In 2022 a task force was formed with the goal of identifying the person or people responsible for the Gilgo Beach serial killings. In reviewing the original case files, the task force saw that one of the victims’ roommates had described one of her clients as an “ogre-like” man who drove a first-generation Chevrolet Avalanche and said she had one particular client who phoned her incessantly. The original investigators knew that burner phones had been used to make calls to four victims before they disappeared. They were able to connect the calls to cell towers located within an area of just a few blocks in Massapequa Park, Long Island. With the narrowed location and the description of the “ogre-like” man and his Chevrolet Avalanche, the task force was able to identify architect Rex Heuermann as the primary suspect.
Police began to follow Heuermann and eventually collected a pizza box he had thrown away in a trash can in Midtown Manhattan on January 26, 2023. On June 12 DNA recovered from a piece of the leftover pizza crust came back as a match to a male hair found on one of the victims’ body. With the DNA match and Heuermann’s personal cell phone records linking him to the burner phones, police arrested him on July 13, 2023, and charged him with three murders. He was later linked to other deaths. In April 2026 Heuermann pleaded guilty to killing eight women; in June 2026, he was sentenced to life in prison.