Manorville Victim's Family Cautiously Optimistic After Gilgo Beach Serial Killer Suspect's Arrest

Jasmine Robinson was preparing to mark the 20th anniversary of her cousin Jessica Taylor being found brutally murdered in Manorville when she learned that police arrested a suspect in the long-unsolved Gilgo Beach serial killer case.

Although the suspect, 59-year-old Rex Heuermann of Massapequa Park, pleaded not guilty to charges of murdering Megan Waterman, Amber Costello, and Melissa Barthelemy — he’s also considered the prime suspect in the closely related murder of Maureen Brainard-Barnes — Robinson was hopeful that justice may also soon be within reach for Taylor as well. Heuermann was not charged in the deaths of seven other people whose remains were found along Ocean Parkway in 2010 and 2011 — Taylor’s partial remains were scattered there as well — but the investigation is continuing.

“I’m grateful for the hard work that has been done, I’m grateful that today is happening and I’m hopeful for the future,” Robinson, who has been advocating for justice in the case, told reporters outside Suffolk County criminal court in Riverside shortly before Heuermann was ordered held without bail on July 14. “I hope that a connection is made.”

On July 26, 2003, a dog walker found Taylor, who was 20 at the time of her death, nude, decapitated and missing her hands on the side of Halsey Manor Road sump access road near a Long Island Expressway overpass in a sparsely populated area of the rural community in the heart of the Long Island Pine Barrens region. Her missing head and hands were found eight years later 50 miles away near Cedar Beach, a few miles east of Gilgo.

The upstate New York native was last seen on the streets of Manhattan near the Port Authority Bus Terminal the week before she was found dead. She had been a sex worker at the time of her death.

“I hope that she is remembered as a beautiful young woman and not what her occupation was at that time,” said Robinson, whose family recently marked what would have been her 40th birthday on June 17. “She’s loved and missed every day.”

Taylor’s killer had repeatedly sliced her tattoo — a red heart with an angel wing that said, “Remy’s angel” — in an attempt to avoid her being identified, but medical examiners pushed it back together and shared its image with authorities nationwide. A detective in Washington, D.C., where she was reported missing, recognized the ink and helped identify Taylor months after the initial discovery.

When her skull and hands were found in 2011 during the expanded search of the Jones Beach barrier island triggered by the Gilgo discoveries, Taylor’s case was unique because she was the only one of the victims identified years before her connection to what is now known as the Long Island Serial Killer case. While police quickly identified the four women found in 2010 in Gilgo Beach, most of the other remains — some of which were also scattered in Manorville, Fire Island and Hempstead Lake State Park — have yet to be identified.

The one exception is a woman found dead in 2000 about a mile from Taylor in Manorville — a victim initially dubbed Jane Doe #6 who has since been identified as Valerie Mack. Her identification in 2020 was among the biggest recent breaks in the cases prior to Heuermann’s arrest. Investigators identified Mack using genetic genealogy — matching her with public DNA databases. Like Taylor and the Gilgo four, Mack also had been a sex worker. She was last seen near Philadelphia.

As of this story, Suffolk police say there are no updates in Taylor’s case, although even if there were new leads, homicide squad detectives would likely not publicly release them in order to secure a conviction should they eventually make an arrest, as is standard practice. But in 2016, Khalil White — who was alternately described as Taylor’s pimp and boyfriend — told the A&E docu-series The Killing Season that homicide squad detectives informed him that Taylor was found wrapped in burlap.

That detail was significant because prosecutors confirmed last week that the first four victims found in Gilgo Beach in 2010 were also wrapped in camouflage burlap used for duck hunting. Taylor, however, was previously reported to have been covered with plastic, although that was never confirmed either. Police declined to comment on the materials in Taylor’s case.

Asked if she feels that Heuermann could be Taylor’s killer, Robinson said: “I’m not sure yet.”

She was joined at court by her Miller Place-based attorney, John Ray, who also represents the family of Shannan Gilbert, a New Jersey woman who was reported missing from Oak Beach and who police were searching for when they found the victims along Ocean Parkway. Gilbert was found dead in a marsh near Oak Beach in 2011, but investigators have suggested she may have accidentally drowned — although her family believes she was killed following a frantic 911 call on the night she was last seen alive.

“We breathe a great sigh of relief,” said Ray, who suspects investigators will link Heuermann to additional victims, but the lawyer is also not sure if Taylor will be among them. “Finally, something has been done, and finally somebody has been caught.”

He maintains his belief that more than one killer may be involved in the Ocean Parkway cases, as authorities have suggested in the past. Heuermann’s lawyer, Michael Brown, called the DNA evidence, cellphone records and eyewitness identification in the case “circumstantial” and said his client denied involvement in any of the murders.

What was clear after Heuermann’s arraignment, however, was that Robinson was spooked when prosecutors’ revealed that the suspect’s search history included him seeking photos and information about the victims’ surviving family members. She declined to make additional comments to the media after the accused serial killer’s court appearance out of fear for her safety.

“Jasmine has been very disturbed by what she’s heard,” Ray said.

As for whether or not investigators will find evidence of Heuermann being involved in Taylor’s murder, that’s an open question.

“We don’t know if he’s connected to Jessica Taylor’s murder,” Ray said. “We have no idea — yet. And the police, maybe they’ll tell us, maybe they won’t.”