Suffolk County police on Long Island announced a shocking development on Friday in a case that’s obsessed followers of true crime for over a decade. Rex Heuermann, a 59-year-old architect, was arrested in what’s known as the Gilgo Beach serial killings, at least ten deaths that stretch as far back as the 1990s.

Several of the victims, as well as the then-abortive search for the killer, were immortalized in Robert Kolker’s 2013 non-fiction bestseller Lost Girls: An American Unsolved Mystery. A high-profile dramatic adaptation of that book, starring Amy Ryan and Gabriel Byrne, dropped on Netflix in 2020. Though it didn’t make much of a splash at the time (the emerging pandemic overshadowed its release on March 13), with the story on the front page of every paper in the country, it’s likely Lost Girls will see an uptick in views on the platform in coming days, though police say its central figure might not be one of the Long Island serial killer’s actual victims.

A grand jury had charged Heuermann with six counts of murder for the slayings of Melissa Barthelemy in 2009, and Megan Waterman and Amber Costello in 2010, according to Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney. He's also “the prime suspect in the 2007 disappearance and death of a fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, according to a bail application from prosecutors,” but has yet to be charged in that case, according to CNN. 

Heuermann has denied all involvement in the deaths and entered a plea of not guilty on all charges.

To just about everyone's surprise, actor Billy Baldwin popped up on social media to confirm that he went to high school with the suspect. “Mind-boggling… Massapequa is in shock,” he said.

In a subsequent Instagram post, Baldwin wrote that his tweeted mention of DNA test kit 23andMe was a reference to a practice known as forensic DNA, in which similar tests are used to link people via relatives to past crimes. “When people allow their 23 and Me DNA results to be posted publicly, it can often resolve a cold case crime or paternity issue because they can link someone's child or niece or nephew to a suspect by their 23 and Me results,” Baldwin said.

Investigators say it was phone records and a distinctive pickup truck that directed them toward Heuermann, and the AP reports that the DNA evidence in question was recovered from a pizza crust discarded by Heuermann and strands of his wife's hair that police say matched evidence found on one of the victims.

That victim, as well as others linked to the case, were found along a highway near Heuermann’s home between 2010 and 2011, only after the mother of another missing woman—Shannan Gilbert, who disappeared in 2010—pushed police to search the area. During that search, the remains of several other women, most of them sex workers, were found along Ocean Parkway in the tony Long Island enclave of Oak Beach. Several other bodies have been found in the area in years since, many of whom police say were killed by the same person. Until Friday, no arrests have ever been made, nor were any suspects announced in the homicides.

Though investigators have since said that they don’t believe Gilbert’s death is related to the Long Island serial killer case, it’s her death that’s at the heart of Lost Girls. It’s also what attracted director Liz Garbus to the film, she told Collider in after the film made its Sundance debut.

"The book tells the stories of five families who have lost a daughter and their various struggles over the course of about ten years as they try to get the authorities to help locate these girls,” Garbus said, while the film focuses on Mari Gilbert (Ryan), whose daughter Shannan “was the last girl to go missing as far as we know,” Garbus said at the time. “She raised some hell, and got the police to start looking, but of course, it was too late. And in doing so, a group of women came together to get justice for their loved ones. It's also the story of Mari Gilbert forgiving herself as a mother,” Garbus said.

The movie was also Garbus’s scripted debut, after a career focused on documentaries, including Oscar nominees The Farm: Angola, USA and What Happened, Miss Simone? The same year Lost Girls was released, Garbus also helmed docuseries I’ll Be Gone in the Dark for HBO, an adaptation of the late Michelle McNamara’s investigation into the Golden State Killer case.

McNamara died before her book was published, the victim of an accidental drug overdose in 2016. Mari Gilbert was also gone before Lost Girls was released, killed by another of her daughters, Sarra Gilbert, in 2016.

Speaking with Collider about her character, Ryan said that "Mari had an extremely hard life. She was a single parent who worked a few jobs, and she made really hard decisions with some of her parenting choices, which I'm sure, at the time, she believed were her best choices.”

In the film, Byrne plays former Suffolk Police Commissioner Richard Dormer, who—in reality as well as the film—clashed with Mari Gilbert over the investigation. In a 2011 appearance on 48 Hours Mystery, he argued that Shannan accidentally drowned and was “hysterical” at the time of her death. That said, he agreed with other investigators that the other 10 bodies discovered in the area were victims of a serial killer, the search for which Mari Gilbert—and others—claim he botched. Dormer resigned as Commissioner later that year, and died in 2019 at age 79.

According to Garbus, Dormer “bungle[ed] this case—whether because of negligence or corruption, we really don't know—and what Gabriel did so brilliantly was walk the line for different interpretations to arise from it.”

Less nuanced, perhaps, is the characterization of Dean Bostick, a Suffolk Police investigator who has no real-life counterpart. Played by insurance pitchman Dean Winters in the film, Bostick is a “composite character,” Garbus said, a less ambiguous cop with lines like “I mean, honestly, who spends this much time looking for a missing hooker?”

The answer to that question, apparently, is Suffolk County's newest Police Commissioner, Rodney Harrison. He's the one who revived the then-dormant search for the serial killer last year, saying then that “I believe this case is solvable and identifying the person or people responsible for these murders is a top priority." 

Heuermann remains in custody without bail, after prosecutors filed a 32-page document outlining the allegations against him. Lost Girls is available on Netflix now.