Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect Rex Heuermann may have ties to Atlantic City, police said.
Police are investigating whether the 59-year-old Long Island resident operated in the New Jersey area and have been interviewing jailed sex workers who interacted with him.
“He approached them for sex,” Sheriff Errol Toulon of the Suffolk County Police Department told Good Morning America of the prostitutes the officers spoke to. “They got the calls, but they didn’t meet with him.”
The police update comes after it was revealed that the Gilgo Beach murders bear similarities to murders in the area by the “eastbound strangler,” who killed four sex workers by strangling them near Atlantic City.
In the Long Island case, most of the victims were also sex workers and several of them were strangled.
Authorities are investigating whether Gilgo Beach murdered suspect Rex Heuermann who was operating in the New Jersey area.
Investigators, seen outside Heuermann’s Massapequa Park home on Wednesday, believe the New York architect targeted sex workers he met online.
Police have been interviewing jailed sex workers who interacted with the suspect (Atlantic City pictured above)
Investigators believe the architect targeted sex workers he met online.
The investigation now covers four states: Heuermann owns a timeshare in Las Vegas and a property in South Carolina, and police are investigating whether he might be linked to any unsolved murders there.
Heuermann was arrested and charged last week with the murder of three of the “Gilgo Four,” a group of women whose bodies were discovered near Gilgo Beach on Long Island in 2010.
He has pleaded not guilty to the murders of Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello.
Heuermann is also the prime suspect in the 2007 disappearance and subsequent murder of the fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, though he has yet to be charged in the case.
He is also being investigated for the murders of six other women whose bodies were found near Gilgo Beach in 2011.
A former sex worker previously claimed she went on a date with the alleged killer, but walked away when she felt uncomfortable.
Nicole Brass, 34, said she met the alleged killer at a seafood place in Port Jefferson, Long Island, sometime between 2014 and 2016.
The sex worker said the conversation quickly turned to true crime documentaries and Heuermann asked her if she knew about the 11 unsolved Gilgo Beach murders.
Brass said he revealed details, including another death, that had not been reported in the news and that he was “strange” by how emotional he seemed. The escort claimed that Heuermann indicated that others participated in the killings.
Heuermann’s wife came forward Wednesday when she filed for divorce. She is pictured with her daughter Victoria hers, 22 (right)
The first victim, 24-year-old Melissa Barthelemy, was discovered by Suffolk County Police on December 11, 2010. The body of 22-year-old Megan Waterman was found two days later.
Maureen Brainard-Barnes was 25 when she disappeared (left). Amber Lynn Costello was 27 years old. Her bodies were found near Barthelemy the same day.
After dinner, Heuermann told her to “get in my car” and invited her back to his home in Massapequa. Detectives believe some of the prostitutes were murdered on the Manhattan architect’s property before being washed up on the beach.
Recounting his 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 agitated and angry that I wasn’t going to be in the car with him and it made me even more like, “I have to get out of here.” So I ended up leaving, thank goodness I trusted my gut, I left when the check came.
Meanwhile, Heuermann’s wife came forward Wednesday when she filed for divorce.
Asa Ellerup, 59, was married to Heuermann for several decades and the couple raised two adult children.
Robert Macedonia, Ellerup’s lawyer, told DailyMail.com on Wednesday that police executed a search warrant at the family’s New York home at the same time they arrested Heuermann in Manhattan.
“She was in complete shock,” as were her two adult children, the lawyer said. “Their entire lives of hers have been turned upside down.”
Ellerup immigrated to the United States from Iceland as a child and grew up near Heuermann on Long Island.
She was not around when the women were killed, and neighbors said the couple were rarely seen together.
The couple also raised their son from a previous marriage together.
Former escort Nicole Brass, 34, spoke about her date with Gilgo Beach murder suspect Rex Heuermann, who excitedly filled her in on the mysterious 2015 murders.
