Why Gilgo Beach suspect Rex Heuermann may have called victims’ families

Gilgo Beach murder suspect Rex Heuermann’s phone calls to his alleged victim’s families may have been to “gloat” and feel a “sexual thrill,” a forensic psychiatrist explained this week.

“Since Rex Heuermann is a serial sexual sadist, he was not satisfied by killing, and likely torturing, his victims,” Dr. Carole Lieberman told Newsweek of the architect, 59, who pleaded not guilty last week to multiple murder charges in connection with the deaths of three women over a decade ago.

“He needed to taunt their families with calls to gloat about having killed their loved ones, in order to inflict pain on them, as well.”

Heuermann, of Massapequa Park, is accused of killing Melissa Barthelemy, 24, Amber Lynn Costello, 22, and Megan Waterman, 27, whose bodies were discovered along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo State Park in December 2010.

He is also the prime suspect in the death of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, who was the first of the so-called “Gilgo Four” to go missing.

As part of the ongoing investigation, police linked Heuermann to a burner phone that was used to contact Barthelemy’s family seven times after she disappeared in mid-July 2009.

“Is this Melissa’s little sister?” an anonymous male voice asked the victim’s then-16-year-old sister, Amanda, during one phone call.

“Do you know what your sister is doing? She’s a whore.”

“[He said that] he killed her; he raped her,” Amanda recalled of the eerie exchange in an interview with PIX11 News in 2020.

The sick calls – which authorities originally traced to midtown Manhattan – are a classic marker of Heuermann’s pathology, Liebermann told Newsweek.

“Heuermann undoubtedly felt a sexual thrill when he made these calls, similar to the sexual thrill he felt looking at child pornography and pictures of women being sexually tortured,” she said.

“At the time he made these calls, the technology for discovering LUDS [local usage details] wasn’t as widely known as it is today. So, he either felt he was safe from discovery or unconsciously he wanted to be discovered.”

In addition to the burner phones, authorities found a slew of additional incriminating evidence, including gruesome searches for child porn and rape and a bizarre fake Tinder profile.

The married father of two was ultimately tied to the Gilgo Four murders after his DNA from a discarded pizza crust was matched to genetic material from the burlap used to conceal Waterman’s body.

Barthelemey’s remains were found off Ocean Parkway, just about 20 minutes from Heuermann’s rundown suburban home, on Dec. 11, 2010.

The bodies of Waterman, Costello, and Brainard’ Barnes were unearthed just a few feet away two days later.

All four had been strangled, and were wrapped in burlap.

“I’d like him to suffer at the hands of other inmates,” Barthelemy’s mother, Lynn Barthelemy, told NBC News on Friday.

“Let him receive what the girls received.

“Death is too good for him. It’s too easy.”

Heuermann is currently on suicide watch at the Suffolk County Correctional Facility.