Gilgo Beach killer hunt slowed by infighting between prosecutors, police
By
Alexandra Heal
and
Gus Garcia-Roberts
August 1, 2023 at 2:17 p.m. EDT
MASSAPEQUA PARK, N.Y. — A decade after the discovery of 11 bodies near Gilgo Beach sparked the search for one of America’s most elusive serial killers, a Long Island district attorney’s office turned its attention to an aging former police officer.
Newly equipped with advanced technology, the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office analyzed old cellphone data to home in on a shrinking list of suspects who had lived in one sleepy neighborhood not far from the shore — chief among them the former officer, whose initials matched those on a belt used to bind one of the victims. By 2021, excitement grew among prosecutors that they were on the verge of finally closing the case.
But there was a problem: The homicide detectives chasing the lead were bordering on mutiny.
Prosecutors believed the detectives refused to follow orders and clashed with federal partners, multiple high-level law enforcement officials familiar with the case said. Detectives, meanwhile, felt that the district attorney at the time, Tim Sini, was forcing them to investigate leads they had already ruled out while ratcheting up pressure to solve the case before his 2021 reelection bid. The tension grew so high that, at Sini’s urging, the case’s longtime lead detective was removed.
Rex Heuermann on July 14 after being charged with three counts of first-degree murder. (Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office/Getty Images)
Amid that squabbling, a decade-old witness tip concerning the model of a pickup truck linked to the suspected killer went ignored. Last month, under the new district attorney who unseated Sini, that tip finally led to the arrest of another suspect who lived blocks away from the ex-officer:
Rex Heuermann, a 59-year-old architect who is charged with three of the murders and under suspicion for another.
The previously unreported recent infighting between prosecutors and detectives illustrates how official missteps fueled years of false turns and dysfunction as the infamous killing spree remained unsolved, The Washington Post found through a review of records and interviews with more than 20 legal, law enforcement and political insiders familiar with the case — many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case or feared retaliation. The investigation was hampered by political battles, deep-seated local resistance to federal investigators and apparent apathy toward sex-worker victims.
Sini said in a statement that he sought to remove the lead detective, Patrick Portela, because “it became increasingly clear that [he] was not willing to effectively collaborate,” including by refusing to share information with the FBI. Sini said that he was met with “fierce resistance” from within the police department when he initially advocated for the detective’s removal, and noted that investigators under his successor “solved the case in eighteen months without [Portela’s] involvement.”
Multiple former high-level law enforcement officials supported that Portela was removed due to complaints from FBI officials, but others disputed it, and none would speak on the record. The Suffolk County Police Department and the FBI declined to comment. Portela, who retired last year, declined to comment.
Crime laboratory officers remove boxes as police search Heuermann's home on July 15 in Massapequa Park, N.Y. (Jeenah Moon/AP)
Among current and former elected officials and investigators in this affluent, insular county of 1.5 million residents, which has one of the highest-paid police forces in the nation, initial relief and elation at Heuermann’s arrest has given way to finger pointing and deflection as new information has cast national scrutiny on why it took so long to apprehend a suspect.
“They could have caught this guy a decade ago,” said Phil Boyle (R), a former New York state senator whose district included the serial killer dumping ground.
Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney, who oversaw the task force that arrested Heuermann, said that the investigation was hindered during its early years due to “a lot of dysfunction among the leadership” and “not a great relationship between the DA and the federal authorities.” He declined to comment on the clash between his predecessor and homicide detectives.
Suffolk County DA comments on Gilgo Beach investigation
2:11
On July 20, Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney talked about how disorganized leadership slowed down the Gilgo Beach serial killer investigation. (Video: The Washington Post)
The cost of the investigation’s lost years is still unknown. Heuermann, prosecutors said, continued to contact sex workers as recently as this year. Investigators in multiple jurisdictions are exploring whether Heuermann can be linked to other unsolved murders, standard practice when an alleged serial killer is apprehended.
Heuermann has pleaded not guilty. His lawyer, Michael Brown, declined to comment.
Steve Cohen, an attorney for the family of one of the victims, described the long delay in the case as grueling for loved ones: “It’s been an incredibly harsh ordeal for the family, beyond that which you can even imagine.”
The victims
An officer from the Suffolk County Police Department's K-9 Unit searches through the brush for the remains of Shannan Gilbert along Ocean Parkway, near Oak Beach on Long Island on Dec. 5, 2011. (Kevin P Coughlin/AP)
From the beginning, when a woman disappeared in May 2010 running toward the salty thickets near Gilgo Beach — where 10 other bodies or sets of remains would ultimately be found — the case suffered from apparent missteps. These included a lack of urgency by police officers to probe the disappearance of sex workers, according to lawyers for the families of victims.
Shannan Gilbert, 23, was last seen alive by residents of the gated Long Island community of Oak Beach, having fled screaming from the house of a man who was paying for her sexual services. According to “Lost Girls,” Robert Kolker’s book on the then-unsolved serial killings, it took months for Suffolk County police to connect a 911 call from Gilbert the night she disappeared to a missing persons report filed by her family in New Jersey, and even longer to seek surveillance footage, which by then had been taped over.
An undated photo of Shannan Gilbert, whose remains were found near Gilgo Beach on Long Island in December 2011. (John Ray Law/AP)
Seven months after Gilbert vanished, when a police dog caught a scent several miles west, four bodies were discovered in the scratchy shrubs and reeds that separate a desolate highway from the sand. All of the women were White and petite, and wrapped in burlap.
None was Gilbert. The women, who became known as the Gilgo Four, were soon identified as Melissa Barthelemy, 24, Megan Waterman, 22, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, and Amber Lynn Costello, 27. All had advertised escort services on Craigslist or other sites.
In the coming months, Suffolk County police and officers in neighboring Nassau County would find the remains of six more people along Ocean Parkway, some dating back to the 1990s. Three were later identified as Jessica Taylor, 20, Valerie Mack, 24, and Karen Vergata, 34. The rest remain unidentified. Gilbert’s skeletal remains were pulled from a marsh in December 2011.
The case sparked national headlines about a serial killer on the loose, along with a cottage industry of media, including the best-selling book, a Netflix drama and multiple podcasts. But early investigators telegraphed a lack of alarm about the case. When asked at a public meeting in 2011 whether kids should be afraid to go out at night, Dominick Varrone, who was chief of detectives, referred to the victims’ status as sex workers. He called it a “consolation” that the murderer wasn’t “selecting citizens at large — he’s selecting from a pool.”
“This statement and the underlying attitude it betrays demonstrate a sad truth about how law enforcement handles crimes against sex workers — differently than they would if the victim were not engaged in sex work,” said Ariela Moscowitz, communications director of advocacy group Decriminalize Sex Work.
A lost lead
Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer, center, during a news conference concerning Shannan Gilbert on Dec. 7, 2011, in Oak Beach, N.Y. (Kathy Kmonicek/AP)
The county’s internecine politics invaded the investigation from the start. In 2011, Thomas Spota and Richard Dormer, then the district attorney and police commissioner, respectively,
publicly bickered about whether they believed there was one or more killers.
And a pivotal lead — one that would much later crack the case — was apparently mishandled.
According to a bail application prosecutors filed following Heuermann’s arrest, witnesses gave police a detailed description of a man who had visited Costello, one of the four women who bodies were found by police in 2010, shortly before her disappearance. The witness reports in the document describe him as an “ogre,” standing more than 6 feet 4 inches tall and driving a first-generation Chevrolet Avalanche. Tierney, the district attorney, confirmed in an interview that police had obtained the witness descriptions of the suspect’s appearance and his truck around the time Costello’s body was found in December 2010.
Three homicide investigators who worked on the case at the time provided little clarity on why the tip appears to not have been chased down. One of them, a supervisor who oversaw the case starting in 2011, said he was not made aware of the witness statements from the year earlier, which he called “inexcusable” and “beyond weird.”
“It just raises questions about the adequacy of the initial investigation, and whether a full-court press was done,” Eugene O’Donnell, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and former NYPD officer and New York City prosecutor, said of the lost statements. He said it cast doubt on whether the victims “received the kind of investigation that they deserved.”
Flawed new leader
Former Suffolk County police chief James Burke is escorted to a vehicle by FBI personnel outside the FBI office in Melville, N.Y., on Dec. 9, 2015. (Steve Pfost/Newsday RM/Getty Images)
In 2012, James Burke took over as chief of the 2,500-officer police department — and inherited the Gilgo Beach case. Burke’s nearly four-year tenure, which ended in disgrace as he pleaded guilty to assaulting a prisoner and conspiring to cover it up, brought new dysfunction to the case.
Earlier in his career, Burke was transferred from a street post after Internal Affairs Bureau investigators found he had an illicit sexual relationship with a felon in his precinct previously convicted of crimes including prostitution. Burke acknowledged the relationship but claimed he didn’t know about the woman’s long criminal history. Records in that case show that investigators probed Burke’s interactions with at least one other sex worker in his precinct who said Burke took her to a motel. But she said Burke just drank beer while she slept, and the IAB made no findings involving her.
In a separate case, the IAB investigated whether Burke was involved in a prostitution ring — allegations he called “absolutely false,” and which the IAB found to be “unsubstantiated,” records show.
For John Ray, an attorney representing the families of two of the women found on the beaches, Burke’s alleged history with sex workers conflicted with the case placed under his purview. “So here is this guy with this predilection for sex workers investigating the murder of sex workers,” Ray said. “You don’t bring the robber to come in and investigate robberies.” (Burke did not respond to a request for comment made through his lawyer.)
Burke also instilled a deep distrust of federal agencies, his colleagues said. “We all hated the feds,” former Lt. James Hickey, one of Burke’s closest confidants in the department, later testified.
Serial killer investigations are typically aided by federal authorities. But Burke and Spota instead took steps to keep out the FBI, according to Sini, who said he reviewed a report in the case file in which detectives stated that they had been barred from sharing case information with the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, known for profiling serial killers. Spota has
denied blocking the FBI, saying that federal agents previously assisted Suffolk investigators in the case — before Burke took office — but that they were turned away in 2012 because their work was deemed “duplicative” by local authorities.
According to the bail application, the four women Heuermann is accused of murdering each had contact with a person using an unregistered, or “burner,” phone shortly before their disappearances. In 2011, before Burke became chief, the federal agent started an analysis of related cell-site records, Tierney said. That report, completed in 2012, first suggested that the killer lived in Massapequa Park and commuted to Midtown Manhattan.
But local authorities then failed to narrow down the field of suspects, according to Sini and other law enforcement officials familiar with the case. That included not performing “dumps” of nearby cell towers — checking them for all phone activity during relevant periods.
“The first thing I thought about was the fact that tower dumps would have been a great investigative tool,” said Larry Daniel, a forensic expert who has testified about cell-site data in criminal cases.
Burke’s posture against federal authorities only intensified after Dec. 14, 2012, when the chief and his detectives beat up a shackled suspect who stole a duffel bag containing sex toys and porn from Burke’s truck, according to later indictments and court testimony. Federal prosecutors described a criminal conspiracy that was all-consuming for several of the top officials in the district attorney’s office and police department as the feds pursued Burke, ultimately resulting in the 2016 conviction of Burke. Spota and another former top prosecutor were later convicted of helping the coverup.
“No police work is getting done,” prosecutor Lara Treinis Gatz said in court of the top law enforcement officials in Suffolk County during this period. “They’re spending their day protecting Jimmy.”
Police and prosecutors clash
Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota, center, leaves a court in Riverhead, N.Y. (John Dunn/AP)
Sini, then a 35-year-old former federal prosecutor, was appointed police commissioner in late 2015. Two years later, he was elected district attorney after Spota was indicted. In both positions, Sini said, he sought to revive the Gilgo Beach case that Burke and Spota had left in “disarray.” But Sini’s efforts would soon be hampered by more internal conflict.
Sini attempted to reinvolve the FBI in the case. His office recruited experts in technical investigations and bought expensive, high-tech equipment to vacuum up DNA and reduce the area where cellphone data suggested their suspect resided. By 2021, Sini said, they had whittled the pool of homes where the killer may have lived from around 1,250 to 200. Basic vetting of those residents produced what Sini called a “large sheet” of possible suspects.
But investigating each of those possible suspects required the police department’s homicide squad, including the detective esteemed by his colleagues for an encyclopedic knowledge of the case dating back years. Portela was a Burke-era appointee to the case, having been put on the investigation in 2013. He worked the case out of “the Gilgo room,” packed with filing cabinets and boxes from the investigation.
When the previous lead detective on the case retired in late 2015, around when Sini became commissioner, Portela took over the lead role. Sini said that Portela was kept on, alongside new detectives and FBI agents, “because of his institutional knowledge.” But led by Portela, the homicide detectives on the case clashed with Sini and Howard Master, a Yale-educated former federal prosecutor who Sini put in charge of the Gilgo Beach case in 2020. (Master declined to comment.)
A poster lists personal details of five of the women whose bodies were found near Gilgo Beach in 2010 and 2011. (Reuters/Courtesy of Suffolk County Police)
Former law enforcement officials aligned with Sini said that homicide detectives failed to perform basic investigative tasks to reduce the pool of potential suspects. One former official said that when prosecutors pushed the homicide squad to produce long-requested dossiers on the residents in the area where they were focused, the detectives gave them a couple of recent printouts from a law enforcement search program.
“I was like, are you serious?” that official said. “What
have you done?”
The detectives didn’t take kindly to being told how to investigate, another former law enforcement official said: “Their philosophy was they investigate and we prosecute, and they kind of wanted to keep it that way.”
For their part, homicide detectives considered Sini and Master to be micromanagers, demanding weekly meetings and constantly hectoring them to investigate people they had already ruled out. And led by Portela, some didn’t trust the narrowed-down area where Sini directed them to focus, wanting to investigate suspects outside of it.
Multiple law enforcement sources said that one of the disagreements arose over the former police officer in Massapequa Park, whom they said the prosecutor’s office considered a top suspect even as homicide detectives were confident he was not. Sini declined to comment on that person specifically, but said that “of course there were a number of people of interest who fit our profile whom we wanted worked up from an investigative standpoint. At no point was I or any senior member of my team fixated on any particular suspect to the exclusion of others.”
Sini said that his attempts to remove Portela came to a head in 2021, when he was informed by Suffolk police brass that the FBI “was not going to invest more resources into the case if Portela remained on.”
Law enforcement officials said that a homicide supervisor finally removed Portela after the supervisor was threatened with demotion by his own higher-ups.
Long-awaited arrest
Crime laboratory officers search Heuermann's home on July 18. (Yuki Iwamura/AFP/Getty Images)
The break that led to Heuermann’s arrest came quickly after Tierney took office last year. He assigned a task force from four law enforcement agencies, who conducted a “comprehensive review of every item of evidence and information in this investigation,” according to the bail application. During that review, a New York state trooper found the detail about the Chevy Avalanche. A secretive flurry of investigation followed over the next 16 months, strengthening the case against Heuermann, before he was arrested.
There is plenty of work yet to be done: the fourth Gilgo Beach murder, in which Heuermann is a suspect but not yet charged; a potential trial in which Tierney plans to be the lead prosecutor; and six more unsolved murders which may not be linked to Heuermann. (Police have indicated they do not believe Gilbert’s death was a homicide.)
But on Long Island, blame-shifting has erupted over the case’s past delays — while top county officials continue to clash.
Those aligned with prosecutors and police have faulted the other for failing to close the case sooner. A former law enforcement official posited that if the detectives had backgrounded each person of interest under Sini as they were asked, Heuermann could have been caught years earlier.
But two current law enforcement officials with direct knowledge of the case against Heuermann said that investigative findings from Sini’s tenure played no significant role in finding him. They said the case against Heuermann consisted of the old witness statements leading them to him, the FBI cell data analysis completed in 2012, and investigative steps — such as mitochondrial DNA comparison performed using hair investigators had for more than a decade — taken after the new administration zeroed in.
“I do not know how the law enforcement personnel who earned the credit of solving this case used the work we did,” Sini responded. “I am just thrilled that the case has been solved.”
He had previously touted his administration’s work as vital,
saying that a “real key ingredient to the success this case throughout the years was the collaboration between the Suffolk County Police Department and the Suffolk County DA’s office.”
A man described in a bail application as Rex Heuermann appears in a still image from surveillance video in a cellphone store in Manhattan in May. (Suffolk County Court/Reuters)
Even the announcement of Heuermann’s arrest — a jubilant moment for public officials on the island — was indicative of simmering tensions.
Tierney’s office worried for months about tipping off Heuermann, especially after Sini
gave an interview in January detailing his administration’s use of cell-site data. Tierney’s office responded by sending out letters to dozens of former law enforcement officials in the case — including Sini — ordering them not to discuss confidential information.
Two law enforcement officials involved in the case said task force members were also under strict orders not to share information with Steve Bellone, the longtime county executive who previously appointed Burke, the later-convicted police chief.
“It was believed by members of the task force that if he would learn about the investigation he would seek to get publicity out of it at the expense of catching a serial killer,” one of those law enforcement officials said of Bellone.
Instead, they said the top elected official in the county was told about Heuermann’s impending arrest on July 13, the night the architect was quietly taken into custody near his office in Manhattan. Tierney planned to announce the indictment the following afternoon at a news conference at the DA’s office. Because Tierney said he didn’t want to mix politics with law enforcement, according to the officials, no politicians were invited.
Bellone beat him to it. The morning after the arrest, he had his own lectern set up in front of Heuermann’s ramshackle house in Massapequa Park. Joined by Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison, Bellone heralded the arrest and assured residents that “
we have never stopped working on this case.”
People gather as law enforcement officials search Heuermann's home on July 14. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
In law enforcement circles, criticism flew that Bellone was attempting to upstage Tierney. But Bellone told The Post that as news began to leak about the arrest, bringing a crowd to the house already swamped with police, he arranged the news conference out of an obligation to inform the public, not to grandstand.
“There was not anything remotely political in my remarks,” Bellone said, “and that’s an absurd suggestion.”
www.crimewatchers.net
killer. Its 43 minutes long. I haven't listened yet.
