Can you help bring Melissa's killer to justice? Melissa Barthelemy, a 24-year-old White female, moved from Buffalo to New York City with dreams of becoming a hairstylist. To make ends meet while she pursued her cosmetology career, she began working as an escort, advertising her services online. On the evening of July 12, 2009, she informed a friend she was going to meet a client and would be back later. That was the last time she was seen alive.
After she failed to make contact for several days, her mother reported her missing on July 18, 2009.
In the weeks that followed Melissa's disappearance, her teenage sister, Amanda, began receiving a series of disturbing and vulgar phone calls. The male caller, using Melissa's cell phone, taunted the young girl with sexually explicit comments and eventually admitted to killing her. The calls, which were traced to crowded locations in Manhattan such as Times Square and Madison Square Garden, added a layer of torment for the grieving family but provided few immediate leads for law enforcement.
For more than a year, Melissa's fate remained a mystery. Then, on December 11, 2010, a Suffolk County police officer conducting a training exercise with his K-9 partner along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach discovered skeletal remains. The remains, found wrapped in burlap, were later identified as those of Melissa Barthelemy. The discovery was a grim breakthrough in what would become a sprawling investigation into the Gilgo Beach serial killings. Two days after Melissa was found, authorities uncovered the remains of three more women in the same vicinity, all of whom had also worked as online escorts.
For years, the case went cold, leaving the families of the victims without answers. However, a renewed investigation in 2022, utilizing advanced DNA technology and a comprehensive review of evidence, led to a significant development. Investigators focused on Rex Heuermann, a Manhattan-based architect living in Massapequa Park, Long Island. Evidence, including a DNA match from a pizza crust Heuermann discarded, allegedly linked him to the crimes. In July 2023, Rex Heuermann was arrested and charged with the murders of Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello. He was later also charged with the murder of a fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes. Heuermann has pleaded not guilty to all charges. Subsequent investigations have led to additional murder charges against Heuermann in connection with the deaths of other women whose remains were found in the Long Island area, expanding the timeline of the alleged killings back to the 1990s.
