Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison ripped Gilgo Beach murder suspect Rex Heuermann as “an animal” Saturday, vowing not to rest until all killers responsible for the 10 bodies are arrested — as the NYPD looked for city ties to the alleged killer’s DNA.
“I’m not going to rest until we get all involved that committed all the crimes whether it’s this animal — or someone else,” Harrison said in an exclusive interview with The Post.
Harrison, the NYPD’s former chief of department, is hailed for revamping the Suffolk PD and lighting a fire under the 13-year-old Gilgo Beach investigation.
“We have 11 bodies all together,” he said. “You take out Shannan Gilbert. We were able to say that that was a horrible accident. We don’t believe that that was part of the murders.”
“There’s some more work that needs to be done,” he said of the other remains found on the beach.
Now that the NYPD has the DNA of suspected Gilgo Beach killer Rex Heuermann, the department plans to see if it links to any of their cold cases, a source told The Post.
Having Heuermann’s DNA — which authorities got from a discarded pizza crust to tie him to three of the “Gilgo Four” — “changes things,” the source said.
The department now plans to see if Heuermann, 59, is connected to any of their open cases, the source said.
“His DNA was never in the system until they arrested him,” the source said. “Now we can compare it to other crimes.”
A former detective from the NYPD’s Cold Case unit said he believes the four women are probably just the tip of the iceberg.
“If we have four, he probably did 10,” said Wendell Stradford, a former NYPD cold case detective. “As he got more comfortable with it, he probably figured out how to get rid of them.”
The experienced sleuth, who was on the force for nearly 40 years, also said searching the DNA won’t be as simple as it appears on television crime shows.
The investigators will have to look for similar cases and then make sure victims’ DNA profiles have been added to the FBI’s CODIS (Combined DNA Index System) database to search for connections to the alleged killer, he said.
The federal database is an umbrella for state DNA samples and contains the DNA profiles from federal, state and local forensic laboratories.
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“People are under the impression that we submit everything to CODIS,” he said. “We do not because it’s very expensive and you have to have a very good reason for doing it because the city is paying for it.”
He also said cops may have to submit evidence that isn’t already in the database.
“The biggest thing in sex assaults are fingernail scrapings,” he said.
He said medical examiner’s offices won’t always test them if there’s no suspect.
“They’re like, ‘Do you have a suspect,’” he said. “If not, we’re not going to test them. We’ll keep them on file in the event that you get a suspect and then we’ll test.’”
He said police officers would have to look at similar cases and make sure evidence has been submitted.
While local cops look to link Heuermann to more crimes, the dramatic moment that law enforcement finally made a breakthrough in the long-unsolved Gilgo Beach murders was caught on video.
Rex Heuermann was walking along a Midtown sidewalk, oblivious, in the moments before he was arrested, footage of his arrest obtained by ABC7 shows.
Heuermann was suddenly confronted by one plainclothes cop who stepped right in front of him, then swarmed by officers during the Thursday night takedown.
On Friday, Heuermann was charged in the murders of Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello, whose bodies were found wrapped in burlap along Ocean Parkway on Long Island’s South Shore, according to a Suffolk County Criminal Court indictment.
He is considered the primary suspect in the death of a fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes.
Meanwhile, authorities poured over his ramshackle Massapequa Park home for a second day, taking mundane items like an empty bookcase and cat food out, while Hazmat suit-clad investigators sorted evidence in his unkempt backyard.
They did a similar search of his Midtown office on Fifth Avenue on Friday.
