(NewsNation) — Long before Rex Heuermann’s arrest, detectives had looked at the possible ties between Long Island’s Gilgo Beach killings and a string of unsolved homicides some 170 miles away in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Instead of a thicket on a beach, the four Atlantic City victims were all found in a drainage ditch five feet deep and 10 feet wide. They were found in 2006 behind a strip of motels, face down, strangled to death without any shoes or personal belongings.
They were eventually identified as Molly Dilts, Kim Raffo, Barbara Breidor and Tracy Roberts, and all of them were sex workers. Their bodies were placed facing east, and the killer was dubbed the “Eastbound Strangler.”
Police are now looking at whether Heuermann, who was has been charged with three Gilgo Beach murders, could be involved in the Atlantic City killings.
Robin Dreeke, a retired FBI special agent and former head of the counterintelligence division’s behavioral analysis program, says the profile for the Eastbound Strangler “strangely fits” that of Heuermann.
“I think there’s a lot of similarities, especially strangulation, the missing shoes, those are two big ones for me,” Dreeke said Monday on “Banfield.”
Heuermann, 59, is charged with the murders of Amber Costello, Melissa Barthelemy and Megan Waterman. All sex workers, their bodies were found on Gilgo Beach in 2010.
Heuermann has pleaded not guilty.
ABC7 New York reports Suffolk County police are looking “around the nation,” including Atlantic City, for any possible connections to the Gilgo Beach murders in which Heuermann is a suspect.
“It seems like duct tape and hair have been really the undoing of a lot of these murders, and so hopefully the investigators back then with Atlantic City as well were able to collect the evidence,” Dreeke said. “So, they can then take the new technologies and new advancements and apply it to what they have back then and try to do those overlays. I think there’s a good chance that there are already seeing a comparison similarity.”
Police in Long Island connected Heuermann to the Gilgo Beach killings by obtaining his DNA from a discarded pizza box in Manhattan. They also say his wife’s hair was found on the victims.
He allegedly used multiple burner phones and also called the family of one of the victims to taunt them after her disappearance.
A former escort who met Heuermann in 2015 told NewsNation she was “weirded out” because of his extreme interest in the killings. She also claims he mentioned Atlantic City during their conversation and had a general lack of compassion for the victims.
“When you’re dealing with someone that is trying to satisfy their own sexual deviancy, they’re going to go for someone who’s not going to necessarily in their eyes be missed by a population so they can get away with it, and they’re also looking for someone that they can victimize without them being alerted to really abhorrent behavior,” Dreeke said in explaining victimology.
Police continue to search Heuermann’s home in Massapequa Park, New York, near where the bodies were found on Gilgo Beach. They’ve dug up his backyard and also searched a vault found in his basement.
NewsNation digital producer Sean Noone contributed to this report.