Gilgo Beach murders: Rex Heuermann charged with killing of Philadelphia woman
PHILADELPHIA - Suspected Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann was charged Tuesday with the murder of a Philadelphia woman whose remains were found over two decades ago.
Valerie Mack had been working as an escort in Philadelphia when investigators say her partial skeletal remains were found by hunters in a wooded area of Long Island in October 2000. Mack was last seen by her family in New Jersey before her suspected murder, investigators said.
Human hair found with Mack’s remains was sent for testing earlier this year and found to be a likely match with the genetic profile of Heuermann’s daughter, prosecutors said in court papers. His daughter is not accused of any wrongdoing and would have been 3 or 4 years old when Mack died.
Mack is the seventh alleged victim of Heuermann, who prosecutors linked to the long unsolved Gilgo Beach murders last year. The remains of nearly a dozen women, many of them sex workers, were found near the remote community of Gilgo Beach from 2010 to 2011.
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Alleged Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann charged with 7th murder
Suspected Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann was charged with a seventh murder on Tuesday morning in the death of Valerie Mack.
The remains of four victims – now known as the ‘Gilgo Four’ – were found within a quarter-mile of one another near Gilgo Beach in December 2010.
Shannan Gilbert, a 24-year-old sex worker, vanished in May 2010. A police officer and his cadaver dog were looking for her body in the thicket along nearby Ocean Parkway when they happened upon the remains of a different woman. Within days, three other bodies were found, all within a short walk of one another.
Courtesy of Suffolk County Police Department
Gilbert's disappearance and search is what ultimately led to the discovery of several remains in the area.
Heuermann was charged Tuesday with second-degree murder in the killing of Mack. He is also facing charges in the murders of six other women whose remains were found on Long Island, and has pleaded not guilty.