Accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann is expected to be charged Tuesday with a fourth count of murder for the death of Maureen Brainard-Barnes.
Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney will announce the new charges once they are unsealed in court in Riverhead, law enforcement sources confirmed.
Heuermann, 60 was named the prime suspect in Brainard-Barnes’ murder when he was charged over the other so-called “Gilgo Four” slayings of sex workers whose remains were discovered on the Long Island beach in December 2010.
Brainard-Barnes, who disappeared in 2007 when she was 25, was found bound by a distinctive belt stamped with the initials “WH” or “HM” — which could have belonged to Heuermann’s grandfather, William Heuermann, prosecutors have previously argued.
Heuermann, a New York City architect and married dad of two, was arrested this past July in connection to the notorious case.
Authorities were able to pinpoint Heuermann as the suspect after DNA from the hair of victim Megan Waterman matched that of his, taken by investigators from a discarded pizza crust in January.
Heuermann was charged with murdering Waterman, 22, Melissa Barthelemy, 24, and Amber Lynn Costello, 27, whose remains were discovered wrapped in burlap within days of each other near where Brainard-Barnes was found.
All four women are believed to have been advertising as sex workers when they vanished between 2007 and 2010.
The years-long investigation that led to the arrest revolved around the discovery of more than 10 sets of human remains along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach in Suffolk County between December 2010 and April 2011.
The bodies were initially discovered during an investigation into the May 2010 disappearance of Shannan Gilbert, a Jersey City woman who worked as an escort on Long Island.
John Ray, the lawyer for Gilbert’s family, said Monday that her sisters reacted with “careful caution” to news of Heuermann’s pending new charge.
“There appears to be a modicum of valuable evidence that arises because of the charge that’s going to be made that Heuermann killed Maureen Brainard-Barnes,” Ray told The Post.
The attorney also noted that no suspects have been named in connection to the deaths of the other victims, including Gilbert.
“It seems to me though that it’s just one piece in this very large, expansive chain of evidence that’s spread along Long Island and even into other states that will be required to be followed before we can start to really close in on the true facts as to how all these other girls were murdered, including Shannan,” Ray said.
“It’s a good development,” he added, “but more than that it doesn’t lead us closer to anything” in Gilbert’s case.
Heuermann’s arrest came after former NYPD chief Rodney Harrison, who was Suffolk County police commissioner at the time, reopened the case in January 2022.
