2023-07-24 20:08:33
MASSAPEQUA PARK, N.Y. (AP) — Police have been digging up the backyard of the Long Island home of Rex Heuermann, who days ago was accused of killing at least three women and burying their remains on a remote stretch of beach road.
A yellow bulldozer that removed earth on Sunday was still there on Monday. In drone footage captured by The Associated Press, a man is also seen operating equipment used to scan buried objects.
Over the weekend, the police dismantled a wooden terrace at the house.
“They yelled ‘Up!’ and they put it up all at once, like it was a roof,” a neighbor, Barry Auslander, told the AP.
The porch has been replaced by a white tent, near which a coroner’s office vehicle is parked.
Investigators, shovel in hand, were seen examining the freshly turned dirt in Heuermann’s yard. Authorities are trying to determine if any of the slayings took place at the home in the Massapequa Park neighborhood where Heuermann lived with his wife and his two children.
Authorities have removed more than 100 firearms from the house, as well as a huge doll in a glass box and the portrait of a woman with a bruised face. Police also obtained a warrant to search Heuermann’s property in South Carolina.
Heuermann, a 59-year-old architect, was arrested on July 14, a breakthrough in the case that first made headlines in 2010, when police began searching for a missing woman, Shannon Gilbert, near Gilgo Beach on Long Island.
Instead, they found 10 groups of human remains scattered along a coastal area. Among the dead are eight women, a man and a minor.
Heuermann, who has pleaded not guilty, was accused of killing three of the women: Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Costello and Megan Waterman. He is also the prime suspect in the murder of a fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes.
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