Resurfacing of Atlantic City’s ‘Eastbound Strangler’ Case: New Jersey Shore Links to Gilgo Suspect Rex Heuermann
Following the arrest of suspected Long Island serial killer Rex Heuermann, law enforcement agencies across the country are revisiting similar cold case murders, including those in an oceanfront area near Atlantic City where four sex workers were found dead in a sewage ditch in 2006.
Suffolk County police say that unsolved cases “around the nation including Atlantic City” are being reviewed for any possible connections to the Gilgo Beach murders.
In 2006, the bodies of four women employed as sex workers were found in a watery ditch along “Black Horse Pike,” along Route 40 in Egg Harbor Township, just over the Atlantic City border.
The deaths are believed to be the work of a serial killer, but no arrests have been made.
Former Suffolk Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart said in 2020 that her investigators had been in contact with law enforcement in New Jersey, but uncovered no link between the killings.
With the formation of the Gilgo Beach Task Force and arrest of Rex Heuermann last week, past investigative leads are now being revisited.
On November 21, 2006, two women walking in a marsh behind a row of motels near Atlantic City made a gruesome discovery. They found the remains of four women, Kim Raffo (35), Tracy Ann Roberts (23), Barbara Breidor (42), and Molly Dilts (19), all believed to be sex workers. Similar to Heuermann’s alleged victims, these women were found face down in filthy water and barefoot, and all were posed in the same direction.
Rex Heuermann, a 59-year-old architect from Long Island who worked in New York City, was arrested on multiple murder charges earlier this month for the deaths of three women who disappeared between 2007 and 2010: Melissa Barthelemy (24), Megan Waterman (22), and Amber Costello (27). He is also the prime suspect in the slaying of a fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes (25), found near Gilgo Beach on Ocean Parkway, a location that resembles the Atlantic City crime scene.
Heuermann also had ties to Las Vegas and South Carolina, where police seized a vehicle believed to be linked to one of the disappearances. Moreover, he appears to have connections to Atlantic City, and witnesses from a strip club recall encountering him there on multiple occasions.
While authorities in Atlantic City are actively investigating the 2006 Black Horse Pike homicides, no official link to Heuermann as a person of interest has been established yet. Experts note that there are some differences between the Atlantic City murders and the Gilgo Beach cases, such as the level of development in the surrounding areas and the possibility that the Atlantic City killer made more efforts to cover his tracks.
Rex Heuermann has pleaded not guilty to the charges and is scheduled to appear in court on August 1st. Investigators continue their efforts to gather evidence and uncover any potential links between Heuermann and the unsolved murders in Atlantic City.
