A man is charged with murdering the Gilgo 4. What about the other 6?

When authorities announced the arrest of Rex Heuermann in four of the Gilgo Beach serial killings last summer, the relieved families of the murdered women stood behind them.

But at least ten bodies were found along that deserted stretch of Long Island beach. And the loved ones of the other victims are waiting for answers more than a dozen years later.

“The Gilgo case is still largely unsolved,” said Lorraine Paulino, 54, who says she met one of the six victims, Karen Vergata, shortly before she disappeared.

To solve the cold case, the task force formed in early 2022 focused on the so-called Gilgo Four, the most immediately solvable cases, which led to the arrest of 60-year-old Mr Heuermann last summer.

“When you start a puzzle, you have to start with the most obvious pieces,” Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said in an interview.

The uniform way the bodies were handled bore the hallmarks of a serial killer. Investigators had a strong set of clues, including DNA and cellphone data, that linked the four bodies to Mr. Heuermann, who has pleaded not guilty to killing the women.

Mr Tierney, who helped lead the investigative taskforce, said it would now focus on the cases of the other six victims. But connecting those remains to Mr. Heuermann or someone else will be more difficult. They are colder cases with fewer clues and more random features than the Gilgo Four.

The six victims were found spread out over several miles, compared to the Gilgo Four’s relatively neat clustering over a quarter mile. Three are still unidentified. Four were dismembered. Clues such as DNA, telephone records and life details are scarce.

Still, investigators hope that recent advances in DNA technology, which have become crucial in the prosecution against Heuermann, can help solve these six cases that have stalled investigators for 13 years.

Since the arrest of Mr. Heuermann, who remains in a Suffolk County jail awaiting his next court appearance on April 17, many hundreds of tips have been received by police. And researchers have interviewed inmates at the Suffolk and Nassau County jails who may have worked. as escorts. Of the 168 people interviewed, 15 provided information deemed relevant enough to pass on to investigators, Suffolk County Sheriff Errol Toulon Jr. said.

Relatives and friends hope that the renewed investigation and explosion of media interest following Mr. Heuermann’s arrest can finally help investigators solve the cases of the other victims.

“They owe it to the girls and their families,” said Ms. Paulino, a nurse on Long Island. Suffolk County detectives interviewed her about her story of meeting Ms. Vergata at a swingers’ party at Mr. Heuermann’s home in 1996 — after which Ms. Paulino says she saw a distressed Ms. Vergata running out of the house naked.

“To spend all these years without information,” Ms. Paulino said. “You want to see that whoever did it paid for it.”

Mr Tierney seemed to indicate progress.

“I can say that what we have made public is an infinitesimal portion of the work we have done” on the case overall, he said.

The remains of all 10 victims — eight women, a man and a little girl — were found around the center of a 15-mile stretch of Ocean Parkway that runs east of Jones Beach. All eight women had worked as escorts.

Discovered along a desolate ocean coast in December 2010, the Gilgo Four appeared to be the prey of a serial killer: four young, frail women dumped within a quarter-mile radius of their discovery within three years of their discovery.

Their remains were complete and bound with burlap, straps and tape, capturing human hairs that prosecutors used for DNA evidence to link the bodies to Mr. Heuermann.

“They were deposited in the same way, in the same general location, and four burner phones were used in the same way in all four deaths” to contact the victims, Mr Tierney said.

But the other six sets of remains, found in early 2011, were disposed of differently. Body parts of two of the dismembered victims were found not only along Gilgo Beach, but in the same wooded area about 45 miles east of Manorville.

The other six bodies disappeared already in the mid-1990s, when cell phones and Internet use were rare – along with the clues they leave behind. Their remains were exposed to the elements for more than a decade.

Still unidentified are an Asian man wearing women’s clothing, a woman called Peaches because of a tattoo and her toddler daughter who was left in a blanket, wearing gold jewelry and showing no signs of trauma.

While the Gilgo Four kept in touch with their families until their disappearance and were identified within weeks of discovery, the three other women whose identities were known had lost contact with theirs for years.

During the first decade of the investigation, DNA matches for the six bodies remained scarce. Only one was identified: Jessica Taylor, who disappeared in 2003 at the age of 20.

In recent years, advances in DNA technology have helped investigators identify two more victims, Valerie Mack and Mrs. Vergata.

DNA steps also helped link Mr. Heuermann to the Gilgo Four bodies from withered strands of hair found among the four sets of remains, prosecutors say. “We hope to use the same methodology” for the other six, Mr. Tierney said.

The victims’ families faced a case bogged down by scandals, corruption and political infighting, amplified by an ongoing media circus. They also complained for years that investigators were ignoring them, but the families now appear to have a closer relationship with current investigators.

Edwin Mack, a retired engineer from South Jersey, last saw his daughter Valerie in 2000 when she went missing at the age of 24. Twenty years later, Suffolk County detectives informed him and his wife, JoAnn, that Valerie had been identified through genetic identification as a Gilgo victim. genealogy.

“We think they are doing an excellent job,” Mr. Mack said, adding that investigators have visited them several times looking for information. “The detectives appear to have been quite thorough in their digging and they have gone into great detail with us.”

In 2021, the Macks were able to claim Valerie’s remains, which are now being cremated and kept in a container next to her framed photo. In 2022 they held a memorial service on their back deck.

“After all these years, she finally came home,” Mr. Mack said.

The Gilgo investigation began with 24-year-old Shannan Gilbert, who disappeared in May 2010 while working as an escort in Oak Beach, several miles east of Gilgo, and was later found dead. Her search led to the discovery of the Gilgo bodies, but Suffolk authorities never ruled her death a homicide or considered her part of the investigation.

Her family’s lawyer, John Ray, said authorities had prioritized the Gilgo Four to arrest Mr. Heuermann, “but what good does this do for the victims whose cases have not been solved?”

“Every minute they spend on those four, they don’t spend on the other seven things that need immediate attention,” he said.

He accused the Suffolk authorities of creating a wave of good publicity from Heuermann’s arrest, while neglecting the other six cases because of their difficulty, all while maintaining good relations with families “because they don’t want the families of the victims speak out.”

Mr Tierney defended prioritizing the four cases as crucial to Mr Heuermann’s arrest, but would not discuss whether Mr Heuermann was a suspect in the other murders. He said the grand jury that was empaneled last year will remain in place.

“Every body, every crime scene is different,” he said. “And you look at the evidence as if you have no suspects and work from there.”