FBI probe reports of ties to missing woman and Rex Heuermann
The FBI has joined an investigation into possible links between suspected serial killer Rex Heuermann and a missing South Carolina mom — but a local sheriff cautions that so far there is “zero” direct evidence.
Sumter County Sheriff’s Office confirmed to NBC News Monday that the feds have been asked to help investigate Julia Ann Bean’s 2017 disappearance after her daughter recently came forward to say she was last seen with a man resembling the 59-year-old Gilgo Beach suspect.
The daughter, Cameron Bean, also said the mystery man was driving a dark truck, seemingly similar to the vehicle hauled from Heuermann’s own home in the Palmetto State after his arrest for the Long Island murders.
“Miss Bean may have a connection with the serial killer in New York, Rex Heuermann,” the sheriff’s office spokesman Mark Bordeaux recently told WLTX.
“It’s still unclear, but there’s enough hope that our investigators are doggedly pursuing an answer.”
Still, while acknowledging his own investigators’ “guarded excitement,” Bordeaux stressed that the initial investigation had yet to produce anything concrete beyond the daughter’s reported memories.
“Thus far, the connection is zero,” he told NBC’s “Today” show Monday.
“We have hearsay, we have supposition, but whether or not that man was Rex Heuermann, we have yet to be able to determine,” he said.
“Just because we want so badly to find the whereabouts of Ms. Julia Bean, does not mean that we can pre-suppose anything.
“We have to operate in the world of facts,” he said of the re-opened investigation.
The FBI did not immediately return messages Monday seeking comment on its investigation.
Bean’s daughter confirmed in a statement to NBC News that she is working with investigators about the case.
Family friend Heidi Kovas previously shared text messages the daughter allegedly sent after first seeing photos of the hulking architect suspected of killing the Gilgo Four.
“I have chills … That was the last man I saw her with personally,” she allegedly texted of the night her then-36-year-old mom went missing in June 2017.
“She knew him right away,” family friend Heidi Kovas told PIX 11. “She recognized him right away. She said that was the last person she ever saw with her mom.”
Heuermann owns property in a wooded area in South Carolina’s Chester County — about 90 minutes from Sumter — where he reportedly plans to retire.
Although he did not buy that property until 2021, his brother, Craig, has lived in the Chester area since about 2000, records show.
The architect was first linked to the Gilgo Beach killings by his distinctive dark Chevrolet Avalanche truck, which was hauled away from his South Carolina property soon after his arrest in New York.
Kovas also said the Gilgo Beach victims shared a striking resemblance to Bean, who she said “was more than likely escorting” when she disappeared, as were the Long Island women.
“They look like Julia,” Kovas told PIX11 of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, and Amber Lynn Costello, whose bodies were found wrapped in burlap along Ocean Parkway in Dec. 2010.
“They look just like Julia. The blonde hair, the green eyes, petite.”
The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office has said it “stands ready to assist outside jurisdictions with any of their ongoing investigations,” but would not comment on any specific inquest.
Officials are also looking for possible ties between the father of two and cold cases in several states, including Nevada, where Heuermann has long owned timeshares in Las Vegas.
Heuermann has pleaded not guilty to three counts each of first- and second-degree murder in the deaths of Costello, 27, Barthelemy, 24, and Waterman, 22. He has been formally named the “prime suspect” in the death of Brainard-Barnes, 25.
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