Report: Long Island Suspect Not Connected With West AC Murders
A report Saturday in the New York Post says the Gilgo Park murder suspect is not a suspect in the killings of four women whose bodies were behind a West Atlantic City motel in 2006.
Long Island police say, Rex Heuermann, a suspect in the string of murders that took place in Gilgo Beach, New York, is not a suspect in the unsolved deaths of four sex workers 17 years ago.
Heuermann's arrest brought immediate questions about any possible ties to a South Jersey cold case, the murders of four women whose bodies were found in a drainage ditch behind a motel on the Black Horse Pike on Nov. 20, 2006.
Much like the Gilgo Beach killings, the murders of Kim Raffo, Molly Dilts, Barbara Breidor, and Tracy Roberts have attracted substantial media attention over the years, but remain unsolved today.
The killings are also similar because most of the victims were young women who had been sex workers.
Shortly after Heuermann's arrest, a Suffolk County Police spokesperson confirmed police were looking at any ties between the South Jersey murders and the Gilgo Park suspect.
“Shame on us, if we don’t look into Las Vegas, South Carolina, even Atlantic City,” Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison, told WABC.
The South Jersey victims were all found with their heads facing east and all four victims were female sex workers killed by strangling. In the Long Island case, most of the victims were female sex workers, and several of them were strangled.
Now, however, Harrison is discounting there is a link between Heuermann and the case some call the Eastbound Stangler murders.
“We don’t believe that the sex workers killed in Atlantic City are connected to Rex Heuermann,” Harrison told The Post, adding authorities in Atlantic County think someone else is responsible for the murders.
This news comes just days after Fox News Digital spoke to a dancer at an Atlantic City gentleman's club who said she may have had three interactions with Heuermann in the club over the last few years. The dancer said the man she believes was Heuermann always paid for a private room.
"He just wanted me to sit and talk with him and then would keep persuading me to meet him outside of the club, and I never went. I’ve met people outside of the club before, so I’m not stranger to it, but this guy made me feel uncomfortable."
A spokesperson for the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office declined to comment to the New York Post on the case but did say they would keep the victim's families updated with any new findings.