By Germania Rodriguez Poleo For Dailymail.Com and Ruth Bashinsky In Massapequa Park For Dailymail.Com
17:39 24 July 2023, updated 18:56 24 July 2023
- Drone footage shows officers using an excavator at a Long Island home
- Officials are using ground penetrating radar to look for any trouble
- Heuermann is accused of killing 3 of the 4 women known as the Gilgo Beach Four
Investigators have been spotted using a large excavator to dig up the back of Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect Rex Heuermann – as they reveal the search could end as soon as Tuesday.
Officials said they were using ground penetrating radar to search for any disturbance in the grounds of the Long Island home that Heuermann, 59, shares with his wife Asa Ellerup and two grown children.
‘If I have a tree stump it is a disturbance on the ground. An underground wire or a cesspool can be a nuisance on the ground. All it shows is that there’s something underneath,’ Suffolk County Lieutenant Kevin Beyrer told Dailymail.com.
Bayrer added that while they are still looking for the property, the investigation may be completed tomorrow or later in the week.
Officers were seen returning some of the items they had taken for a home inspection in Massapequa Park on Sunday.
Suffolk County Commissioner Raymond would not confirm the claims of a neighbor who said investigators found a soundproof room in the basement of the home.
‘Somehow some of the bad information that got out there is not a soundproof room,’ he explained. ‘There was a vault where he got a lot of guns – no soundproof room.’
Heuermann has pleaded not guilty to the murders of Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello.
He is also the prime suspect in the 2007 disappearance and subsequent murder of a fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, although he has not been charged in the case, and is being investigated for the murders of six other women whose bodies were found near Gilgo Beach in 2011.
Police said they believe the alleged serial killer killed at least one of his victims inside the home while his family was away.
Aerial footage of the scene revealed teams of investigators in Heuermann’s back yard digging up dirt and carrying evidence.
Dead dogs were also brought to the property
Commissioner Raymond said that officers on Monday ‘did a general investigation around the house to see if there is anything we need to look into more closely.’
llerup was at home Thursday when police raided the property at the same time they arrested Heuermann outside his Manhattan architecture firm.
Her lawyer, Robert Macedonio, said the family was blindsided by the shocking murder charges.
‘Obviously it’s a very shocking time for them and a pretty difficult time to understand,’ he told the US Sun.
‘Like any family, it was very upsetting and they were completely shocked and caught off guard. The family do not wish to comment further than that.’
Authorities previously echoed the lawyer’s comments, saying the family was ‘in the dark about his double life.’
In addition, detectives are now looking into unsolved murders across the country to see if they are linked to Heuermann.
Police are investigating whether he operated in the Atlantic City area, and are interviewing incarcerated sex workers who were associated with him.
The update from law enforcement comes after it was revealed that the Gilgo Beach killings have similarities to the murders in the area of the ‘Eastbound Strangler,’ who killed four sex workers by strangling them near Atlantic City.
In the Long Island case, most of the victims were also female sex workers, and many of them were strangled.
The investigation now covers four states – Heuermann owns a time-share in Las Vegas and a property in South Carolina – and police are investigating whether he could be connected to any unsolved murders there.
Suffolk County police have executed a search warrant on two properties. Officers recovered a Chevrolet Avalanche truck they believed to be connected to the suspect and one of the murders and brought it back to New York.
