Who Killed Carmen Vargas? Gilgo Beach Serial Killer Examination

NEW YORK, NY — Carmen Vargas went with her family to the Central Park pool for a dip on a balmy night in the summer of 1989.

Like many women in New York City, she was wearing a classic 80s-style tank top, a mini skirt, and shoes with low heels. After she returned home with her sisters and niece, she left by herself.

Her niece, Felicita, told Patch that she was 12 at the time, but the childhood memory of the last night she saw her aunt is vivid. It haunts her to this day.

Patch is withholding her surname due to safety concerns.

It was close to August, which has a significant meaning. Felicita asked Carmen if she was coming up to the apartment for the night, but the 29-year-old told her she would not.

Carmen had worked odd jobs but was not working at the time. She was staying out.

“She said, ‘No, leave the door open. I'll be back,’” Felicita said in a recent interview.
“She always came back.”

Felicita was the last one of her family to see Carmen alive.

Felicita left the door open, but when she got up, her aunt, the youngest of the three Vargas sisters, still wasn’t back home. Her family didn’t think anything of it, but then when two days passed, they began to worry because they usually saw her every day.

At first, though, “We didn’t think anything,” Felicita recalled.

Carmen was never married, never had a child. The doting aunt would take her nieces out to eat, to the park, and to the movies.

"She always wanted to be around family," Felicita said. "She was very fun. She was like the life of the party. That was my favorite aunt. I always wanted to be outside with her. She would take me everywhere."

She and Carmen even shared the same room.

Carmen’s tight-knit family knew she had experienced drug addiction, but it wasn't obvious."We couldn't tell because she didn't show [it]," Felicita said.

Carmen was also what they considered “a lady of the evening" and she "walked the street," Felicita said. Felicita did not learn that until she was older.

The three sisters, Aida, Mercedes, and Carmen, had lost their matriarch just a few years before. When Carmen disappeared, her family "thanked God" because her mother could not have borne the fate of her youngest child.

As for Carmen, the ties that bound them as sisters could never be easily shaken by a lifestyle choice. Carmen was loved unconditionally, her family said.

CARMEN IS GONE

She was only 17 years older than Felicita was.

When Carmen never returned, her family began making up posters featuring the brunette’s photo.
Family and friends canvassed the East Harlem neighborhood where they lived asking anyone if they knew Carmen’s whereabouts.

A friend later told Aida that they saw Carmen get into a dark car with a man.

The city’s morgue would call the sisters whenever a body was found. Felicita’s aunt, Mercedes, who was the eldest, would always go down there, sometimes bringing Aida, the pair desperately hoping to bring Carmen home and for some closure.

“The police, the city morgue, would call us if they had… like a body close to her description,” Felicita said. “And [Mercedes] would have to go.”

"It was really gross — bodies," she said.

Felicita remembers hearing a lot of stories from her mother. The remains were often in advanced stages of decomposition. Some were found in cans or canisters. Felicita remembers Randall’s Island as one of the locations.

The remains were never Carmen’s.

FINDING CARMEN

Carmen’s remains were ultimately found by a passing motorist who had pulled over on the shoulder of the Meadowbrook Parkway in Freeport in September 1989.

"When they found her she was completely decomposed — nothing," Felicita said.

In that time frame, accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann, according to Patch research, was reportedly living and working in the area of Freeport. The location is only miles from his childhood home in Massapequa Park where he had been living with his family until his arrest in July.

Carmen, who was wearing the same tank top and miniskirt she had on the last time Felicita saw her, was found with her legs bound at her ankles — and there was a towel and rope around her neck, state police said in February 2021.

Her slaying, 31 years earlier, had not gained any substantial leads, but the troopers had been hoping that highlighting her murder in their weekly Tuesday "cold case" campaign might shed some light on her unsolved killing.

Kristin Lowman, chief of agency publications for the New York State Police public information office, said "Cold Case Tuesday," started in 2016, was a social media initiative developed “to highlight open cases on the agency’s social media platforms and online newsroom.”

The program’s goal was “to renew the public’s interest in open cases and generate leads in the featured cases,” she said.

Carmen’s remains were reported found by a passerby on the right shoulder of the parkway on the southbound side, about a half mile south of Merrick Road. The passerby, who had stopped on the shoulder of the parkway, saw “what appeared to be a corpse,” police said.

An investigation determined she was the victim of a homicide, according to police.

Investigators described Carman as a woman who stood at about 5 feet 1 inches tall and weighed 105 lbs. She had a thin build, black hair, and brown eyes.

Her remains were unidentified for three years.

THE AFTERMATH: LOSING CARMEN AGAIN

Carmen was not positively identified until 1992.

Police came to the apartment that she shared with her family, and had asked if "a male" was inside the house so that detectives could share photos of the crime scene.

Felicita, who was pregnant at the time, and her family were spared the photos.

"They didn't want us to see how they found her," she said.

By the time Carmen’s family realized she was the woman found on the Meadowbrook Parkway, her remains had already been buried at Potter's Field in Lynbrook, a place ironically at the time right across the street from a roller skating rink frequented by children and teens, which has since closed.

It is also a location tied to the infamous slaying of a Long Island teenager in 1985— Theresa Fusco.
Fusco, 16, of Lynbrook was found raped and strangled near the popular hangout.

The three men convicted of her murder — Dennis Halstead, John Kogut, and John Restivo — were later exonerated by DNA evidence.

A FINAL RESTING PLACE FOR CARMEN

Carmen could not be placed with her mother, at her grave, as her family had wanted because the Vargas family never found the funds to help make that wish a reality.

The pastor at the family’s church would always remember Carmen’s name at services — but, her family said, their grief, cloaked in uncertainty, was far different than what other families had endured at the death of a loved one.

“We never had the same closure,” Felicita said.

Carmen never met Felicita's younger sister, her namesake, as well as her child, because she was not alive to spend time with them.

The family kept strong and went on living their lives, but Carmen’s absence has always haunted them. She has never been forgotten.

A SEARCH FOR CARMEN’S KILLER

Investigators told her family that Carmen had fought hard, as several of her teeth were knocked out and her hyoid bone was missing, Felicita said.

Investigators don't know what happened, she said.

At the time, there was also mention that she had cocaine in her system and had overdosed — the accuracy of that statement, Felicita's family questions.

Her death forced Felicita's mother down her own deadly, narrow path of drugs, she said.

The pair of sisters were only two years apart — you would have thought they were twins, she said.
Aida started using drugs because of “the stress” she was under after Carmen's death, Felicita believes.

"It killed her," Felicita said. "They were inseparable."

IS THERE A GILGO CONNECTION?

Since Heuermann’s arrest, Felicita has questioned if he had any involvement.

He would have been around 25 at the time of Carmen's slaying.

The 59-year-old architect has been charged in the deaths of three out of the Gilgo Four. All were involved in the sex trade at the time they died and their bodies were found along Ocean Parkway.
In her years lamenting her aunt’s death, Felicita has become a follower of true crime and has familiarized herself with the case of Joel Rifkin.

Rifkin, also from Long Island, was convicted of killing nine women, mostly drug addicts or those who worked in the sex trade, from 1989 to 1993.

For years, Carmen's family believed he was responsible for her death.

In a recent conversation with her family, Felicita questioned if Rifkin had been considered for her aunt’s killing and why he never admitted it.

“If I was a serial killer, and I'm never gonna see the day of light, ever, ever again, why wouldn't I admit to one body out of all the bodies that they have?” she said.

When Felicita heard of Heuermann’s arrest and read the details, her stomach churned.
Details of the murders Heuermann is alleged to have carried out and the similarities to the circumstances under which Carmen was murdered gave Felicita a bad feeling “in her gut,” she said.

While there have been 11 sets of remains, including a toddler and an Asian male, found between Gilgo Beach, Manorville, and Davis Park on Fire Island, as part of the Gilgo Beach investigation, Heuermann has, so far, only been charged in connection with the deaths of three of the Gilgo Four.

Heuermann has been charged with six counts of murder in connection with the deaths of Megan Waterman, Amber Lynn Costello, and Melissa Barthelemy. He is the prime suspect in the murder of Maureen Brainard-Barnes.

All of the women, like Carmen, were working in the sex trade at the time they went missing.
They were found strangled and concealed in camouflage tarp, similar to that used by duck hunters, Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said after Heuermann’s arrest.

Like Felicita’s aunt, all of the women were petite.

"There is something about this case that really bothers me," she said. The case of the Gilgo Four is a case that is too close to home, she added.

Since Heuermann's arrest, she has wondered every day if he might be the killer. The unknowns haunt her.

“Every night, after that day, I've been looking at the articles and the updates every single day, maybe three, four times a day,” she said.

When asked about any possible connection, in a statement to Patch on Tuesday night, Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly’s spokesman Brendan Brosh said, “We’re working with our law enforcement partners to review unsolved homicide cases that fit the alleged pattern of Rex Heuermann.”

He added: “With regards to the investigation of the murder of Carmen Vargas, I’d have to refer you to the New York State Police Department as they are the lead agency."

Patch has reached out to the state troopers' public information office for comment.

Heuermann's attorney has said that his client, who is held without bail within the Suffolk County Correctional Facility, denies the charges he is facing. Heuermann has reportedly alleged, "'I did not do this.'"

QUESTIONS ABOUT THE INVESTIGATION

Felicita does not believe that her aunt's case was seriously investigated because she was working as a prostitute.

The police told her that they could not find her fingerprints in their system, although Carmen had been arrested before for either loitering or trespassing, she said. When her body was found, her fingertips were too hard — so to get an impression, investigators had to soak her fingertips for a week, she added.

Aside from that, when Carmen was younger, Felicita believes she may have been involved with a gang; she said they had been arrested before. Police also said they looked through missing persons reports and there was no match, according to Felicita.

A missing person report was filed with the New York Police Department.

In a Freedom of Information Law request to the NYPD last month, Patch was told that it would be answered sometime in December.

A QUEST FOR JUSTICE

As for Felicita, she vows that she will not stop until she sees justice for Carmen.

She has started a GoFundMe to help hire a private investigator to help with solving her aunt's case, as well as to proceed with removing her body from Potter's Field in Lynbrook so that she can be placed with her mother.

Sherre Gilbert, the sister of Shannan Gilbert, whose disappearance sparked the Gilgo investigation, has donated to the page.

So far, the page has raised about $130 out of its $20,000 goal.

"I just want my aunt to rest in peace," Felicita said. "I'm not gonna stop."

It is not just for herself though — Felicita wants her elder aunt, Mercedes, to have peace, as well.

"She's getting a little older," she said. "I don't want her to go like my mother did, with that on her mind. And at least for my Aunt Carmen, at least she can rest."

And yet, the process has long frustrated — and Felicita questions whether there can ever be a sense of finality for any of the victims, until answers are found. It has made Felicita feel that her aunt, and the others whose lives were lost, are not deemed worthy of attention.

"I don't believe she can rest because I don't believe anyone has been looking into it," she said. "Nobody's taking her seriously."

Lisa Finn contributed additional reporting to this story.