'It's been 17 years since we last spoke,' victim's sister tells Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann, who taunted her after murdering her sibling

Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex A. Heuermann kept his eyes down through most of his sentencing hearing on Wednesday in Riverhead, unwilling to look at the relatives of the women he murdered as they described decades of grief, pain and loss.

But all of that changed when Amanda Funderburg, the younger sister of victim Melissa Barthelemy, demanded Heuermann’s attention as she delivered her victim impact statement.

“You can look at me when I am talking,” Funderburg said to Heuermann, her voice electric with emotion that forced him to look up for the first time in the two-hour hearing. “It’s been 17 years since we last spoke.”

Funderburg was just 15 years old when Barthelemy disappeared in July 2009, and authorities said the serial killer used Barthelemy’s cellphone to make taunting phone calls to his victim’s little sister after the grisly murder. He shared horrifying details about how he tortured her sister before he killed her.

"He wanted to torture [her]," Suffolk District Attorney Ray Tierney said of Heuermann's calls to Funderburg, adding torturing Barthelemy wasn't enough for Heuermann. "That, your honor, is all you need to know. He is smug, confident, not nearly as smart as he thinks he is."

Funderburg said Heuermann robbed her of her childhood. She has been crippled by anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health problems as a result of her sister’s disappearance and the creepy phone calls Heuermann made to her.

Barthelemy, Funderburg said, was not only her big sister but also her best friend. Barthelemy was a “fighter for love, for family, for a better life.” Heuermann — whom she called “an ogre” and “a repulsive monster” — took all of that away.

“I was 15. Fifteen years old. I know you don’t care,” Funderburg told Heuermann. “I was robbed of my youth. I was robbed of my young adulthood.”

Police were able to trace some of the calls to midtown Manhattan, and while they were originally unable to identify the caller, Heuermann was ultimately arrested near his midtown office years later, on July 13, 2023.

Heuermann, of Massapequa Park, pleaded guilty in April to the murders of seven women and admitted he killed an eighth victim. On Wednesday, State Supreme Court Justice Timothy Mazzei sentenced Heuermann to multiple consecutive life sentences for the murders of Barthelemy and the other victims.

“I hope you suffer,” Funderburg told Heuermann.

The Gilgo Beach case began in May 2010, when a sex worker named Shannan Gilbert called 911 while fleeing from the Oak Beach home of a client. Suffolk County Police Officer John Malia and his K-9 partner, Blue, a German shepherd trained in cadaver searches, searched for Gilbert near Ocean Parkway in December 2010. They didn’t immediately find Gilbert’s body — that wouldn’t happen until December 2011 — but they did find Barthelemy’s remains.

The remains of three other women — Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Megan Waterman and Amber Lynn Costello — were found in the days that followed.

The sentencing marks an end to a case that shocked Long Island and the nation, both for the cruelty of the crimes and the incompetence of Suffolk County law enforcement during the early years of the investigation. The Suffolk District Attorney’s Office and Suffolk police, under earlier leadership, publicly feuded over the investigation, with dueling theories about how many killers committed the crimes. The investigation also soured after then-Chief of Department James Burke cut ties with the FBI, after federal agents launched an investigation into allegations that he violated the civil rights of a man who broke into his car and stole sex toys, porn videos and police equipment.

Barthelemy, a native of Buffalo who had moved to the Bronx, was 24 years old when she was killed. She had worked as a hairstylist and hoped to open her own salon, her sister said Wednesday.

“Do me a favor — save me a spot in hell,” Funderburg told Heuermann as she concluded her remarks, “because I will see you there.”