How Did Sandra Costilla’s Case Change The Entire Rex Heuermann Timeline?

Before prosecutors linked Sandra Costilla to Rex Heuermann, the Gilgo Beach killings were understood to begin around 2007. Sandra’s death in 1993 pushed the timeline back by fourteen years — and changed everything about the scope of what investigators believe Heuermann did. This look back examines the case of the earliest known victim and what her connection to the investigation reveals.

Sandra Costilla was twenty-eight years old when her remains were found in the woods of Southampton, Long Island. For three decades, nobody connected her death to the Gilgo Beach case. Investigators looked at the wrong suspect for years. Meanwhile, according to prosecutors, the man whose DNA was found connected to her was living undisturbed on Long Island — building a career, raising a family, and allegedly continuing to harm other women for nearly two more decades. The DNA match came through advanced technology that didn’t exist during Sandra’s lifetime. The defense tried to get it excluded. The judge ruled it admissible.

Heuermann eventually pleaded guilty to Sandra’s murder along with six others, and admitted to killing an eighth woman as part of the plea agreement. He confirmed strangulation as the cause of death for each. We revisit where the case stood at the time of our reporting. Sandra’s case matters not just as evidence but as a life — a woman who was twenty-eight, who had a story that preceded by decades the headlines that finally brought her name back into public view.

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