DNA could be the key to linking Long Island serial killer suspect Rex Heuermann with at least five similar killings in Las Vegas, where he owns a time share — or dismissing suspicions about some of his activities in Sin City.
Law enforcement sources have told reporters in Las Vegas and New York that they are comparing DNA samples found at the crime scenes with Heuermann’s DNA, which he was ordered to provide earlier this month by a New York judge.
News 12 reported that investigators were specifically using the process in the case of Victoria Camara, a New Jersey teen mom who was found dead in Boulder City 20 years ago. The results should be available in six to eight weeks, the station said.
Meanwhile, KTNV in Las Vegas spoke with law enforcement sources who said DNA would likely be used in four other cases — Jodi Marie Brewer, Jessie Foster, Lindsay Marie Harris, and an unnamed woman found dead and dismembered in 2003, as CrimeOnline previously reported. All five of the victims were sex workers.
Heuermann has been charged with three of the four Gilgo Beach murders — four women found dead near the beach in late 2010, all strangled and wrapped in burlap. Investigators have been looking at other unsolved killings in the area but have not found any links so far. They also said they were looking in to cases in Las Vegas and South Carolina, where he also owned property.
Brewer was found dead in the desert two weeks after her August 14, 2003, disappearance, he body wrapped in cloth and plastic.
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.
For the latest true crime and justice news, subscribe to the ‘Crime Stories with Nancy Grace’ podcast.
[Featured image: Rex Heuermann/Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office via AP]
