The motel where Maureen Brainard-Barnes was last seen

This is the motel where Maureen Brainard-Barnes was last seen.

It is located at 59 West 46th Street in Manhattan.

In 2007, it was called the Super 8. Today, it is known as The Hotel @ Times Square.

Brainard-Barnes was a victim of Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann.

The 25-year-old escort disappeared on the night of July 9, 2007, after leaving the motel to meet a client for an outcall.

More than three years later, her skeletal remains were discovered among the bodies of three other women near Gilgo Beach.

Background

Maureen Leigh Ducharme Brainard-Barnes was born in New London, Connecticut, on June 14, 1982. At the time of her death, she was living in an apartment at 180 Prospect Street in Norwich.

She initially went to New York City hoping to become a model. However, the people she met in modeling circles introduced her to the sex industry.

She stopped working as an escort for a few months but resumed shortly after receiving an eviction notice.

In the months leading up to her disappearance, the mother of two was under financial pressure. Although she worked as a telemarketer, her wages were too low to cover her living expenses. She needed to raise $3,000 for an eviction court hearing the following Tuesday, and her son's father was reportedly using the impending eviction to justify a custody case.

Consequently, she started making sporadic weekend trips from Connecticut to New York to work as an escort.

On Friday, July 6, 2007, she and another sex worker, Sara Karnes, traveled to Manhattan by train.

The pair intended to work out of their rooms at the Super 8 motel but soon learned their Craigslist ads had been suspended or demoted.

Unable to advertise their services, they hired a photographer to update their online photos and spent the weekend exploring the city together.

On July 8, Karnes returned to Connecticut, while Brainard-Barnes stayed behind.

A client had started calling Brainard-Barnes on July 6, the Friday she traveled to Manhattan.

Phone records showed that they had 16 interactions over that weekend.

Client

At 11:43 p.m. on July 9, Brainard-Barnes called a fellow sex worker and told her that a client was picking her up outside the Super 8 motel. She explained that the outcall would last one hour and take place on Long Island. Before hanging up, she promised to call afterward to confirm her safety.

Brainard-Barnes never called her friend back.

According to the February 2025 affirmation in opposition:

On July 9, 2007, at 11:43 p.m., Ms. Brainard-Barnes called a witness (whose identity is known to law enforcement) in Connecticut. Although she was known to work out of motel rooms, on the night of July 9, 2007, Ms. Brainard-Barnes told the witness that she would be going to meet a customer on a one-hour "outcall." The victim further indicated she would call the witness after the outcall, which would assure said witness that Ms. Brainard-Barnes was safe. Prior to getting off the phone, Ms. Brainard-Barnes further indicated the outcall would be taking place in Long Island. When the witness did not hear back from Ms. Brainard-Barnes, he/she reported the victim missing.

Brainard-Barnes' last known cellphone activity occurred at approximately 11:56 p.m. near the 59th Street Bridge, which links Manhattan to Queens and the broader Long Island area.

Disappearance

Brainard-Barnes failed to appear at her eviction court hearing the following Tuesday, at which point her family learned she had been working as an escort.

Two weeks after Karnes returned to Connecticut, she received a phone call from a private number.

When she answered, a man asked if she was from Connecticut and if she "knew Maureen." He described a tattoo on Brainard-Barnes' right arm. Karnes confirmed they were friends and explained that she had been missing for two weeks.

The man claimed she was "fine" and that he had just seen her at a "wh*rehouse in Queens." Karnes felt this sounded suspicious, as her friend was an independent escort. When she asked for the location, he said he did not know the exact address. The man promised to call her back with further details, but he never did.

Discovery

Brainard-Barnes remained missing until December 2010, when police found her remains in the brush off Ocean Parkway. By that point, three and a half years had passed since her disappearance.

The killer had left her in the same area as three other sex workers: Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy, and Amber Lynn Costello.

The media nicknamed them the "Gilgo Four" due to their proximity to one another.

Brainard-Barnes was the first of the group to disappear. She was also the only victim among them who was not wrapped in burlap.

Her killer had restrained her with three leather belts. One of the belts bore the initials "WH" or "HW."

Arrest

On July 13, 2023, police arrested 59-year-old Rex Heuermann in connection with the murders of three of the Gilgo Four victims.

Although he was not initially charged with Brainard-Barnes' death, officials publicly named him the prime suspect. They noted that the investigation was ongoing and that they expected to indict him for her murder.

On January 16, 2024, Heuermann was formally charged with Brainard-Barnes' murder. Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney stated that a hair found on one of the belts attached to her lower body matched that of Heuermann's wife, Asa Ellerup.

Authorities believe the hair transferred to the belt buckle while it was inside the family's home in Massapequa Park.

After reviewing phone, travel, and financial records, the task force learned that Ellerup had been out of town during the murders of the other Gilgo Four victims between 2009 and 2010.

Establishing a similar pattern during the disappearance of Brainard-Barnes proved difficult, as many 2007 records had been deleted due to data retention policies.

Following Heuermann's arrest, authorities seized thousands of documents from storage units he leased.

These documents included credit card statements from 2007, which showed that Ellerup and her two children had arrived in Atlantic City three days before Brainard-Barnes' murder.

Cell tower records had indicated that Brainard-Barnes' killer accessed her voicemail on July 12, 2007, roughly three days after her disappearance. On that date, two outbound calls to her voicemail originated near the Long Island Expressway in Islandia. This phone activity occurred one day before Heuermann traveled to Atlantic City to meet his family.

During an interview with Ellerup, investigators established that Heuermann did not join her in Atlantic City until July 13, 2007, four days after Brainard-Barnes disappeared.

Heuermann pleaded not guilty to all charges and maintained his innocence. His lawyers fought to exclude nuclear DNA evidence that linked him to the victims, arguing that the science behind the match was not widely supported in the scientific community. After a Frye hearing, the judge ruled against the defense, allowing the advanced DNA analysis to be admitted.

Other motions to suppress evidence were also unsuccessful.

On April 8, 2026, Heuermann pleaded guilty to Brainard-Barnes' murder, as well as the deaths of seven others. During the court hearing, he admitted to strangling the eight women and discarding their remains near Gilgo Beach.

In June 2026, Heuermann was sentenced to life in prison without parole.