A New York architect has been arrested in connection with a string of unsolved murders on Long Island more than 10 years ago.
Rex Heuermann, 59, was arrested outside his practice in Manhattan on Thursday night.
Mr Heuermann will be charged with three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of Melissa Barthelemy, 24, Megan Waterman, 22 and Amber Costello, 27, according to his bail application.
They are three of the “Gilgo Four”, whose remains were found in December 2010 along Ocean Parkway in Gilgo Beach, Suffolk County.
The document said that although Mr Heuermann was not charged with crimes in connection with the disappearance and murder of 25-year-old Maureen Brainard-Barnes, the fourth member of the “Gilgo Four”, he is the “prime suspect in her death” and the investigation is ongoing.
Kept tabs on investigation
In recent months, authorities said, Mr Heuermann sought to keep tabs on the police investigation, conducting hundreds of internet searches for the names of women he is accused of killing, as well as podcasts and documentaries about the case.
On Friday, he pleaded not guilty at an arraignment in Riverhead and was jailed without bail.
Officials were earlier seen searching his ramshackle bungalow around 40 miles east of New York.
“This is a day that is a long time in coming, and hopefully a day that will bring peace to this community and to the families – peace that has been long overdue,” Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York, said.
The remains of 11 people – most of whom were young, female sex workers – were found along Gilgo Beach in 2010 and 2011.
The case has confused authorities for years.
Inter-agency task force
Last year, an inter-agency task force was formed with investigators from the FBI, as well as state and local police departments, to help solve the case.
Mr Heuermann, who went to school with actor Alec Baldwin, is married with two children.
He is a licensed architect with a small Manhattan-based firm that, according to its website, has done renovations for major retailers, offices and apartments.
The news of an arrest came as a shock to some of the relatives after so many years waiting for a break in the case. In a text message, a sister of one victim said her family wasn’t ready to speak publicly because they “really haven’t had a chance to process the news today”.
“We’re happy to see that they’re finally active, the police, in accomplishing something. Let’s wait and see what it all leads to,” said John Ray, the lawyer for the families of two victims, Shannan Gilbert and Jessica Taylor.
A larger mystery
Ms Gilbert’s disappearance in 2010 triggered the hunt that exposed the larger mystery. The 24-year-old sex worker vanished after leaving a client’s house on foot in the seafront community of Oak Beach, disappearing into the marsh.
Months later, a police officer and his cadaver dog were looking for her body in the thicket along nearby Ocean Parkway when they happened upon the remains of a different woman. Within days, three other bodies were found, all within a short walk of one another.
By spring 2011, that number had climbed to 10 sets of human remains: those of eight women, one man and one toddler. Some were later linked to dismembered body parts found elsewhere on Long Island, making for a puzzling crime scene that stretched from a park near the New York City limits to a resort community on Fire Island and out to far eastern Long Island.
Ms Gilbert’s body was found in December 2011, about three miles east of where the other 10 sets of remains were discovered.