Rex Heuermann is facing the fourth murder charge in Gilgo Beach serial killings

Rex Heuermann, whom prosecutors accused in July of being the Gilgo Beach serial killer, was charged Tuesday morning in connection with a fourth murder.

Mr. Heuermann, 60, was previously charged with the murders of three of the four women whose remains were found on the shores of Long Island in 2010, similarly bound with burlap, straps and tape.

In July, prosecutors named Mr. Heuermann as the prime suspect in the murder of the fourth victim, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, of Norwich, Conn., who disappeared in 2007 and became the first of the so-called Gilgo Four.

But charges for her murder were postponed pending DNA test results on a hair recovered from her remains, so the grand jury in the case continued its work.

After the four bodies were discovered along a stretch of oceanfront parkway, six more sets of remains were found. The circumstances surrounding these deaths remain under investigation.

Mr. Heuermann was first identified as a suspect in the killings in early 2022, shortly after a new multi-agency task force was formed to investigate the case.

Investigators say he made numerous phone calls and text messages to Ms. Brainard-Barnes shortly before her disappearance.

Prosecutors say they have records of scathing Internet searches by Mr. Heuermann, as well as location data from his cell phone that match his home in Massapequa Park and his architectural consulting firm in Midtown Manhattan.

The DNA evidence linking him to the murders includes several stray hairs belonging to his wife, Asa Ellerup, found on the bodies, and a male hair matching a genetic sample taken from pizza crusts that Mr. Heuermann left outside his office threw away, prosecutors say. .

Investigators say Ms. Brainard-Barnes' remains, believed to be the most decomposed of the four sets, were bound with three ties.

Stray female hair was found on one belt, and another belt had a distinctive buckle with the initials WH, which authorities said in 2020 could have belonged to Mr. Heuermann's father.

Mr. Heuermann's lawyer, Michael Brown, has cited weaknesses in the mitochondrial DNA tests used by researchers. The technology does not prove a connection to a specific person, but instead eliminates suspects by excluding others.

Mr Heuermann could be among a group of “thousands and thousands” of suspects, given the local population, Mr Brown has argued.