Gilgo investigators upload missing teen's profile into national database
NEW YORK (PIX11) – Investigators with the Gilgo Beach Homicide Investigation Task Force added the profile of Judith Ramona Veloz, a Bronx teen who vanished from Manhattan in 1993, to a national missing persons database last October.
The move is noteworthy because it came seven months after the task force had identified architect Rex Heuermann as a prime person of interest in the Gilgo Beach serial killer case. He was arrested on July 13 near his Midtown office and charged with murder in the deaths of three young women who were sex workers. Their bodies, wrapped in burlap, were discovered in the brush off Ocean Parkway in December 2010.
Judith Ramona Veloz, who was 19 in 1993, went missing from Manhattan’s West Side more than 17 years before the “Gilgo Four” were found.
Heuermann owns an architectural consulting firm on Fifth Avenue, not far from Penn Station, which is located at 33rd Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues.
The profile for Judith Ramona Veloz in NamUs, the acronym for the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, lists the following circumstances for the 19-year-old woman’s disappearance:
“Judith Veloz aka ‘Aries Jones’ was last seen in the vicinity of 30th Street between 10th and 11th avenues in Manhattan, NY.”
Police alleged that Heuermann met some of his victims in New York City and said the cellphone of Gilgo victim Melissa Barthelemy “pinged” near Penn Station during the summer of 2009, when she went missing.
Barthelemy was the first of the “Gilgo Four” to be found on Ocean Parkway in 2010.
The NamUs site said Judith Ramona Veloz last had contact with friends or family on March 3, 1993, just over 30 years ago.
The photo that is posted on NamUs with information about Veloz shows a slim, petite teen wearing a burgundy top and beret-style hat. The Department of Justice-run site noted Veloz’s short hair was naturally brown but dyed strawberry blond.
The site said her eyes are hazel.
Her slim, blonde looks are similar to some of the Gilgo victims.
A Facebook group called Remembering Judith Ramona Veloz was created in early 2023, saying “Judith is a loving sister, a loving mom with a baby girl she called her princess. She was a good human, but sadly had to make hard choices with hopes of a better life.”
The group asks anyone with information to contact New York State Troopers in Suffolk County at (631) 756-3300.
PIX11 News reached out to the Facebook page’s administrators on Thursday night and the New York State Police in Suffolk County seeking comment.