The hotel where Megan Waterman was last seen

Holiday Inn Express

This is an east-facing aerial image of the Holiday Inn Express hotel in Hauppauge.

A number of sources say that Megan Waterman was last seen walking along the service road towards the gas station (the red route). However, this appears to be an unreliable piece of information that has been gradually accepted as fact.

Although one website claims that an employee saw her walking along the service road, this is incorrect. In reality, that statement came from Waterman's pimp and boyfriend, Akeem Cruz.

Cruz did not see her walking along this route, as he was in Brooklyn at the time. In his statement to the police, he claimed that Waterman called him and said that she was going to a convenience store.

The problem with Cruz's statement is that he had an extremely good reason to lie about the nature of their phone call. If he had told investigators that Waterman left the hotel to meet a client, then he would have been implicating himself as a pimp and sex trafficker.

On April 13th, 2022, the Suffolk County Police Department released surveillance footage of Waterman in the hotel lobby.

In the final clip, she calmly walked out of the hotel and turned right.

This contradicts claims that she was seen walking along the red route. Instead, it indicates that her killer picked her up in the parking lot or on Central Avenue (the yellow route).

Central Avenue

It is difficult to overlook Central Avenue as a potential pickup point. This small road lies to the south of the hotel and is easily accessible via the parking lot.

Locals have noted that this area is pretty quiet, especially after normal business hours. If the Long Island serial killer is as cautious as the authorities believe he is, then it stands to reason that he would have selected this spot instead of the busier service road to the north.

When Waterman exited the hotel lobby at 1.30 a.m., this street would have been completely dark and empty.

There were no streetlights on Central Avenue in 2010. The streetlights at the eastern end of the road weren't added until circa 2017.

Possible pick-up spot

LISK may have concealed his vehicle by parking behind the tree line on Central Avenue. This would have prevented hotel guests and employees from witnessing the pickup.

The turning circle on the left is in a blind spot, as there are no rooms or cameras on the southern side of the hotel.

Once he had rolled to a stop, the killer picked up his burner phone and contacted Waterman to let her know that he was outside.

After picking up his victim, he took one of the red routes highlighted above before heading west towards Massapequa Park.

During the 2000s, the Holiday Inn Express was a popular place for sex workers to conduct business, as employees at the hotel usually turned a blind eye to their activities.

If LISK was a Long Island resident who regularly picked up girls, then it is possible that he had visited the hotel in the past and knew exactly where to park.

2010

This aerial image was taken on April 1st, 2010—roughly two months before Waterman vanished.

As you can see, Central Avenue was very quiet, even during the day.

The side of the hotel

The Google Street View image above was taken two years after Waterman's murder.

The southern side of the Holiday Inn Express consists of a plain exterior wall with one small window. The hotel rooms do not overlook this area. Furthermore, it is very obvious to the casual observer that there are no security cameras.

The red line highlights a small pathway that leads from the front of the hotel down to the rear parking lot.

If the Long Island serial killer parked near this pathway, then it means that he was in a blind spot.

Waterman's remains were discovered near Gilgo Beach

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.

Coordinates: 40.624999, -73.374454

Google Maps

Surveillance footage

The last clip in the released surveillance footage shows Waterman walking out of the lobby and turning right.