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DETECTIVES are investigating accused Gilgo Beach killer Rex Heuermann in connection to the unsolved murder of a woman found bound at the side of a Long Island highway 34 years ago, following a desperate appeal from her relatives.
Carmen Vargas was just 29 years old when she vanished in the summer of 1989. She was last seen getting into a dark truck outside her apartment building in Harlem, New York, promising her sister and niece that she’d be home later that night.
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But Vargas’ promise was broken – though not of her own volition.
She never returned home that evening and when she failed to show first thing the following morning her family knew instantly that something terrible must’ve happened.
“She was out a lot but she’d always come home. Every day,” Vargas’ niece, Felicita Figueroa, who was just 12 when her aunt vanished, told The U.S. Sun.
“When she told me, ‘I’ll be back,’ I believed her because she always did, no matter what she was doing or who she was seeing.
“She got into a dark car […] I couldn’t really see the make or who was driving it, but I believe it was a white man with glasses.
“When she didn’t come home the next day, we went out asking around the neighborhood if anyone had seen her.
“She never told us where she was going, or who with – only that she was coming back.”
An agonizing three-year period of silence would follow, with almost no traces of Vargas yielded in the moments after they’d unknowingly bid farewell to her for the final time.
Felicita and her siblings spent months putting up missing posters around their neighborhood, while Vargas’ oldest sister – Felicita’s aunt – volunteered for the harrowing task of frequently visiting the city morgue and local police precinct, looking at bodies and sifting through images of women who had recently been found dead to see if any of them resembled her younger sibling.
To the family’s relief, none of them had, but the experience left Vargas’ eldest sister traumatized.
And, unfortunately, that wouldn’t be the end of the family’s suffering – nor would their extensive search for Vargas end in a miraculous triumph.
A HARROWING DISCOVERY
One night, in the summer of 1992, the family had gathered to watch the news when a sketch of a woman flashed on screen who had been found murdered on Long Island three years prior, on September 11, 1989.
The sketch didn’t much resemble Vargas but Felicita’s aunt contacted the Nassau County Police Department anyway, just in case.
Officers from the department made the hour-long car ride to their home in Harlem within days.
They requested Vargas’ dental records and quizzed Felicita on what her aunt had been wearing on the day she disappeared.
A blue mini skirt and a gray tank top, Felicita had told them, before they handed her a series of photographs depicting clothes identical to those she’d just described.
“Those are her clothes,” Felicita reluctantly confirmed.
The officers refused to show the family any more images of the woman due to their gruesome nature.
They left with Vargas’ dental records and later used them to confirm that it was her they’d found.
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Vargas’ body was discovered in a wooded area roughly 30 feet from the west side of the Meadowbrook State Parkway in Freeport, New York.
Her legs were bound at the ankles with a cord. She had a towel over her face and a rope tied around her neck. Though not mentioned in news reports from the time, Felicita says her aunt’s wrists were also bound.
Although she was discovered on Sept. 11, 1989, police believe she was murdered at a different location and dumped along the parkway some two to four weeks prior.
Vargas’ remains were so badly decomposed that detectives were unable to determine whether she’d been sexually assaulted or how she’d been killed.
Her skull was missing three teeth. Her hyoid bone in her neck was also partially missing, Felicita said, suggesting that Vargas had been strangled to death.
The horrific discovery left Felicita and her family with few answers and only an endless list of questions – the weight of which became too much for some of her relatives to bear.
“My mother started using drugs after this because she was so depressed […] whoever did this took my aunt from me and […] killed my mother,” said Felicita through tears.
A GLIMMER OF HOPE
For years, the family believed that Vargas may have fallen victim to Joel Rifkin, a Long Island native who confessed to killing 17 women between 1989 to 1993.
However, detectives hounded Rifkin with questions about Vargas after his arrest but he declined to take responsibility for her murder.
“Joel Rifkin said, ‘That’s not me. That’s not my work,'” said Figueroa. “We really thought it was him but we eventually let it go.
“He would’ve accepted the credit, he admitted to killing 17 women. He admitted to each and every one of them.”
Another three decades would pass without answers and closure.
In the meantime, Felicita’s grief-stricken mom, Aida Vargas, tragically passed away in 2009.
But Felicita and her other family members were given a renewed sense of hope that one day answers may finally be forthcoming in Vargas’ murder, following the arrest of Rex Heuermann on July 13.
Heuermann, a Long Island lifer, has been charged with the murders of three women found dead on Gilgo Beach in late 2010: Megan Water, 22, Melissa Barthelemy, 24, and Amber Lynn Costello, 27.
Heuermann is also the prime suspect in the murder of a fourth woman, 25-year-old Maureen Brainard-Barnes.
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Known collectively as the Gilgo Four, the women were all sex workers of a petite build who advertised their services on Craigslist.
They were found in close proximity to one another along Ocean Parkway. Each was missing items of clothing and personal belongings.
They were also found “similarly positioned, bound in a similar fashion by either belts or tape, with three of the victims found wrapped in a burlap-type material,” according to court documents.
The four murders are part of a broader investigation into at least 11 unsolved deaths in the Gilgo Beach area – otherwise referred to as the Long Island Serial Killer (LISK) case – with the earliest known killing in that case occurring sometime in early 1996.
Heuermann has not been accused or charged with any additional murders and Suffolk County police have so far been tight-lipped as to whether he’s being investigated as a concrete suspect in connection to the other deaths.
However, numerous police departments across the country are combing back through old cold cases and missing person reports to establish any potential links to him.
Felicita is convinced that her aunt may have been an early victim of Heuermann’s and recently urged local police to re-investigate her death.
“I believe he did it,” alleged Felicita. “I believe he did it when he first started killing.
“It’s too close to where he lived and where he worked.
“Where she was found is not far from Gilgo Beach, it’s right by Jones Beach. And what was my aunt doing all the way over there?
“She doesn’t know anyone from Long Island. We’re from Harlem.”
Felicita first contacted the Nassau District Attorney’s Office who ordered a team of detectives to investigate the case.
In a statement to The U.S. Sun, the communications director for the DA’s office, Brendan Brosh, confirmed Vargas’ case is being re-examined.
“We’re working with our law enforcement partners to review unsolved homicide cases that fit the alleged pattern of Rex Heuermann,” said Brosh.
“With regards to the investigation of the murder of Carmen Vargas, I’d have to refer you to the Nassau County Police Department as they are the lead agency.”
The Nassau County Police Department has not yet returned a request for comment seeking further information.
‘JUST LIKE CARMEN’
Heuermann would’ve been roughly 25 years old at the time of Vargas’ disappearance.
While he has lived in Massapequa Park, in his childhood home, for the vast majority of his life, in the summer of 1989 he was working for Greer Construction Company and living in Freeport on Bedell Avenue, records show.
Heuermann’s residence would’ve been a mere few miles drive from where Vargas’ body was found along Meadowbrook Parkway.
Additionally, Freeport is just two towns over from Massapequa Park and Meadowbrook Parkway leads to Ocean Parkway where the Gilgo Four were found.
It’s not only Heuermann’s seeming proximity to the location of Vargas’ remains that arouses Felicita’s suspicions.
She also believes her aunt shares several striking similarities to Heuermann’s alleged victims, in both how she looked and how she was found.
Carmen Vargas was a petite Hispanic woman in her 20s who stood at approximately 5’1″ and weighed 105 pounds, matching the average build and height of the other four women.
Her ankles and – according to Felicita – wrists were also bound just like the other women.
Felicita had never heard of the LISK case before Heuermann’s arrest. She was alerted to it by one of her co-workers and, after researching the murders, she was almost immediately overcome with a gut feeling that this may be the breakthrough she’d long been waiting for.
“I started reading about the women and it was really triggering for me, so that’s when I started asking my aunt about it, asking if she’d heard about this serial killer, how they found the women, and telling her it sounds just like Carmen,” she recounted.
“She didn’t know what I was talking about, so I showed her. She was like, ‘Oh my God!’ and I asked her if she thinks he did it.
“It just brought back so many memories, so I started reaching out to people and called the police, the Nassau County Police Department, who are now looking into it.”
GUT FEELING: ‘IT WAS REX’
Felicita told The U.S. Sun she’s eagerly waiting by the phone for updates, hoping to finally achieve justice in her aunt’s name.
The last 34 years have been incredibly painful for her and her family, she added. During that time she believes her aunt Carmen was forgotten by investigators and her case was otherwise not handled with the care it deserved.
“It hurts because it feels like they forgot about her,” said Felicita.
“They forget about a lot of these women, but these women were valuable to their families, they were mothers, sisters, daughters, and aunts.
“It was like, nothing. It was as if they didn’t care because she didn’t work a legitimate job and because she wasn’t a white woman, or whatever.
“They’re still human. It could’ve been one of the detective’s daughters out there. They’d be out looking then.”
She added: “My aunt said I was bringing back all these old memories and it hurts. But I have to do it because I need to know.
“My gut feeling is that he [Rex Heuermann] did it.”
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