RIVERHEAD, New York (AP) — A Long Island architect was charged Friday with murder in the deaths of three of the 11 victims in a long-unsolved string of killings known as the Gilgo Beach murders after New York detectives pursuing a new lead say they matched DNA from a pizza he ate to genetic material found on the women’s remains.

Rex Heuermann, who has lived for decades across a bay from where the remains were found, is charged with killing Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello. He is also considered the prime suspect in the death of a fourth woman whose body was bound and hidden in thick underbrush along a remote beach highway, authorities said.

Investigators have said over the years that it’s unlikely one person killed all 11 victims.

Heuermann, 59, was arrested late Thursday amid a renewed investigation that first identified him as a suspect in March 2022, when detectives linked him to a pickup truck that a witness reported seeing when one of the victims disappeared in 2010.

In March, detectives tailing Heuermann recovered his DNA from pizza crust in a box that he discarded in a Manhattan trash can and matched it to a hair found on a restraint used in the killings, authorities said.

Heuermann’s lawyer entered a not guilty plea on his behalf Friday in state court in Riverhead. Judge Richard Ambro ordered him jailed without bail, citing “the extreme depravity” of his alleged conduct.

Heuermann’s lawyer, Michael Brown, said they just learned about the charges Friday morning. Speaking to reporters after the arraignment, he said Heuermann told him: “I didn’t do this.”

Heuermann, wearing khaki pants and a grey collared shirt, did not speak in court.

Heuermann lives in Massapequa Park, a community just north of South Oyster Bay and the sandy stretch known as Gilgo Beach where the remains were found in 2010 and 2011. Most of the victims were young women who had been sex workers. Their deaths long stumped investigators, a mystery that fueled immense public attention and led to a 2020 Netflix film, “Lost Girls.”

Determining who killed them, and why, vexed a slew of seasoned homicide detectives through several changes in police leadership. Last year an interagency task force was formed with investigators from the FBI, as well as state and local police departments, aimed at solving the case.