After Arrest in Serial Killings, a Profile Looks Prescient

Good morning. It’s Monday. We’ll look at the suspect in the Gilgo Beach killings who was arrested last week.

Rex Heuermann, a 59-year-old architect who lives on Long Island, has been charged with killing three of the four women whose bodies were found on Gilgo Beach in 2010, and the Suffolk County district attorney, Raymond Tierney, called him a prime suspect in the fourth woman’s death. I asked my colleague Andy Newman, who wrote about Heuermann, to explain who he is and how a long investigation led to him.

In 2011, several experts assembled a sketch of characteristics they expected to see in a suspect. How closely did Heuermann fit that profile?

In some ways, eerily well.

In 2011 our colleagues Manny Fernandez and Al Baker put together a profile of the killer by talking to serial-killer experts and criminologists. Their piece began this way: “He is most likely a white male in his mid-20s to mid-40s. He is married or has a girlfriend. He is well educated and well spoken. He is financially secure, has a job and owns an expensive car or truck.”

Rex Heuermann was 47 at the time. He was, and is, married. He has an architecture degree and ran a consulting firm that specialized in dealing with New York City’s building codes and the officials at the Department of Buildings who approve applications from building owners. Judging from this 2022 interview, he is well-spoken — in some ways, even charming. He owned a Chevrolet Avalanche pickup truck.

A decade ago, experts in criminology talked about how serial killers can be categorized as disorganized or organized and said the Long Island killer was highly organized. In his professional life, Heuermann appeared to be that. He marketed himself as an expert in the details of New York’s byzantine building rules, saying he had bought copies of long-out-of-date codes to have on hand when dealing with old buildings. Former clients described him as painstakingly methodical.

What else did the experts say in 2011 that appears to match the suspect?

The experts in 2011 said the killer showed signs of being a sadist who probably got pleasure from witnessing others’ pain. On Friday, a court document filed by prosecutors included internet searches they said had been done by Heuermann for “sex workers, sadistic, torture-related pornography and child pornography.”

The court document also said that Heuermann had done more than 200 internet searches on the investigation of the women he is accused of killing and that he had “searched for and viewed articles concerning the very task force that was investigating him.”

The suspect had lived in plain sight for years. There were people in his neighborhood who suspected something was off, weren’t there?

One of the interesting things about Heuermann is how differently he struck different people. Some of this seemed to have to do with differences in how he conducted himself in different social situations. I think a lot comes down to the way that people can perceive the same thing differently.

But yes, while some neighbors described him as just an average commuter in a suit, others described him as very disturbing. Three different neighbors told our colleague Nate Schweber that they had actually joked that he must be a serial killer.

What did the neighbors say about their encounters with Heuermann?

One of them was Nicholas Ferchaw, who talked about the first time he saw Heuermann chopping firewood in his front yard. Ferchaw said a friendly hello. Heuermann, a big and kind of imposing guy, just glared at him and then resumed smashing logs.

Ferchaw, who is 24, told Nate that when he found out Heuermann had been charged with the murders, “I wasn’t surprised at all — because of all the creepiness.” Someone else in the neighborhood said that Heuermann’s house was so strange and dilapidated that he had said Heuermann “probably has bodies there” — but he meant it humorously.

A woman who works at a nearby Whole Foods store described a run-in with Heuermann, who was stealing clementines from a display set up for kids. When she called him out, she said, Heuermann, who was wearing a dingy T-shirt and looked disheveled, yelled at her that he had a medical condition and said “you wouldn’t be talking to me like this if I was in a suit and tie.” She had the manager escort him out.

What about his work life? Was he fastidious and detail-oriented, as you said earlier, or arrogant?

Everyone we talked to said he could come off as somewhat full of himself. Even a guy who’d worked with him for almost 30 years — and who considered Heuermann “highly knowledgeable” and great at shepherding complex building projects along — said he could be a “little bit boastful about what he did and his capabilities.”

In that interview from last year, Heuermann said he did “architectural troubleshooting” and was the guy people turned to when they couldn’t figure out how to solve a complex problem involving a lot of red tape.

“When a job that should have been routine suddenly becomes not routine,” he said, “I get the phone call.”

Do we know how hair from his wife got on at least one of the victims? She has not been accused in these cases.

The court document filed by prosecutors on Friday went into considerable detail about the physical evidence they had amassed. This included DNA analysis of hairs recovered from where three victims’ bodies were found — in one case, from the leather belt that was used to tie up the woman, and in two other cases, from the tape used to tie them up.

Those hairs were from women but not from the victims. DNA analysis said they belonged to a genetic group that includes only 0.02 percent of the women and girls in North America, and prosecutors said that Heuermann’s wife was in that group. That finding was reached only a few weeks ago and was one of the reasons Heuermann was arrested now.

Investigators do not think Heuermann’s wife had any role in the killings. She was out of state or out of the country when all of them happened. But when you live with someone, your hair gets all over them, in the house, maybe in the truck. So it probably would not be surprising that her hair would wind up at the crime scene.

Weather

It’s a sunny day with a high near 90. The evening will be partly cloudy, with a low around 75.

ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING

In effect until Aug. 15 (Feast of the Assumption).

METROPOLITAN diary

Take a chance

Dear Diary:

June 28, 2003. My friend Ilene and I were eating at a restaurant across the street from City Center before seeing a show.

We vaguely noticed a guy who was around our age eating alone, but we were too busy talking to pay much attention to him and soon left for the theater.

As we settled into our seats before the show began, the guy from the restaurant showed up. He recognized us, introduced himself and struck up a conversation with us.

The conversation continued at intermission, when he asked if he could take us out after the show. Later, he took out his card, wrote his home number on it and gave it to me.