FBI Investigates Possible Link Between Gilgo Beach Suspect Rex Heuermann and Missing South Carolina Woman

In the latest twist in the Gilgo Beach serial killer case, investigators are looking into a possible connection between a missing South Carolina woman and Rex Heuermann, who is accused of murdering at least three women on Long Island, N.Y.

Julia Ann Bean, 37, of Sumter, S.C., vanished on May 31, 2017, when she was last seen in the Red Bay Road area of Sumter. That November, her daughter reported her missing.

Now, six years after the woman disappeared, someone “claiming to be a friend” of hers contacted the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office on Sunday, telling an investigator “they believed there may be a connection between Bean and murder suspect Rex Heuermann,” the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.

On Monday, detectives who have been investigating Bean’s disappearance met to review the information provided and then contacted the FBI to share what they had learned, the sheriff's office said.

Investigators reached out to Bean’s daughter, Cameron, who was “very cooperative and eager to help,” the sheriff’s office said in the statement.

“It is her recollection that someone she saw with her mother could possibly be Heuermann,” the sheriff’s office said.

Bean’s daughter said the man she recalls seeing her mother with was driving a dark truck, Sumter County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Mark Bordeaux told WLTX.

“Someone that may have been, appeared, may have looked like Mr. Heuermann was with her mother and a vehicle may have been similar,” Bordeaux said.

In July, investigators from New York impounded a black Chevy Avalanche pick up truck from a property Heuermann owns in Chester, S.C., which is about an hour-and-a-half from Sumter.

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Heuermann, 59, of Massapequa, N.Y., was arrested on July 13 near his office in midtown Manhattan and charged in connection with the deaths of three women whose bodies were found on a desolate stretch of Gilgo Beach on Long Island in 2010: Melissa Barthelemy, 24; Amber Lynn Costello, 27; and Megan Waterman, 22.

He is also the main suspect in the killing of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25.

She and the other three victims are known as “the Gilgo Four” after their remains were found wrapped in burlap and dumped near each other in the thicket along Ocean Parkway.

Heuermann pleaded not guilty to three counts each of first- and second-degree murder in the deaths of Barthelemy, Costello and Waterman.

But Bordeaux has been careful to note that authorities have not linked Heuermann to Bean’s disappearance.

“Thus far, the connection is zero,” he said on NBC News' “Today” Show on Monday.

“Just because we want so badly to find the whereabouts of Ms. Julia Bean, does not mean that we can pre-suppose anything," he said. “We have to operate in the world of facts."

Authorities are continuing to investigate.

The FBI and Heuermann’s lawyer did not immediately respond to PEOPLE requests for comment.

Anyone with information related to the investigation of Bean's death is asked to call the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office 803-436-2000, or use the website www.p3tips.com or the “P3” app.