Sixty miles up the coast from billionaire playground The Hamptons is Massapequa Park, a less glitzy town on the south shore of New York’s Long Island that exudes middle-class seriousness.
It’s the America of many Hollywood movies: suburban, uncluttered, and until recently unremarkable.
In the summer, children bike down wide streets lined with neat, white weatherboards with stars and stripes and often a “Welcome” banner on the lawn.
But a small, run-down bungalow that stands in stark contrast to its neighbors has never been inviting.
When the Mail recently visited, few neighbors said they’d ever exchanged more than a few words with Rex Heuermann, the hulking and – many agreed – downright sinister owner of 105, 1st Avenue.
Nor did anyone admit to being invited into the modest home he shared with his also reclusive wife and two adult children.
Suspect: Arrested person of interest Rex Heuermann is seen leaving the 7th Suffolk County Police Station on July 14
Victims: Maureen Brainard-Barnes (top left), Melissa Barthelemy (top right), Megan Waterman (bottom left), and Amber Lynn Costello (bottom right)
They only saw the 59-year-old on his daily walk to the train station, dressed in a suit and tie, to catch a train to Manhattan, where he ran an architectural practice, or when he worked outdoors, often chopping firewood.
Now, Heuermann could make Massapequa Park as notorious as Amityville, just three miles away, where in 1974 a 23-year-old man butchered his family, a crime that led to the infamous book and film The Amityville Horror .
Because prosecutors have accused Heuermann of being the “Gilgo Beach serial killer” — named after a stretch of sand 17 miles from town — who terrorized the local community for decades, having murdered perhaps 11 or more people and wrapping their bodies in town threw camouflage sack used by hunters – in the dense undergrowth on a remote coastal road.
The alleged killer was so sadistic that he later used his victims’ cell phones to call their families and rejoice at the harm he had caused them.
“Rex Heuermann is a demon walking among us, a predator who ruins families,” claims Rodney Harrison, a New York City detective whose decision to reopen the case in 2022 after taking over the local police force was pivotal Heuermann’s appearance in a Long was Inselgericht last month.
Heuermann was charged with the murders of Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Lynn Costello, all former sex workers whose unclothed remains were found in December 2010. He denies the allegations.
Heuermann was also named as the “prime suspect” in the death of another sex worker, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, whose body was discovered at the same site as the others. They are collectively known today as the Gilgo Four.
Investigators have indicated that more victims will be identified. In addition to the 11 bodies discovered near Gilgo Beach, the investigation extended to New Jersey, South Carolina and Las Vegas, where Heuermann also owned homes.
Just last week, a body found on a Long Island beach was identified as that of Karen Vergata, a 34-year-old escort last seen in Manhattan in 1996. Police would not confirm that she was also a victim of the same killer, although a connection has long been suspected.
Startling Discoveries: The scenic coast of Long Island
Rex Heuermann (pictured Tuesday) was arrested last month in connection with the killing of three women whose bodies were found in burlap sacks on Gilgo Beach
In January, after investigators had been watching Heuermann and his family since last March, they seized a pizza box he had thrown in the trash outside his Manhattan office
It also emerged that police took more than 200 firearms since they began searching Heuermann’s six-room home and discovered that he had a special concrete-lined vault with walls several feet thick built in the basement.
Police believe he may have kept his arsenal of weapons in it. Given that investigators are now digging up the back garden on the assumption he may have killed some victims inside, it’s possible the vault had a far darker purpose.
Recently, a former Cold Case police investigator urged investigators to search woods near Heuermann’s home and said he believes bodies may be buried there.
Many in Massapequa Park are shocked to find they have a suspected serial killer in their midst, but some claim that in some ways they are not at all surprised.
Carpenter Nick Ferchaw, 23, told the Mail about a disturbing encounter with the six-foot-tall Heuermann four years ago.
“He was chopping wood in front of his house and as I walked by I was like, ‘Hey, how are you?'” He stopped chopping and just glared at me. He said nothing.’ Ferchaw added, “I was joking at the time that he must be a serial killer.” And I know now that other people here thought the same thing.’
Others said the bungalow and its occupants were “creepy” and that local children would dare each other to knock on the door while playing trick-or-treating on Halloween. Once Heuermann surprised them by offering them sweets.
His neighbor Etienne Devilliers said he once had to ask Heuermann not to bother his wife over the fence again when she was sunning herself in the back garden. “It wasn’t a pleasant conversation,” he told Fox News. “We talked pretty tough but he didn’t get aggressive and never did again.”
Heuermann grew up in Massapequa Park and attended the same local school as brothers Alec, Daniel, Billy and Stephen Baldwin, all of whom went on to become Hollywood actors. Former classmates remember Heuermann as a geeky guy who was reserved and sometimes bullied.
The first victim, Melissa Barthelemy, 24, was discovered by Suffolk County Police on December 11, 2010. The body of Megan Waterman, 22, was found two days later
Maureen Brainard-Barnes was 25 when she went missing (left). Amber Lynn Costello was 27 years old. Their bodies were found near Barthelemy’s the same day
In a community where everyone generally knows everyone, Heuermann and his family stayed under the radar.
He inherited his home from his father, an aerospace engineer.
He spent his days in the office, specializing in helping clients – including American Airlines, a major Catholic charity, and Trump Corporation – navigate New York’s complicated planning laws. Opinions differ about his expertise: some business partners admired his attention to detail, others thought he was arrogant and pedantic.
A longtime collaborator described him as “a big goofy guy, a little bit nerdy” who was devoted to his wife and elderly mother.
A YouTuber who once interviewed Heuermann about his work recalled that shaking his hand was “like shaking a very thick piece of marble — that’s how strong his hand was.”
There was certainly an antisocial side to his personality that slipped out on occasion: last summer, Heuermann was escorted out of a supermarket in Massapequa Park when he reacted furiously after being rushed to the store for stealing clementines left in a children’s bowl had made a speech.
Icelandic-born Asa Ellerup, Heuermann’s 59-year-old second wife of 27 years, gave her first interview since her husband’s arrest last week. She told the New York Post that her son Christopher Sheridan, 33, has special needs and has “cried every night” since his stepfather’s arrest.
Her daughter with Heuermann, Victoria, worked in her father’s company in Manhattan. Ellerup told the Post that Victoria has felt “not human” since the shocking revelation.
Ellerup has filed for divorce. Her lawyer insisted that she, like her children, was “completely shocked,” adding, “Her entire life has been turned upside down.”
Speaking to the Mail last week, Ellerup said: “The neighbors want the house gone.” They want it bulldozed. I don’t want to walk down the street. I heard what people said about us. I heard it.’
Some neighbors and supporters were more compassionate. A GoFundMe was started by Melissa Moore, whose father, Keith Hunter Jesperson, was convicted of murdering eight women in 1995. So far, $36,000 has been raised to help Ellerup and her children “start a new life”.
Annalara Ellerup, Asa’s cousin, told the Mail: ‘We are all very saddened for our cousin and the victims.’ It is heartbreaking.’ Of Asa, she said, “She’s not well, let’s put it this way.” “It was all a complete shock and she’s worried about her daughter.”
At the supermarket in Massapequa Park, staff recalled how Ellerup looked “depressed” during her regular shopping trips with her children and – unusual given her husband ran his own architectural practice – paid with food stamps, a perk for low-income households.
Gilbert’s body was found in a nearby swamp area a year after the bodies of Melissa Barthelemy, 24, were discovered. Megan Waterman, 22; Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25; and Amber Lynn Costello, 27
More than a week after his arrest on July 14, investigators conducted a thorough search of the home
Frankie Musto, who lives two doors down, says Ellerup looked just as untidy and neglected as her home, noting, “It could have been the middle of the afternoon and she looked like she just rolled out of bed.” “I am friendly with everyone here, but she didn’t talk to anyone.”
When she met Heuermann, Asa Ellerup was divorced and growing up with her sister on Long Island after emigrating to the United States with her parents. Her father, now in his 90s, still lives in the family home two miles away. When asked about his son-in-law and daughter by the Mail, he said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
According to investigators, Ellerup was not at home at the time of the murders, either in another state or abroad. Yet even if she was unaware of her husband’s alleged crimes, it was Asa Ellerup who inadvertently led the police to him.
Few strands of hair [believed to have come from her husband’s clothing] were found on the bodies of alleged victims and when investigators took more samples from the couple’s household waste, a DNA match was reportedly found.
In December 2010, one of Heuermann’s alleged victims was first discovered by a police officer and his dog while they were searching through thick vegetation near Gilgo Beach for Shannan Gilbert, a 24-year-old New Jersey prostitute who had gone missing in the Area.
The German shepherd instead sniffed out the skeletal remains of another missing sex worker, also 24-year-old Melissa Barthelemy.
Within days, police had discovered three other bodies – Amber Lynn Costello, Megan Waterman and Maureen Brainard-Barnes.
Like Mrs. Barthelemy, they were all petite women in their 20s who worked as escorts. All had solicited clients in the same way through online sites such as Craigslist and were found with their feet or ankles tied. They are believed to have been killed over a 20-year period.
Further searches of the area led police to the remains of Valerie Mack, a young mother and part-time sex worker who has been missing for 20 years, as well as the remains of six others – including four other women and a young Asian man, dressed in women’s clothing wore clothes and the two-year-old daughter of one of the women.
Police launched an investigation, but it soon became mired in allegations of incompetence and corruption. Local Suffolk County Police Commissioner James Burke refused to contact the FBI, which was surprisingly investigating him for beating a man who stole pornography and sex toys from his car. Burke was later imprisoned for almost four years.
His successor focused on the disposable “burner phones” the suspect used to contact victims via their online ads. Although these phones are prepaid and have no billing records identifying the user, police used cell towers to trace the locations from which the calls were made.
In December 2021, Rodney Harrison took over the Suffolk County Police Department. Harrison, the NYPD’s first black detective chief in 175 years, promptly announced a new task force — including the FBI — to investigate the Gilgo Beach killings. Police have been accused of neglecting the killings as most of the victims were prostitutes. But Harrison insisted the unsolved case was “solvable” and vowed his department “won’t rest until we bring those responsible to justice.”
The task force’s first breakthrough came when it discovered a crucial detail that was initially overlooked. According to a witness, Amber Lynn Costello’s killer had been driving a distinctive pickup truck — a Chevrolet Avalanche.
Heuermann appeared disheveled as he stood before the judge in Riverhead, Long Island on Tuesday
Heuermann, who had never been suspected in the Gilgo Beach murders, was found to possess such a model. Investigators were then able to determine that he lived and worked in two locations, from which many of Brenner’s calls had been made.
Heuermann also allegedly used victim Melissa Barthelemy’s cellphone to make a series of brief “mocking” calls to members of her family. “Do you think you’ll ever speak to her again?” he asked Melissa’s 16-year-old sister, Amanda, in one call.
After she said she hoped she would, the caller calmly told her that her sibling was a prostitute and that he killed her after having sex with her.
A search of Heuermann’s Internet activities uncovered shocking facts, prosecutors say.
As late as 2022, he is said to have entered Google searches such as “Long Island serial killers”; “Why couldn’t law enforcement trace calls from Long Island serial killer”; and “Why wasn’t the Long Island serial killer caught?”.
Police learned that he held licenses for 92 firearms and alleged that he set up a fake email account that he used to search for violent pornography depicting sexual assaults on women and children.
But it was DNA evidence that was instrumental in Heuermann’s arrest. In July last year, a detective removed 11 bottles from a trash can outside Heuermann’s home in Massapequa Park. The DNA extracted from the bottles was compared to DNA from hair from some cadavers.
Last month, a crime lab matched the DNA of a hair found on the body of victim Megan Waterman with DNA extracted from pizza crusts that Heuermann dumped in a trash can near his office. Prosecutors say Heuermann’s DNA was found on one of the bodies and his wife’s on two of them (there’s no indication she was implicated in the murders).
According to the investigators, however, the proceedings against Heuermann are “only at the beginning”.
In 2006, the bodies of four strangled prostitutes were discovered in a ditch in Egg Harbor outside the East Coast gambling mecca of Atlantic City, New Jersey. In 2011, an unnamed law enforcement insider told the New York Post that there were so many similarities to the Gilgo Beach case that it had to be “the same guy,” though investigators recently said they don’t believe the cases are linked.
Police in Las Vegas, where Heuermann owned a timeshare property, say they are also investigating his possible connection to unsolved murders there and in South Carolina, where he also owns a home.
It is hoped that the families of the ‘Gilgo Four’ will finally get justice – but they likely won’t be the only survivors finding a solution after Rex Heuermann’s arrest.