Sitting in a Suffolk County courthouse on Friday, Jasmine Robinson listened intently as prosecutors explained how they tracked down a man suspected of murdering and burying at least three women on Long Island’s south shore. She learned how they’d used DNA carefully harvested from his pizza crusts, triangulated his cell phone signals, and spent hours on old-fashioned, shoe-leather lookouts.
She has not heard who allegedly killed her cousin, whose head and hands were also found near remote Gilgo Beach.
A Massapequa Park architect, Rex Heuermann, pleaded not guilty last week after being charged with three murders of women whose bodies were found on the barrier island. Authorities have said he is the prime suspect in a fourth. But a total of 11 bodies were discovered.
For Ms. Robinson, the hearing and aggressive investigative techniques were a sign that the police might finally solve the murder of her niece, Jessica Taylor. Days after Mrs. Taylor went missing in New York in July 2003, a woman walking her dog found the victim’s torso in the woods in Manorville, about 43 miles east of Gilgo Beach, but nearly eight years passed before the rest of her remains were discovered at Gilgo.
The hearing boosted her confidence, Ms Robinson said.
“I’ve always had hope, and every morning when I wake up I think, ‘Maybe this is the day,'” Ms Robinson said in an interview on Saturday. “When I heard everything yesterday, it proves that they are working and they are working hard. I’m excited to see what comes next.
Since police announced an arrest in the 12-year investigation on Friday, the focus has been on the cases of the four women detectives have so far linked to Mr Heuermann. For the relatives of the other victims found along the beach, the news was a tantalizing reminder that they were still waiting for answers.
The families watched for more than a decade as the investigation was crippled by dysfunction and mired in corruption. Then, last year, investigators joined state and federal agencies to re-examine the case.
“The task force continues to investigate the other deaths,” was all the Suffolk County Police Department would say Tuesday. A spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office said it would not discuss any further investigation.
For some of the victims’ families, last week’s arrest was a reason to keep the faith. For others, it only amplified their frustration.
Investigators began focusing on Gilgo Beach in 2010, when Shannan Gilbert, who had answered a call for an escort in the area, disappeared. Investigators soon discovered the first four buried bodies. Mrs. Gilbert’s remains were found a year later in the swamps of Oak Beach, about six miles from Gilgo Beach. While police have suggested her death was not a homicide, her family disagrees and know little about how or why she died.
“I’m so happy for the four who are able to get those answers,” said Sherre Gilbert, her sister, adding, “I feel like they could have done this years ago if they brought in the right people.”
The investigation began in earnest in December 2010 when a Suffolk County officer, John Malia, and his K9 partner, Blue, searched a stretch of Ocean Parkway near where authorities believed Ms. Gilbert was missing, prosecutors said. Blue discovered human remains.
Police later determined that they did not belong to Ms. Gilbert, but to Melissa Barthelemy, a 24-year-old woman from the Bronx who had worked as a prostitute until her disappearance in July 2009. When police returned two days later, they found the remains of three other women: Amber Lynn Costello, Megan Waterman, and Maureen Brainard-Barnes.
All four were frail, in their twenties, and had worked as prostitutes. All were also found tied at the feet or ankles and wrapped in burlap along a strip of sand about a quarter of a mile long.
Seven other bodies would be found in the months that followed, including Mrs. Gilbert, four other women, a man who was never identified, and a 2-year-old girl. The bodies, two of which were only partial remains, were not bound and wrapped like those of the first group.
Countless killers have sometimes disposed of bodies in one location — parts of the Brooklyn and New Jersey swamps, said Fred Klein, an attorney and the former Nassau County assistant district attorney who prosecuted serial killer Joel Rifkin. But that dumping, he said, is generally the work of an organized crime group or gang.
“The unusual thing is random people using the same location,” says Klein, who is now an assistant professor of law at Hofstra University. “It is almost beyond the imagination to believe that more than one different person, completely separate from each other, happened to dump dead sex workers in the same location.”
But the search area eventually stretched for miles, and Joseph Giacalone, an adjunct professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice who led the Bronx police cold case squad, said a broad search could yield unexpected discoveries: “When you have these vast wooded areas, it depends on how far the police want to go and how many bodies they want to find.”
When investigators launched the task force last year, they focused on the first four women found, District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney said in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
“Those kills: the patterns are very similar,” he told the host. “That’s what this grand jury investigation was about. We are going to handle this case, and then we will continue to investigate all those other bodies as well.”
The arrest of Mr. Heuermann could also be important in helping investigators solve the other victims’ cases, said Mr. Small. In the past, witnesses’ memories were refreshed after seeing a news clip or reading about an arrest, he said.
Since Friday, Suffolk County officials have been executing warrants, seizing evidence from Mr. Heuermann’s home and a storage unit, including more than 200 guns.
But as officials continue their investigation, Ms. Gilbert said the task of solving her sister’s death now lies primarily with her and her lawyer.
Last year, police concluded her sister’s cause of death was undetermined but was likely accidental, with substance abuse and mental illness possibly playing a role, she said. The family disagrees.
“Even if the police say this case is closed, we will not stop getting justice,” Ms Gilbert said. “We’re going to be as loud as possible.”