Map: The hotel where Megan Waterman was last seen

Waterman's remains

Waterman's remains were discovered at this section of Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach in December 2010. By that stage, she had been missing for six months.

Her body lay among the bodies of three murdered sex workers.

Due to their location and their close proximity to each other, the four victims have been nicknamed the Gilgo Four.

Waterman had been wrapped in duck-blind camouflage burlap and bound by duct tape.

Two foreign female hairs were recovered from the area around her head. A strand of male hair was discovered at the bottom of the burlap.

After narrowing in on Rex Heuermann as a suspect, a police surveillance team followed him until he threw a pizza box into a trash can in Midtown Manhattan. Forensic analysis later determined that the DNA recovered from the pizza crust was a mitochondrial DNA match with the male hair found on the burlap. This was significant, as the profile excluded 99.96% of the population of North America.

The female hair that was recovered from Waterman's head proved to be a mitochondrial DNA match with Heuermann's wife, Asa Ellerup. It is believed that Ellerup's hair was transferred to the body from inside the residence or Heuermann's vehicle, as she had been visiting Maryland when the murder took place.

When the task force compared Heuermann's personal cellphone records with the burner phone that had been used to contact Waterman, they learned that both devices had been in the same general areas at the same times. Furthermore, Google searches on one of his most recent burner phones showed that he had been looking up information about the victims and the Gilgo Beach investigation.