Inside details of Gilgo Beach serial killer investigation revealed in new book by former Suffolk Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison

"Rex Heuermann, you're under arrest," a Suffolk detective told the Gilgo Beach serial killer outside of his Manhattan office on July 13, 2023.

"For what?" Heuermann replied.

Once detectives placed a handcuffed Heuermann inside an SUV that had been outfitted with hidden microphones, Heuermann again asked: "What are you guys locking me up for?"

When the hulking architect was told that he was being arrested in connection with the Gilgo killings, Heuermann said, "Well, I want a lawyer."

And then Heuermann, who admitted in open court to strangling to death eight women when he pleaded guilty last month, was silent for the rest of the two-hour ride to Suffolk Police headquarters in Yaphank.

Those details of Heuermann's arrest were laid out in a newly published memoir by former Suffolk Police Commissioner Rodney K. Harrison, who created the multiagency task force that ultimately led to the arrest of Heuermann.

Harrison, who made history as the first Black police commissioner in the Suffolk County Police Department, self-published his memoir, which — in addition to his role in helping to reinvigorate the Gilgo investigation — touches on his roots in South Jamaica, Queens, and his rise to chief of department in the NYPD, the nation's largest police department.

Heuermann, 62, pleaded guilty last month to the murders of seven women, who were sex workers — Amber Lynn Costello, Megan Waterman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Jessica Taylor, Valerie Mack, Sandra Costilla and Melissa Barthelemy. Heuermann also admitted as part of his plea to killing Karen Vergata. He is scheduled to be sentenced on June 17 to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

"This was a great load off my shoulders; I'm glad that he did take a plea," Harrison said in a phone interview with Newsday Monday. "He didn't try to go in a place of trying to not take ownership of the horrible things that he committed. I still think, to this day, that there's more out there."

Asked if he thinks Heuermann committed more killings,  Harrison said: "I think 1,000% that there's more women out there that are missing that may be connected to Rex Heuermann."

In his book, "The Commissioner: From Street Cop to Top Cop and the Inside Story of the Hunt for the Gilgo Beach Serial Killer," Harrison described his frustration with the slowness of the investigation and how the different law enforcement agencies assigned to work on the case through the task force approached the work from different perspectives.

"The DA's office wanted to move methodically," Harrison wrote. "The FBI wanted to move faster. I wanted results. Tension boiled over in our briefings. Some ended in shouting matches."

Harrison also described how Heuermann's arrest wasn't supposed to happen that particular summer night.

Harrison was driving himself to an event in Harlem when he got a call from Rich Zacarese, the chief investigator in the Suffolk district attorney's office, who said authorities were worried the news of Heuermann's indictment might leak.

Once Heuermann was arrested, police informed his wife.

"They knocked on the door and told his wife that her husband had been arrested for the Gilgo Beach murders," Harrison wrote. "At first, she didn't believe it. When detectives explained the DNA evidence and details, she went silent. That silence said more than words ever could."

Prosecutors have said Heuermann's then-wife, Asa Ellerup, was not involved in the killings, as she was out of town when they occurred.

Harrison described seeing up-close the cutthroat world of Suffolk politics and how it permeated everything — including the arrest of a serial killer.

"With Rex Heuermann locked up in the Riverhead Jail, the legal machinery was spinning fast," Harrison wrote. "But before the case could move forward, the political maneuvering started. Everyone wanted to own the moment."

Harrison described a series of bizarre back-and-forth conversations between himself and then-Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone and Suffolk District Attorney Ray Tierney in which Bellone ordered him to hold a news conference announcing Heuermann's arrest and Tierney forbade him to do so.

"What a circus!" Harrison wrote. "The biggest press conference of my life and I was bouncing back and forth on the LIE like a Ping-Pong ball — caught between two political egos."

When speaking at a news conference later that day, Tierney "boasted," Harrison wrote, and "took credit for forming the task force."

"Tierney had stabbed me in the back," Harrison wrote. "He was taking credit for forming the task force. I was seething inside."

The district attorney said Monday night that he has not read the book and declined to comment on something he has not read.

Bellone did not respond to messages seeking comment Monday night.

Harrison also detailed how the FBI initially refused to join the Gilgo task force, citing the federal agency's previous attempts at working on the case with Suffolk homicide detectives under the leadership of Chief of Department James Burke, who served some 46 months in federal prison for beating up a handcuffed prisoner and had blocked the FBI's involvement in the Gilgo investigation.

"And there it was: the Burke stain, still poisoning relationships years later," Harrison wrote.

Newsday's Grant Parpan contributed to his story.

By Nicole Fuller

nicole.fuller@newsday.com@NicoleFuller

Nicole Fuller is Newsday's senior criminal justice reporter. She began working at Newsday in 2012 and previously covered local government.