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The lawyer Gilgo beach serial killer suspect Rex Heuermann has claimed his ‘sadistic’ internet searches don’t mean he’s a murderer.

‘Searching the internet, ask yourselves what you search on your computers and your phones,’ defense attorney Michael Brown told reporters on Tuesday after Heuermann was charged with a fourth woman’s killing in Long Island.

‘One thing leads to another – you see a show about something, you start searching, and they talk about how somebody got killed…. You start searching, and then they talk about another way, and you start searching,’ Brown added.

‘Think about if they looked at your own personal search history, how all of a sudden you’re guilty because of your search history?’

Investigators say they found dozens of alarming internet searches on a burner phone and email account that Heuermann used under the name ‘Thomas Hawk.’

Rex Heuermann  on Tuesday was charged with the murder of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, a Long Island sex worker who vanished in July 2007. Her body was found three years later 

Rex Heuermann’s disturbing April 2021 internet searches were revealed in new court filings 

The searches included ‘torture redhead watch porn online,’ ‘girl with face beat up,’ ‘chubby 10 year old girl crying,’ and ‘Asian twink tied up.’

On Tuesday Heuermann was charged with the killing of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, a 25-year-old sex worker who vanished in 2007.

Last summer he was charged with the murders of three of the ‘Gilgo Beach four’ – Megan Waterman, Amber Costello and Melissa Barthelemy.

He denies all of the charges and his attorney Brown has claimed the DNA testing is not foolproof. 

Brown said: ‘He has maintained his innocence from day one. We had advance notice that it was coming, I explained it to him. He said “I am not guilty” , he is looking forward to fighting these charges.

‘All along we’ve been told the evidence is unsuitable for nuclear DNA testing. There has bene testimony, lab reports that said it was incapable of having nuclear DNA testing.

‘Those statistics are not very convincing.’

A female hair that was found on the belt used to bind Maureen’s body was a match for Heuermann’s wife, new charging documents reveal.

DNA found on the buckle of the belt used to bind Maureen Brainard-Barnes’ body was a match for Heuermann’s wife 

Heuermann has been charged in the murders of Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Costello and Megan Waterman. He is the prime suspect in the murder of Maureen Brainard-Barnes 

She and the children were out of town when Maureen vanished in July 2007 and have not been charged.

In new charging documents, prosecutors revealed today how police followed Heuermann’s daughter, Victoria, on a Long Island Railroad train in May 2023.

They seized a discarded can of Monster Java, an energy drink, that she had been drinking from to test her DNA against the traces found on the victims’ bodies.

Maureen was 25 when she vanished after taking the train from Connecticut to New York in 2007.

Her corpse was discovered three years later, bound by a distinctive belt that had a buckle with the initials ‘WH’ or ‘MH’ engraved on it. Investigators said it could have belonged to one of Heuermann’s relatives. 

All four women were sex workers whose remains were discovered in a stretch of Long Island shorefront near Heuermann’s home in 2010.

Another six bodies were discovered in a different patch of beach the following year. He has not been charged in those murders.

Ten bodies were found in total in 2010 and 2011 in stretches of Long Island beach near to where Heuermann lived 

Heuermann, an architect who lived with his wife and kids in Massapequa Park when the killings occurred, has pleaded not guilty.

He was charged last year in a bombshell case development after a new team of detectives revisited the decade-old case and found traces of his DNA on some of the victims and the tarps they were wrapped in.

Police also traced phone calls made to some of the victims’ families to the areas where Heuermann lived and worked.

The deaths had long stumped investigators and fueled immense public attention on Long Island and beyond, with the killings leading to the 2020 Netflix film ‘Lost Girls.’