote Thursday.