The mother of a woman who disappeared in Las Vegas 20 years ago thinks her daughter could have been a victim of Long Island serial killer suspect Rex Heuermann.
Heuermann owned a timeshare in Las Vegas, as CrimeOnline previously reported, and officials there are looking to see if any unsolved cases can be linked to the man accused in three of the four Gilgo Beach slayings, four women whose bodies were found on a highway running through the beach in 2010. Heuermann is the prime suspect in the fourth murder, as CrimeOnline previously reported.
Las Vegas officials have not said if any disappearances or murders there show ties to the Manhattan architect, but local media in New York and Las Vegas report five sex workers who died under similar circumstances.
A Las Vegas law enforcement source told News 12 he had no doubt that “one person is to blame for at least several of those cases” but did not indicate whether investigators think it could have been Heuermann. Processing the DNA to check, the source said, could take months because of its age.
“It seems to me like the area that he bought the condos in was prostitution areas and that it would have been really easy for him,” Pam Brewer, mother of 19-year-old Jodi Marie Brewer, said.
The victim’s torso was found wrapped in cloth and plastic two weeks later in the desert. Jodi Marie Brewer, who disappeared on August 14, 2003, had turned to sex work, like the Gilgo 4 victims.
“She had gone out for the night, and she said, ‘I love you mom.’ She said, ‘I’ll see you in the morning,’ and I said, ‘I love you’ to Jodi. And I never saw her again,” Pam Brewer said.
“Hearing the whole Rex thing, it’s totally different now because it gives us a little hope,” she said.
The other victims — Jessie Foster, Victoria Camara, and Lindsey Marie Harris — disappeared between 2003 and 2006, KTNV reported. Heuermann has owned two timeshares in Las Vegas, the station said — on which he owned from 2004 until he sold in in 2013 and a second, which he still owns with his wife, bought in 2005.
Camara, originally from New Jersey, was a teen mom who turned to sex work to make ends meet. Her body was found in Boulder City off US 95 20 years ago. She had been strangled.
Harris disappeared from Henderson in 2005. Her legs were found in Nevada, but her body was later found in Springfield, Illinois — similar to the two-location discovery of Karen Vergata on Long Island. Vergata had been a Jane Doe, but she was recently identified. Her murder has not, so far, been connected with Heuermann.
Foster’s body has not been found. Originally from Canada, she was sex trafficked through New York and New Jersey before ending up in Las Vegas, her mother, Glendene Grant, said.
A fifth, unnamed victim is also being looked at — a woman who was murdered and dismembered in 2003.
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[Featured image: Rex Heuermann/Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office via AP]
