Melissa Barthelemy's apartment

Melissa Barthelemy was last seen at this house on Underhill Avenue in the Bronx on July 10th, 2009.

Roughly fifteen months later, her remains were found among the bodies of three other women on Gilgo Beach.

On the day of her disappearance, Barthelemy called a fellow sex worker and told her that a client was willing to pay her $1,000 for an overnight stay. This was notable, as it was an unusually large sum at the time.

Phone records showed that the man in question had contacted Barthelemy multiple times over the previous seven days.

Later that evening, she presumably took a taxi to Manhattan, where the client picked her up in his vehicle and drove her out to Long Island.

Barthelemy told a friend that she would return the following morning. However, she never did.

Cellphone records indicate that she was brought to a location near Massapequa, as her phone pinged a tower in that area at around 1.43 a.m. on July 11th, 2009.

Massapequa is just across the water from where her skeletal remains were discovered 17 months later.

After murdering Barthelemy, the killer used her phone to make a series of short and disturbing calls to her younger sister, Amanda.

During these calls, he calmly taunted Amanda in a monotone voice and informed her that her sister was dead. He also stated that he was going to "watch her rot."

Although investigators determined that someone was using Barthelemy's phone in Midtown Manhattan, the short nature of the calls made them almost impossible to trace to an exact location.

Before dialing Amanda's number, the killer had made sure that he was hidden among the vast crowds and traffic jams of New York City.

Prior to the taunting phone calls, he had also checked Barthelemy's voicemail. Between July 11th and 12th, 2009, he checked her voicemail three times from Freeport and Babylon.

Barthelemy was the first of the "Gilgo Four" to be found.

On December 11th, 2010, canine police officer John Mallia and his cadaver dog "Blue" were walking along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach when "Blue" suddenly became interested in a specific section of the thicket.

At the time, Mallia was searching for a missing sex worker called Shannan Gilbert, who had gone missing from a gated community on the eastern side of the island six months earlier.

When Mallia entered the bushes to investigate, he stumbled upon a skeleton. The victim had tape around their head, torso, and legs. A decaying burlap material was found stuck to the inside of the tape.

Although he initially believed that he had finally found Gilbert, this was not the case. Gilbert had a titanium plate in her jaw, while the skeleton did not.

Later, it emerged that the victim was actually Barthelemy.

The discovery near Gilgo Beach triggered a wider search of the area, during which the police found the bodies of three other women: Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Megan Waterman, and Amber Lynn Costello.

The four victims were all sex workers who had gone missing between 2007 and 2010. Their killer had picked them up, murdered them, wrapped them in burlap, and then deposited their remains among the thick brambles and branches beside Ocean Parkway.

The investigation into the Gilgo Beach killings went nowhere for more than a decade. No arrests were made, and very little information was released to the public. Many believed that the case would remain unsolved.

However, everything unexpectedly changed on a random summer day in 2023.

On July 14th, 2023, the authorities announced that they had indicted a 59-year-old Massapequa Park resident named Rex Heuermann for the murders of Barthelemy, Costello, and Waterman. They also publicly named him as the prime suspect in Brainard-Barnes' death.

While analyzing Heuermann's digital devices, investigators uncovered evidence that a file-shredding program had been used on one of his laptops on July 9th, 2009, which was just one day before Barthelemy disappeared. Investigators believe that he used the software to erase his visits to the victim's Craigslist profile.

Travel records indicated that Heuermann's wife and two children had left for Iceland two days prior to Barthelemy's disappearance.

An analysis of his personal phones, the killer's burner phone, and Barthelemy's phone showed that the devices consistently intersected at multiple locations.

In the documentary The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets, Heuermann's wife, Asa Ellerup, recounted a phone call she had with him the night before he flew out to join her in Iceland (August 9th).

During the call, Heuermann surprised her by revealing that he had remodeled their upstairs bathroom, redone the plumbing, and installed a sink and toilet in the basement.

Receipts show that he purchased the supplies on July 12th, 2009, just two days after Barthelemy went missing.

Photos

Photos of the house and other related images.

Manhattan

The killer used Barthelemy's phone to make a series of "descriptive" calls to her teenage sister, Amanda.

The fact that he repeatedly put himself at risk just so he could taunt a victim's relative indicates that he is a sadist. Comments from law enforcement officials add further weight to this theory, as the former commissioner and chief of detectives both said that the killer "spent time" with his victims and possibly tortured them.

The calls in question were all made from Midtown Manhattan. It is likely that he purposely chose this area because of how busy it is.

The phone calls to Barthelemy's sister took place on the following dates and approximate times:

- Friday, July 17th, 2009, at 12.40 p.m.

- Thursday, July 23rd, 2009, at 6.42 p.m.

- Wednesday, August 5th, 2009, between 6.50 p.m. and 7.11 p.m.

- Wednesday, August 19th, 2009, at 7.23 p.m.

- Wednesday, August 26th, 2009, between 11.29 a.m. and 11.34 a.m.

During these calls, Barthelemy's phone connected to cell towers at 4 Penn Plaza, 275 West 39th Street, 249 West 36th Street, and 408 West 34th Street.

At the time, Rex Heuermann's architecture firm was situated at 19 West 36th Street (labeled "Workplace" in the photo above).

Billing and cell site records indicate that Heuermann's personal phone, Barthelemy's phone, and the burner phone that initially contacted Barthelemy all intersected at various points in Manhattan.

Furthermore, the calls stopped between August 5th and August 19th. This is significant, as Heuermann left for Iceland on August 10th and returned on August 18th, which was the day before the killer resumed contact.

Gilgo Beach

On December 11th, 2010, Barthelemy's skeletal remains were discovered at this section of the roadside beside Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach.

Coordinates: 40.624183, -73.377483

Google Maps

Phone calls to Barthelemy's sister

Image source: The Killing Season

Melissa's mother, Lynn Barthelemy, and her stepfather, Jeff Martina, were interviewed in the TV series The Killing Season.

During the interview, they spoke about the phone calls to Melissa's younger sister, Amanda.

When Melissa's phone suddenly started calling Amanda, they initially felt a wave of relief, as she had been missing for a week.

However, when Amanda answered the call, she heard a man's voice.

During the first call, he reportedly asked the teenager, "Are you a wh*re like your sister? I heard you're a half-breed." In the final call, he stated that he had finally killed her sister and that he was going to "watch her body rot." He then said that he might come and show her one day.

They were all kept relatively short, and he refused to speak to anyone but Amanda. On one occasion, he immediately hung up when Melissa's mother, Lynn, answered the phone.

The details surrounding these phone calls provide a lot of insight into the killer.

The fact that he repeatedly put himself at risk just so he could taunt Barthelemy's younger sister suggests that he was getting some kind of psychological gratification out of it.

During separate interviews with "Get Secure" on The Daily Blu, former Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer and the former Chief of Detectives, Dominick Varrone, both indicated that some of the victims had been tortured.

This, coupled with the phone calls, suggests that the Long Island serial killer is a sadist who derives pleasure from inflicting pain and humiliation on others.