Former Suffolk Police Commissioner details Gilgo task force, Heuermann arrest in new book

Rodney Harrison’s new book puts the former Suffolk police commissioner at the center of the Gilgo Beach investigation that led to Rex A. Heuermann’s arrest, and he says he believes, “1000 percent,” that more victims remain unidentified. For Suffolk readers, the question is not just what Harrison saw from inside the command structure, but how much of the story is a fresh record of the case and how much is a former top official shaping his own legacy.

The book, The Commissioner: From Street Cop to Top Cop in the NYPD, and the Inside Story of the Hunt for the Gilgo Beach Serial Killer, presents Harrison as the architect of the multiagency task force that ultimately helped bring investigators to Heuermann. That matters because the public timeline of the case is already clear on several key points: the Gilgo investigation began in 2010 after remains started turning up near Ocean Parkway by Gilgo Beach, Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney convened a new task force in January 2022, and investigators arrested Heuermann on July 13, 2023. Harrison’s account now adds a participant’s version of how the machinery was assembled and how the investigation moved from suspicion to arrest.

Suffolk County leaders have already framed the work in institutional terms. In a January 16, 2024 statement, Suffolk County Executive Edward P. Romaine praised Tierney, the Suffolk County Police Department, Sheriff Errol Toulon Jr. and the other partners on the Gilgo Beach Homicide Investigation Task Force, saying, “These victims matter.” That language reflects the county’s effort to project persistence and discipline around a case that has drawn years of public scrutiny and left families waiting for answers.

The FBI materials tied to the broader investigation show why the book lands in a still-unsettled case. On April 4, 2011, skeletal remains of an unknown Asian male were found near Ocean Parkway, east of Gilgo Beach in Babylon, and the bureau says the victim was found in women’s clothing and died by homicide. The unidentified victim, known as John Doe of Babylon, remains part of the case’s unresolved human toll.

Heuermann’s later legal turn only sharpened the stakes. In April 2026, Newsday and the Associated Press reported that he pleaded guilty to murdering seven women and admitted killing an eighth. Against that backdrop, Harrison’s book is more than a retirement memoir. It is a bid to define how the Gilgo case will be remembered, who deserves credit for its breakthroughs and whether Suffolk County has truly reached the end of the investigation.