Las Vegas police are testing Rex Heuermann’s DNA for a possible connection to the murder of a young mother
Las Vegas police are testing the DNA of Gilgo Beach murder suspect Rex Heuermann to see if it’s linked to the unsolved murder of a young mother – with one officer pointing to “startling” similarities between the cases.
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department lab is conducting the “head-to-head comparison” of Heuermann’s DNA and evidence related to the 2003 murder of 17-year-old Victoria Camara. according to News12.
Results are expected in six to eight weeks, the outlet added.
The LVMPD did not immediately respond to the Post’s request to confirm this report.
Camara’s remains were found in the early hours of August 11, 2003 by a gravel truck driver in the desert just off a haul road in Boulder City, about 26 miles outside of Las Vegas. according to the LVMPD Open Cases page.
A few weeks later, her body was identified and police concluded that she was likely killed in Las Vegas.
“Someone took my mother’s life without consideration,” Camara’s daughter Savanah told News12 this week.
Savanah was barely a year old when her mother was killed, she said.
At the time of her death, Camara was working as a sex worker to provide for herself and her daughter.
“I just hope it gives us the answers we’ve all been looking for. Honestly, it’s definitely going to help a lot,” Savanah said of the possible connection to Heuermann, who was arrested last month and charged with the murders of three young Long Island sex workers.
In an interview last monthCamara’s cousin, Kaila Donaldson, told News12 that the stigma attached to sex work has made it difficult for the family to get attention for the 20-year-old’s case.
“Usually it’s the same jumble of information as soon as you say yes, she does sex work. Well, let’s put her at the bottom of the list, ya know?” Donaldson said.
“She was just thrown out in the desert like a piece of garbage. It’s terrible. It’s like hearing it for the first time: it’s incredible. It feels like a Lifetime movie.”
Camara, Donaldson added, often spent time at her cousin’s Bergen County home to escape the chaos where her father was absent and her mother was stalked by drug addiction.
“She didn’t have a stable environment from day one. But beyond that, she was a super sensitive, humble, generous and just as dear soul,” the grieving relative recalls.
“She just did what she had to do to survive and unfortunately that’s exactly what she did,” she added of Camara’s decision to enter the sex work industry.
Shortly after Heuermann’s Manhattan bombing arrest in July, Las Vegas authorities confirmed that they were “aware” of, and may be investigating, the architect’s connection to similar killings in Sin City.
The 59-year-old Heuermann has owned a timeshare in Las Vegas since around 2004 and rarely traveled to the area, according to records.
The father of two is suspected of murdering three young women between 2008 and 2010 and dumping their bodies in the swamps off Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach.
He is also the prime suspect in the disappearance of a fourth victim.
“I feel like there are similarities, it’s very scary,” Suffolk County Sheriff Errol D. Toulon Jr. told News12 this week about the parallels between the Gilgo murders and Camara’s case.
“When you see the deaths, the types of women who were killed, the jobs they did…all of it reminds you of that one particular person.”
