“Burner” phones connected to accused serial killer Rex Heuermann showed hundreds of contacts with sex workers in the years before his arrest last year, a newly filed court document says.
As CrimeOnline previously reported, the 60-year-old Manhattan architect was charged with the murder of Maureen Brainard-Barnes earlier this week, adding the fourth of the so-called Gilgo 4 to the indictment against him. He was previously charged with the murders of Amber Costello, Megan Waterman, and Melissa Barthelemy.
All four bodies were found on a secluded stretch of Gilgo Beach in 2010, all wrapped in burlap and buried in shallow graves. All four worked as escorts.
Heuermann previously pleaded not guilty to the first three murders. His attorney pleaded not guilty Tuesday on his behalf in Brainard-Barnes’s murder.
A bail application filed by prosecutors on Tuesday revealed that they had found two burner phones when Heuermann was arrested and that they contained hundreds of contacts with sex workers between 2020 and 2023, Newsday reported.
In one case, prosecutors said, Heuermann contacted a woman who identified herself as Mia in March 2020. Mia suggested the two meet the next day, and Heuermann responded “I AM WORKING ALL DAY,” along with “I WAS FREE TODAY MY WIFE IS OUT FOR THE DAY.”
The court papers also revealed that Heuermann’s online search history included searches for “medieval torture of women,” “skinny white teen crying porn,” and “stories of rape audio.”
Prosecutors also said he used the burner accounts to search out news about the Gilgo Beach murder investigations, pulling up headlines that included “Inside the mind of a murderer: New Clues in the hunt for the Long Island Serial Killer” and “Investigators use DNA, genetic genealogy to ID another victim in Gilgo Beach serial murders.”
Heuermann’s attorney, Michael J. Brown, dismissed the information.
“In this particular case, they had little bits of evidence and they focused on Rex Heuermann,” Brown said Tuesday. “And they accumulated more evidence and they tried to fit that additional evidence to complete their narrative.”
Heuermann is due in court again on February 6.
For the latest true crime and justice news, subscribe to the ‘Crime Stories with Nancy Grace’ podcast.
[Featured image: FILE-Rex Heuermann, right, appears in Suffolk County Supreme Court with his attorney, Michael Brown late last year. (James Carbone/Newsday via AP, Pool, File)]
