NEW YORK, June 9, (AP): For years prosecutors saw a connection in the killings of three young women who disappeared in the winter of 1993 and 1994, their nude bodies found strangled, beaten and left in similar poses in the Long Island brush.
In new charges unveiled, prosecutors said Rex Heuermann - the man already accused in a string of deaths known as the Gilgo Beach serial killings - was responsible for the death of one of the women, Sanda Costilla. The findings, authorities said, indicate that Heuermann began hunting victims more than a decade earlier than previously thought.
That in turn has raised questions about the conviction of another man, John Bittrolff, who is incarcerated for the murder of the other two women - Rita Tangredi and Colleen McNamee - and who prosecutors once considered a suspect in Costilla’s death.
Bittrolff's lawyers have long accused prosecutors of relying on dubious forensics to convict him. They say the new charges against Heuermann cast further doubt on the case against their client, who has maintained his innocence since being sentenced to 50 years to life in 2017.
"You have three women killed in the same time frame and displayed in the same way, and now one is alleged to have been killed by Rex Heuermann,” said attorney Lisa Marcoccia of the Legal Aid Society, which is handling the appeal. "The evidence points to one killer, and the new indictment supports John Bittrolff's claim of innocence.”
The trio of killings came roughly 16 years before the discovery of the remains of 10 people - mostly female workers - along a highway near Gilgo Beach on Long Island’s south shore. Heuermann, an architect, has pleaded not guilty to five of those killings and is considered a suspect in a sixth, in addition to Costilla's death.