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In 2020, only 45% of murders in the United States were solved by police. That belies the mythology of film and television about the country's law enforcement, but it also offers cases that defy the imagination of Hollywood's hottest-minded screenwriter, something especially important since strikes by writers and actors have paralyzed much of the American film industry.

What happened last Thursday in New York, however, would make for a movie. 12 years after the island of Long Island, located next to New York City, had been shaken by a wave of murders that claimed the lives of between 10 and 18 women, most of whom were street prostitutes, police arrested a suspect who has been accused of at least three of those people.

This manhunt has ended - at least for now - with the accusation against New York architect Rex Heuermann, 59, who, although he lives and works in Manhattan, spent his childhood in the area where the crimes took place. If his guilt is confirmed in a trial, it would close one of the darkest chapters in the history of crime in the United States in recent decades, the serial murders of Gilgo Beach, in reference to the beach where the bodies of several of the victims were found. Songs, books, documentaries and even a Netflix series have explored – and exploited – the case.

Rex Heuermann, the New York architect arrested for the Gilgo Beach murders on Long Island. M.

The methods applied to identify Heuermann would be typical of the series Forensic Files (Forensic Reports), some docudramas that are a classic of American television. Police became suspicious of the alleged serial killer in January, and organized a device to track him. That's how agents recovered a piece of pizza that Heuermann had thrown into a bin on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The pizza had traces of the same DNA found in the sack in which the corpse of one of the murdered women had been transported before being abandoned.

Police tightened surveillance and identified traces of Heuermann's wife's DNA in the vicinity of another body. The wife of the alleged killer was not living in upstate New York when the killings occurred. Finally, examination of the alleged killer's online activity revealed enormous interest in the investigation, as well as an obsessive following of several of the victims and their families.

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