Police deny Gilgo Beach suspect's house had soundproof room
Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison gives updates as officers search home.
Police on New York's Long Island denied a report from over the weekend claiming that investigators found a soundproof room in the basement of accused Gilgo Beach serial Rex Heuermann’s home, where at least one woman may have been killed.
"I believe that the soundproof room and the vault, that message got misconstrued, but there is a vault. There is no soundproof room," Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison told reporters Monday. Harrison earlier told Fox News that Heuermann had amassed a stockpile of weapons in that vault.
New York state troopers and Suffolk County police have been combing through the accused killer’s home for clues since his arrest earlier month. Harrison said Monday the search has been fruitful.
The report of the soundproof room emerged in The New York Post on Sunday.
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Police use Ground Penetrating Radar equipment in searching Rex Heuermann’s house in Massapequa Park, New York, Sunday, July 23, 2023. Heuermann charged with three murders in relation to the bodies discovered in Gilgo Beach, Long Island. (Mega for Fox News Digital)
Photos obtained by Fox News Digital showed police using ground penetrating equipment, a backhoe, and cadaver dogs in searching Heuermann’s house in Massapequa Park, New York, over the weekend.
Police have been carting out boxes of potential evidence from Heuermann's home all week. The 59-year-old architect has been charged with killing at least three women and was said by a prosecutor to be a suspect in a fourth slaying. Heuermann has denied killing the women, according to his attorney, Michael Brown.
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Items pulled out of Heuermann's home in Massapequa Park in recent days have included more than 200 firearms, a large doll in a glass case, a large portrait of a woman with a bruised face and a filing cabinet.
Investigators, some dressed in "crime lab" T-shirts and protective suits, were seen earlier in the week carting away a desktop computer, a large picture frame, a mirror and many other household items.
Police use Ground Penetrating Radar equipment in searching Rex Heuermann’s house in Massapequa Park, New York, Sunday, July 23, 2023. Heuermann charged with three murders in relation to the bodies discovered in Gilgo Beach, Long Island. (Mega for Fox News Digital)
The charges were a remarkable development in one of New York's most notorious mysteries. Starting in 2010, police searching for a missing woman near Long Island's Gilgo Beach discovered 10 sets of human remains scattered along a long barrier island. The dead included eight women, one man and a young child.
Authorities concluded it was unlikely one person killed all of those victims, but that several of the bodies found relatively close together appeared to have been the likely work of a serial killer.
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Heuermann is accused of murdering Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Costello and Megan Waterman. Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said investigators are continuing to work toward charging him in the death of a fourth victim, Maureen Brainard-Barnes. All four women had been sex workers. Their bodies were found along the same quarter-milestretch of Ocean Parkway.
Police use a backhoe in searching Rex Heuermann’s house in Massapequa Park, New York, Sunday, July 23, 2023. Heuermann charged with three murders in relation to the bodies discovered in Gilgo Beach, Long Island. (Mega for Fox News Digital)
Investigators in the case have also searched storage units that had been rented by Heuermann, who also owned undeveloped land in South Carolina and a timeshare condominium in Las Vegas.
The missing woman whose disappearance prompted the police search that led to the accidental discovery of the Gilgo Beach remains, Shannan Gilbert, was herself found dead in a nearby coastal marsh in 2011.
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Suffolk Police concluded that she drowned accidentally — a finding her family has not accepted, believing she was also killed.
Fox News' Jennifer Johnson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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