A routine habit ultimately helped investigators link a long-unsolved series of killings to the man who later pleaded guilty and admitted responsibility for eight women’s deaths.
Rex Heuermann is being sentenced this week after pleading guilty in April to multiple murders committed between 1993 and 2010.
The Long Island architect admitted to killing Sandra Costilla, Valerie Mack, Amber Lynn Costello, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy, and Jessica Taylor.
He also confessed to the 1996 murder of Karen Vergata, though he was not separately charged in that death.
Each of the women Heuermann murdered was a sex worker, and all had arranged to meet him before they were killed.
As part of his plea agreement, Heuermann is expected to spend the rest of his life in prison, with prosecutors seeking consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.
Investigators were able to strengthen their case using an everyday item Heuermann discarded.
Police first identified Heuermann as a possible suspect in 2022. A vehicle registration database tied him to a pickup truck that a witness had seen in 2010 around the time one of the victims disappeared.
Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said detectives were careful not to alert Heuermann during the investigation, so he would not have the chance to destroy evidence or attempt to shift suspicion elsewhere.
“We wanted the one person who mattered, the murderer, to think it’s business as usual,” said Tierney to Newsday.
As officers dug deeper, they found Heuermann’s internet searches suggested a particular interest in the murders.
One of the most important breakthroughs, however, came from something far more mundane.
Heuermann had a habit of leaving the crusts from his pizza uneaten.
Officers following him saw him throw a pizza box into a sidewalk trash can.
They quickly recovered it and discovered partially eaten crusts inside, which provided DNA from the suspect.
That sample was later matched to DNA from hair found on burlap used to restrain one of the victims, helping prosecutors link Heuermann to the Gilgo Beach murders.
Gloria Allred, an attorney representing some of the victims’ families, said before sentencing that the ‘public will hear their pain and will hear about who the victims truly were, their importance and the bond they had with their families, which is now irreparably torn’.