A Long Island architect has pleaded guilty to murdering seven women and admitted he killed an eighth in a string of long-unsolved crimes known as the Gilgo Beach killings.

The case against Long Island’s suspected Gilgo Beach serial killer has emerged as a potentially precedent-setting battleground in the use of advanced DNA techniques in criminal cases.

In 2010, police searching for a missing woman began finding human remains in the scrub along a barrier island parkway near New York’s Gilgo Beach.

A New York architect charged in a string of slayings known as the Gilgo Beach killings has been accused in the death of a fourth woman.