This story started back in 2010 when four bodies wrapped in burlap were discovered buried along a stretch of beach off Long Island. Because of the proximity and the similarities, authorities immediately suspected a serial killer.

Remains of the first body, that of a woman, were discovered on Saturday in an overgrown knot of sea grass and pitch scrub near Ocean Parkway, where the Atlantic Ocean pounds the island’s barrier beaches. A police dog led its handler there after the remote area, in Suffolk County, was chosen for K-9 training because of its proximity to where a young prostitute disappeared in May.

That discovery touched off another search, and on Monday, the remains of three more people, at least one of them a woman, were found in the brush near Ocean Parkway, separated by hundreds of feet and spread over a quarter mile. The parkway runs from Jones Beach, which is about 14 miles west, past Oak Beach, to Captree State Park.

On Tuesday, as the authorities sought to illuminate possible connections among the corpses, Richard Dormer, the commissioner of the Suffolk County Police Department, said it seemed clear that the grouping of the victims had not been happenstance.

“It’s not a coincidence that four bodies turned up in the same location,” Commissioner Dormer said at a news conference at the department’s headquarters, in Yaphank. “It appears as though somebody targeted these individuals and dumped them.”

Eventually, it became clear that all of the bodies were those of women who had been working as escorts on Craigslist. The search expanded and more bodies were found but the case seemed to stall after that.

Within months, the remains of as many as 16 victims had been found, from Gilgo Beach stretching out east to the pine barrens of Manorville. And yet for a decade, the police have announced not a single suspect or person of interest. Months passed, then years, with no comment from the department about the case.

The exact reason the case went dark is not clear. This article was written by an author who wrote a book about the case and he says it had to do with corruption inside the department.

In December 2011, more than a year and a half after Ms. Gilbert made her last, frantic 911 call, the Suffolk police found her skeleton in a marsh in Oak Beach that the police had not searched before. But rather than expanding the investigation, the entire department seemed to go dark. Bafflingly, it withdrew from collaborations with other agencies, including the F.B.I. By all outward appearances, the case seemed frozen for six years, until April 2018, when Geraldine Hart was handed control of the department. It fell to her to undo some of the worst police corruption ever to affect this part of the country, and to move this cold case forward.

Hart had been working with the FBI when the bodies were discovered in 2010 and saw her agency get frozen out a year later:

She was still with the F.B.I.’s Long Island office when, in December 2010, the four victims were discovered along Ocean Parkway. According to Ms. Hart, the F.B.I. consulted on the case in 2011, but at the end of 2012, the Suffolk police abruptly locked the agency out. Even the bureau’s famous behavioral analysis unit, memorialized in “Mindhunter” and “The Silence of the Lambs,” was sent away before it could complete a profile of a killer. Ms. Hart said she learned this was happening for one reason: Suffolk County’s newly appointed chief of department, James Burke, seemed to want it that way. And there was a reason for that, too: The Justice Department was investigating him for corruption.

In 2018, Hart left the FBI and took over the department. She then helped put the case back on the front burner. In 2020 her office announced they had identified another victim, the first sign of progress announced in nearly a decade.

Today, a suspect in the case has been arrested. He’s an architect who lived near where the bodies were found and who worked in Manhattan.

Rex Heuermann, an architect who had lived most of his life in Nassau County and worked in Manhattan, was taken into custody in connection with at least some of the killings, said a fourth official with knowledge of the case.

By Friday morning, police officers had cordoned off his home on a block of First Avenue in Massapequa Park, where vehicles and officers converged on the scene. District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney and other law enforcement officials announced a 4 p.m. news conference…

“After hearing about this case for so many years, it’s a shock to find out that your neighbor is a serial killer and you never knew it,” a neighbor, Cheryl Lombardi, said.

NBC New York published this map showing where Heuermann lived and where the bodies were found.

Here’s what Heuermann looks like:

Woke up this morning to learn that the Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect was my high school classmate Rex Heuermann.

Berner High School
Massapequa, New York
Class of 1981

Married, two kids, architect.
“Average guy… quiet, family man.”
Mind-boggling… Massapequa is in shock.… pic.twitter.com/Tms0IWVazN

— Billy Baldwin (@BillyBaldwin) July 14, 2023

Rex Heuermann (59) identified as the Long Island Serial Killer.

He is the owner and founder of Midtown architecture firm, RH Consultants and Associates

The deaths of 11 people whose remains were found in 2010 and 2011 have long stumped investigators. Most of the victims were… pic.twitter.com/2Aey1RbZJS

— DeL2000 (@DeL2000) July 14, 2023

There’s video as well from an interview published last February. At the end of this clip he’s talking about hammers which is a bit creepy in light of today’s news.

What we don’t know yet is what led authorities to this arrest. Police don’t seem to have given away anything about what convinced them Heuermann was their man. No doubt we’ll get more of that as a case against him develops.