Rex Heuermann, the architectural consultant accused in the Gilgo Beach serial killings, was charged with a seventh murder on Tuesday morning.
Prosecutors say that he killed Valerie Mack, who had been working as an escort, more than two decades ago. Her partial remains were found in 2011.
Mr. Heuermann had already been accused of murdering five women found along the Long Island beach and another woman whose remains were found in Southampton. He has pleaded not guilty to those crimes.
Investigators in Suffolk County have been working intently to connect him to the five other people whose remains were found near Gilgo Beach, including Ms. Mack, Karen Vergata and three unidentified victims.
Prosecutors said on Tuesday that a hair found on Ms. Mack matched the genetic profile of Mr. Heuermann’s daughter, Victoria, who would have been a little girl at the time.
Tricia Hazen, a half sister of Ms. Mack, said in an interview before the indictment that she was heartened to hear about the charges.
“He’ll get his punishment, either here or in the next world,” she said. “He has to answer to God and hopefully he’ll answer here on earth, too.”
Appearing in court with his lawyer, Michael J. Brown, Mr. Heuermann, 61, pleaded not guilty to the latest murder charge. He remains in jail awaiting a trial that the judge in the case is pushing to schedule next year.
In addition to DNA matches, phone records and internet activity that prosecutors say tie Mr. Heuermann to the killings, they also say he created a planning document on a computer to “methodically blueprint” the selection, torture, killing and disposal of victims.
The file, which suggests he engaged in sadistic sexual acts with his victims before and after their deaths, bolsters prosecutors’ argument that he led a double life. They have said he waited for his wife and their children to leave on vacations and then possibly attacked his victims in the basement of the family’s home in Massapequa Park.
Prosecutors said on Tuesday that a mutilation wound on Ms. Mack’s breast and indications of rope ligatures seemed to comport with bondage and sadistic pornography he was downloading at the time of her murder. He used similar techniques in the dismembering and disposal of Ms. Mack that he used with that of Jessica Taylor, who he is also charged with murdering, they said.
Prosecutors also said that they found numerous articles on the Gilgo murders that they said he collected as souvenirs or mementos.
Prosecutors used advances in DNA technology to match hairs found on the remains of the six victims to the genetic profiles of Mr. Heuermann and his wife and adult daughter.
In June, Mr. Heuermann was indicted in the fifth and sixth murders: of Jessica Taylor, whose partial remains were found in the Gilgo area, and of Sandra Costilla, whose remains were found in Southampton and who had not previously been associated with the Gilgo investigation.
Investigators discovered the 10 Gilgo victims in 2010 and 2011. They included eight women, a man and a little girl.
The so-called Gilgo Four, a quartet of bodies in a neat grouping along a quarter-mile stretch of Ocean Parkway near Jones Beach, were quickly identified. Progress was much slower in identifying the other bodies.
The unidentified victims include a young Asian man found wearing women’s clothing, a woman referred to as Peaches because of a tattoo and her toddler daughter, who was found wrapped in a blanket, wearing gold jewelry and bearing no signs of trauma.
Ms. Mack’s partial remains were found with the other victims’, but for years she was known only as Jane Doe No. 6. Then in 2020, investigators matched her genetic profile with a cousin in Georgia and then to blood relatives in New Jersey, including Ms. Hazen.
With that, they were able to find and notify her adoptive parents, Edwin and JoAnn Mack, who had not seen Valerie since 2000. She had led a troubled life involving drugs and prostitution and at 24 disappeared after leaving her parents’ home, bound for New York.
Ms. Mack was born in 1976 as Valerie Fulton, the youngest of five children of Patricia Fulton, who herself was one of 15 children and whose life was so marred by drugs and hardship that she placed her young children in foster care, Ms. Hazen said.
In 2021, the Macks gained some solace by claiming Valerie’s remains and holding a memorial on their back deck. Her ashes are kept in a container next to her framed photo.
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