It slowly becomes an intense and cordial chat over scrambled eggs, yogurt and fruit. Just a few miles away from here, a serial killer has been held in jail for a couple of days on suspicion of murdering at least 10 young women and then dumping them along the beaches and in the pine barrens of Gilgo Beach, a popular Long Island resort, after keeping their cell phones and a few intimate items as souvenirs.
It’s a midsummer breakfast hosted by the powerful Hamptons Greek community that meets every Saturday morning at the Capri, one of Southampton’s trendy spots. The guest of honor is the man of the hour. Nassau County District Attorney Ray Tierney, just 16 months into his tenure, is all over American newspapers and TV for nailing with DNA evidence, the alleged serial killer Rex Heuerman. The 59-year-old married architect with 2 children and a double life, is believed to be responsible for the murder of at least 3 young women whom he reportedly lured with disposable cell phones, pulling them into his deadly trap on the Hamptons coast.
At least 11 bodies, as well as that of a child, were found up to 2010 in the sand dunes of Gilgo Beach, all within a few dozen meters of each other. With never a clue as to the perpetrator or suspects.
For now and up to his trial, Rex Heuerman, the 6’4″ killer, is being held in a cell on a suicide watch, in Riverhead Prison not far from the mansions of the billionaires on the Ocean. He is being kept in his underwear and T-shirt, without sheets, in a special cell to prevent him from taking his own life. He has pleaded “not guilty,” but Tierney, who managed to obtain his DNA from a piece of pizza eaten and thrown in the trash, says, “If he doesn’t confess we will prove in court that he’s the killer….and make public his incredible perversions….”
But do you think he’s responsible for all the killings?
“For now the trail leads to four women. However, we are gathering evidence by examining his house inch by inch….”
Can his wife and children return to the house?
“His wife has filed for divorce…None of them are involved in the murders and we are now keeping them in the hotel until the forensic, FBI, police and sheriff’s teams have finished their work. I don’t think they will want to go back there, though.”
Would the young women have been first killed in the house and then buried on the beach when the wife and children were not there?
“It’s not ruled out but we continue to search. The disappearance of many of the women happened just when his family were traveling.”
Why did you only catch him now if you had known for more than a year that he was a suspect?
“We needed a judge’s warrant for DNA collection and got it after presenting 230 pages of evidence. And because there was a risk of a leak in the press as well, and that Heuermann might erase traces or commit another crime, we acted immediately by both staking out his office in Manhattan and his home in Massapequa, where we picked him up at dawn, surprising him.”
For more than a decade, Long Island had been living with the nightmare of a serial killer on the loose who lured young prostitutes, almost always blonde and petite, and killed them in a variety of ways after torturing and abusing them. People invited to the Greek Breakfast to hear him let their scrambled eggs go cold as Ray narrated without flinching.
“For over a year,” he says, “Heuermann had been on our radar and under FBI surveillance. We knew whom he called and how he moved, what he bought at the grocery store, how much time he spent in his Manhattan office or shooting at the range near his home. We knew that he used disposable phones to communicate with his victims, and it was an FBI wiretap service completed more than 10 years ago that put us on his path, because the calls always left from his area and arrived in Massapequa when his children and wife were traveling….”
But why, if all 10 Gilgo Beach victims had already been identified, did you only now intervene?
“We wanted hard evidence and now we have it. DNA from saliva and hair does not lie, it is his in at least four cases. We are also gathering new evidence to be able to link him to all the other murders. And maybe not only in Massapequa: other people in the counties of my jurisdiction have also disappeared over the years. We can say that there is still a lot of work left to be done.”
Ray Tierney is half-Irish and half-Italian on his mother’s side, although he does not speak a word of the language. His wife also has Italian ancestry on her father’s side of the family. He was born and raised in Suffolk County, in the same community that a year and a half ago elected him as District Attorney after a scandal in which his predecessor was involved.
Talking to him gives you the feeling that he is just a simple guy next door. Down to Earth, spontaneous and easygoing. He proudly shows the photo of his daughter who got married in mid-June when he was not yet the most famous prosecutor in the US but just a super investigator on a fixed salary. A civil servant whose salary does not top $223,000 a year and who in less than 30 months, will face a new election to keep his job.
“Maybe this time it will be easier because people know me, I’m not interested in politics and I consider myself an independent who loves his job….”
Before leading the Suffolk County district, Ray served in Brooklyn, where he tried hundreds of members of the M13s, the extremely dangerous Latino gangs that infested the Hamptons in the past decade, responsible for ruthless murders, including those of women and children belonging to rival gangs.
Were they doing it to control drug dealing?
“Not really, they were killing rivals to show how dangerous they are and to maintain control of their territory. They were young men with normal jobs during the day and killers at night. More than guns, they used machetes.”
Are they all gone now?
“Probably not, but thousands have ended up in jail and many, for life. They got their orders from the big bosses in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, where they came from, often mixed with illegal immigrants. The situation on Long Island has calmed down, while now Los Angeles has become the area of big business and trafficking….”
To what do you attribute this extraordinary success in catching the serial killer with the double life?
“Tenacity, luck and great teamwork. I wanted a task force to solve these cases that had been cold for a decade, and I was able to get the local police to collaborate with the FBI and the sheriffs of the various counties, and with the Highway Patrol. Each one helped the forensic analysts, making a contribution to the investigation. So much material had already been collected and in those pages were the clues we were looking for, but no one wanted to analyze them first and they remained frozen. I have always asked to keep politics and politicians out of these sensitive investigations that need the utmost secrecy if any results are to be achieved….”
Tierney, in his smiling and modest tone, claims to have at his disposal in his district more than 100 investigators and 200 lawyers. After this success he will receive more funds to pursue investigations that may expand to Las Vegas and North Carolina and cover more recent years. But there are other unsolved cases in more areas of Long Island as well to take a closer look at.
With pride Tierney admits that tomorrow he will take his first day off in more than 10 months and go with his wife to the beach with a couple of friends. He will be on those same beaches that just over a week ago made him an “American hero.”
But if he is going to complete the considerable work that still remains to be done in the Hampton serial killer case, he will need to win in the next election.
“I’m certainly running again, and continuing this work will be one of the main reasons that may lead people to vote for me,” he said.
To mingle and chat with everyone and shake hands, the District Attorney barely samples the Capri’s breakfast, but he doesn’t pass up an excellent Cuban cigar when it is by now, lunchtime. And behind him, with extreme tact, Allen Bode,Tierney’s right-hand man and chief of staff, hands us a card that he has already had printed some time in advance, under a patriotic logo, we read, “Ray Tierney for District Attorney.” The election slogan is even clearer: “Experience you can count on….”
