After twenty years, a Las Vegas murder was set to be “re-evaluated” for potential connections to Long Island Serial Killer suspect Rex Heuermann, RadarOnline.com has learned.
Since Jodi Marie Brewer, 19, was murdered in 2003, little progress in the investigation caused the case to grow cold. When Heuermann’s arrest made headlines on July 13, the Manhattan-based architect and father-of-two‘s ties to the Sin City brought Brewer’s murder back into the spotlight.
Heuermann’s Suffolk County arrest prompted law enforcement in multiple states to re-examine cold cases with similarities to the Gilgo Beach murders, which police said Heuermann was connected to via DNA and cell phone data.
Heuermann was suspected of murdering three female sex workers, Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Costello, and Megan Waterman. The women’s remains were found wrapped in burlap on Gilgo Beach during the 2010 search for missing sex worker Shannan Gilbert.
A Las Vegas family believed their daughter could also be a victim of Heuermann, who owned property off the Las Vegas Strip.
Pam Brewer recalled the final conversation she had with her daughter Jodi on August 14, 2003, the night she went missing.
“She had gone out for the night, and she said, ‘I love you mom.’ She said, ‘I’ll see you in the morning,” the grieving mother told News12 Brooklyn. “I said, ‘I love you’ to Jodi. And I never saw her again.”
Two weeks later, the 19-year-old’s torso was found wrapped in cloth and plastic in the desolate Mojave Desert.
Pam explained that her daughter had fallen into the wrong crowd and as a result, turned to drugs and prostitution before her murder. Heuermann’s timeshare was located in a seedy part of town known for its abundance of sex workers.
“It seems to me like the area that he bought the condos in was prostitution areas and that it would have been really easy for him,” Brewer’s mother said.
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According to the outlet, a review of 266 Las Vegas cold case murders revealed four other sex workers who were killed under disturbingly similar circumstances. A Las Vegas law enforcement source claimed, “One person is to blame for at least several of those cases.”
The source noted that advanced DNA testing was being looked at to connect the cases to a suspect; however, due to the degeneration of samples over time, the process could take months.
“Hearing the whole Rex thing, it’s totally different now because it gives us a little hope,” Pam said of a potential break in her daughter’s case. Brewer’s sister Jacqueline agreed. “Hopefully, we can get some resolutions.”