New charges for alleged Gilgo Beach serial killer cast scrutiny on another man’s murder conviction
Associated PressNEW YORK — For years prosecutors saw a connection in the killings of three young women who disappeared in the winter of 1993 and 1994, their nude bodies found strangled, beaten and left in similar poses in the Long Island brush. In new charges unveiled Thursday, prosecutors said Rex Heuermann — the man already accused in a string of deaths known as the Gilgo Beach serial killings — was responsible for the death of one of the women, Sanda Costilla. “The evidence points to one killer, and the new indictment supports John Bittrolff’s claim of innocence.” The trio of killings came roughly 16 years before the discovery of the remains of 10 people — mostly female sex workers — along a highway near Gilgo Beach on Long Island’s south shore. The killing occurred shortly after Heuermann’s mother and another person moved out of his home, leaving him with “unfettered time to execute his plans,” prosecutors said. “Given what is now known, the prosecutors have an ethical duty to revisit and reexamine the Bittrolff case.” Suffolk County Legislator Rob Trotta, a former detective on the FBI’s violent crime task force, agreed.