New Charges for Alleged Gilgo Beach Serial Killer Cast Scrutiny on Another Man’s Murder Conviction

New Charges for Alleged Gilgo Beach Serial Killer Cast Scrutiny on Another Man’s Murder Conviction
Defendant John Bittrolff appears for a hearing at Riverhead Criminal Court in Riverhead, New York on July 31, 2014. James Carbone/Pool/Newsday via AP
The Associated Press
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NEW YORK—For years prosecutors saw a connection in the killings of three young women who disappeared in the winter of 1993 and 1994, their nude bodies found strangled, beaten, and left in similar poses in the Long Island brush.

In new charges unveiled Thursday, prosecutors said Rex Heuermann—the man already accused in a string of deaths known as the Gilgo Beach serial killings—was responsible for the death of one of the women, Sanda Costilla. The findings, authorities said, indicate that Mr. Heuermann began hunting victims more than a decade earlier than previously thought.