Search for bodies expands on Long Island as possible link eyed to Gilgo Beach murders
The police search for bodies in a remote section of Long Island has expanded as it moves into its third day on Thursday — with a possible link to the Gilgo Beach murders.
Dozens of cops from Suffolk County, the NYPD and state troopers continued to comb through the woods near Manorville with cadaver-sniffing canines, with a mobile command unit in place at the nearby Manorville Fire Department headquarters to oversee the grim search.
The search has focused on a section of Otis Pike Preserve along Schultz Road and Wading River Manor Road — with authorities so far mum on what sparked the massive search.
The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office would not comment on the case Thursday other than to say prosecutors have not confirmed that the massive search is tied to the Gilgo Beach killings.
On Wednesday, Suffolk DA Ray Tierney confirmed in a statement that the three police agencies were part of “an ongoing investigation” in the area, but declined to provide details.
“We do not comment on investigative steps while they are underway,” Tierney said. “We will make further statements when appropriate.”
On Thursday, more than two dozen law enforcement vehicles were at the scene from early morning, with cops breaking up into 12 search teams, each with police canines, to search the vast wooded area.
Officers also mounted quads to get into the far reaches of the area, and are using hunting and fire trails to penetrate deeper into the woods.
The remote stretch of land is known to locals as Calverton.
Authorities, however, remain tight-lipped about the operation.
At least two sets of human remains were found in Manorville in 2011, among the 11 bodies eventually found dumped along a wide stretch of Long Island’s Southern Shore.
Four of the victims, who are known as the “Gilgo Beach Four” —Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Melissa Barthelemy, Amber-Lynn Costello and Megan Waterman — are part of an active murder case.
Rex Heuermann, a hulking Massapequa Park architect with offices in Midtown Manhattan, is being held pending a murder trial in the high-profile case.
Heuermann, a married father of two, is accused of killing the four women, all of them sex workers, after soliciting them on Craigslist and other sex-for-hire sites online, prosecutors contend.
Their bodies were found along Ocean Parkway beginning in 2010, with the case sitting dormant for over a decade before former NYPD Chief Rodney Harrison took over as Suffolk County police commissioner in 2022 and reopened the probe.
Heuermann was identified as a suspect thanks to cellphone data, eyewitness accounts and DNA and was arrested in July, remaining behind bars without bail pending his upcoming trial.
Investigators also uncovered sick Google searches on his computer and spent 13 days tearing apart his home and yard looking for evidence of the grisly killings.
However, police have not linked the other bodies to the hulking murder suspect.
