New York
Once Rarely Seen, Gilgo Beach Suspect’s Family Now Barbecues on the Lawn
Until last month, the neighbors never saw much of the family living in the rundown house on First Avenue in Massapequa Park on Long Island.
But in the five weeks since the authorities charged the house’s owner, Rex Heuermann, in the Gilgo Beach serial killings, his wife and children have become unlikely fixtures in their neighborhood.
The family — Mr. Heuermann’s wife, Asa Ellerup, 59, and their children, Victoria, 26, and Christopher, 33 — slipped out of the house in July just before crowds of reporters and gawkers descended and investigators began to hunt for evidence in a search that lasted nearly two weeks.
But Ms. Ellerup and the children soon returned and quickly became a daily presence outside the house, sitting together on the front porch or working to put the place back together. She declined to speak to a reporter who recently stopped by.
Not so long ago, the family had a reputation as reclusive. Now, while they still have little contact with the neighbors, clouds of savory smoke regularly waft from their yard.
“They’re having barbecues on the front lawn — they never did anything like that before,” said Etienne de Villiers, 68, a retired New York City firefighter who lives next door. “Suddenly, they’re out there all the time.”
A lawyer representing the two children offered an explanation for the change in behavior: Investigators had left the house uninhabitable.
“It’s literally piled floor-to-ceiling with debris,” the lawyer, Vess Mitev, said. “It’s like someone broke in and tore the place apart.”
The unsolved Gilgo Beach case riveted the public for more than a decade, and Mr. Heuermann’s arrest on July 13 was a huge break in it. Now, a bizarre public battle is unfolding over the investigators’ search of his ramshackle home, with his family recently holding a news conference on the lawn.
The family always stood out as aloof in the otherwise tight-knit neighborhood, their dilapidated ranch house drawing sneers on a mostly fastidiously tidy block. Many neighbors presumed Ms. Ellerup and the children would never return to the home given its new notoriety.
“Who in their right mind would come back to a house equated with the most horrible thing to ever happen in this town?” one neighbor, Chris Duncan said.
Mr. Heuermann, who is being held without bail at a Suffolk County jail, is scheduled to appear in court next month on charges of murdering three of the 11 victims whose bodies were found more than a decade ago along Ocean Parkway, near Gilgo Beach. He has pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors say he hired the women as escorts and then killed them, bound their bodies and wrapped them in burlap. He is the prime suspect in the death of a fourth woman. It is unclear whether he is linked to the other seven victims.
To many homeowners in this suburban village, Mr. Heuermann was a workaday, if antisocial, neighbor who commuted to and from his architectural consulting firm in Manhattan. Last year, though, after repeatedly running into dead ends, investigators used DNA analysis and cellphone records to close in on him.
The family’s lawyers are seeking to address the damage they say investigators did to the home in the search for evidence. The lawyers have associates helping Ms. Ellerup and the children around the house and recently set up a lectern on the front lawn to publicly air their complaints.
John Ray, a lawyer who represents the families of two women whose remains were found in the Gilgo Beach area but whom Mr. Heuermann has not been charged with killing, held his own news conference and called for Ms. Ellerup to be investigated.
Raymond Tierney, the Suffolk County district attorney, has said Mr. Heuermann, 59, committed the killings while his family was away on trips.
Mr. Ray said it was implausible that Ms. Ellerup was ignorant of her husband’s deeds and “should be considered a suspect and investigated accordingly.”
A lawyer for Ms. Ellerup, Robert A. Macedonio, dismissed Mr. Ray’s assertion.
“She knew nothing about any of this,” Mr. Macedonio said in a phone interview. “If it happened, he was leading a complete double life.”
Mr. Macedonio said that investigators had never interviewed Ms. Ellerup or the couple’s children and that there was no indication they would be charged.
“She hasn’t even begun to process what he’s being charged with,” Mr. Macedonio said. “She’s still putting her own life back together.”
Ms. Ellerup has not visited Mr. Heuermann in jail but did speak to him once by phone when he called, Mr. Macedonio said.
Upon returning to the family’s house, she greeted the media scrum outside with a lewd gesture and settled into bantering from afar with reporters and photographers, by turns cordial and dismissive.
“They’re sitting outside smiling,” Mr. Ray said. “She seems very out of sync with what is really happening.”
Ms. Ellerup has filed for divorce “to protect herself and her children” and is considering suing the authorities for what she says is the extensive damage investigators caused, Mr. Macedonio said.
The family stayed with relatives and friends and slept in their car while the search proceeded, Mr. Macedonio said.
In terms of the damage to the house, the family’s lawyers say, investigators ripped up floorboards and pulled belongings out of closets, leaving them piled in disarray. The bathtub was cut open and mattresses were seized as evidence. Even now, Mr. Macedonio said, the family was sleeping on mats on the floor while waiting for new mattresses.
With their bedrooms in shambles, the children had to sleep in the basement, Mr. Mitev said.
Neighbors have not flocked to support the family. Many are unsure whether Ms. Ellerup deserves sympathy or suspicion, and are skeptical that she could have been clueless about the crimes her husband is accused of.
“We’re getting a slew of emails from people wanting to help and a slew from other people saying, ‘I hope you burn in hell,’” Mr. Mitev said.
“Some are sympathetic and some say, ‘When can we get this thing out of here?’” he added, regarding the unsightly home. “But there’s no getting it out of here because they have nowhere to go.”
For now, Mr. Mitev added: “They are going to rebuild; they want to fix it up,” He said investigators had violated the family’s rights with what he called their reckless search.
Adding to the family’s woes, Mr. Macedonio said, Ms. Ellerup was being treated for breast and skin cancer and could not afford the premium payments for the health insurance she had through Mr. Heuermann’s business.
With the family facing financial hardship, damage to their home and shock from the criminal charges, things could change, he said.
“At this point,” he said, “there’s no plan.”
Some help has come from afar. More than $50,000 has been raised for the family through an online fund-raiser created by Melissa Moore, the daughter of the serial killer Keith Hunter Jesperson, known as the “Happy Face Killer.”
Mr. Heuermann grew up with his parents and four siblings in the house, which is on a tight grid of streets an hour from Midtown Manhattan. He bought it from his family in the 1990s but let it fall into disrepair as neighbors renovated theirs and watched the property values soar.
Many neighbors feared the house would become a notorious landmark. Village authorities have installed street signs forbidding parking or even stopping nearby. The return of the family has not helped in that regard, another neighbor, Warren Ferchaw, said.
“I really think the best thing for everyone is for them to move on and for the house to be torn down once and for all,” Mr. Ferchaw said while walking his dog near the house on a recent evening as the family barbecued on the front lawn.
This does not seem imminent. Nearby Massapequa is Ms. Ellerup’s hometown. She grew up there after immigrating to the United States from Iceland with her family as a child, and has lived in her current home for the 27-year duration of her marriage to Mr. Heuermann.
“This is all that they’ve known, so there’s no real options,” Mr. Mitev said.
Last week, the family seemed to be settling back in, moving items between the house and the garage. Ms. Ellerup bristled when a reporter approached.
“Shoo, shoo,” she said, extending her hands as if dismissing a dog. “We’ve got too much work to do.”
In the last few weeks, Bethenny Frankel has been talking a lot about Dior bags on TikTok. The subject itself isn’t unusual: As a reality TV star and entrepreneur, she frequently posts about fashion topics to her 2.4 million followers, including in a feature Ms. Frankel calls “Handbag University,” where she offers reviews and tutorials.
But the tone of Ms. Frankel’s posts about Dior is strikingly different than a typical conversation about luxury goods. Less Vogue and more Jason Bourne.
In a post on Monday, Ms. Frankel suggested there was a cover-up at play.
“I’ve received several Dior bag videos and messages about sightings which are obviously not being reported in the mainstream media,” she said.
The day before, Ms. Frankel said she had been talking to an unnamed source about the Dior bag situation, and that this person — the father of someone Ms. Frankel knows — had passed along top-secret intelligence.
“If our government tries to tell us that they’re from China, that these bags are from China, that we have an issue,” Ms. Frankel said, cryptically, repeating what she said her source had told her, “that would be very alarming.”
Confusion would be understandable to someone coming across just one of the videos, but watch enough of them and you will realize “Dior bags” aren’t always Dior bags. In this case, Ms. Frankel is using the term to refer to the drones that have been reported flying in the skies over the eastern United States and elsewhere.
Who but a fashion obsessive would use a French luxury label as a code word?
“It was in the moment — it wasn’t planned at all,” Ms. Frankel said in a phone interview. “I was just like, ‘The Dior bags are real, they’re in the closet, and management doesn’t want us to know about it.’”
Various governmental agencies have said the sightings, for the most part, are not drones, and a visual analysis by The New York Times indicated most of the sightings over New Jersey were of airplanes rather than drones.
That has not been enough to persuade Ms. Frankel.
She said she initially had only a peripheral interest in the story. Then someone she knows whose father has access to inside information of some sort — and whom she refers to only as “Waterhammer” — reached out to her with a theory explaining the drone sightings. Ms. Frankel posted about it on TikTok in the days before Christmas. But whereas her posts usually get millions of views, she said, the handful of posts in which she talked about drones “were getting 500 views.”
TikTok creators have long complained that the reach of videos has been restricted because they touched on topics the platform didn’t like — “shadow banning,” as the alleged practice has come to be known. It is hard to prove that TikTok is suppressing content, but Ms. Frankel started talking about Dior bags instead of drones in an attempt to get around algorithms and strict content moderation. Such a diversion technique is called “algospeak.”
Ms. Frankel’s fashionable way of talking in code has caught on. Indeed, the reality TV star, her followers and others who want to discuss the drone phenomenon and theorize on social media have created an alternative lexicon built around shopping terminology. “Store management,” to this group, is the U.S. government; Oscar de la Renta products are the shiny objects some have claimed to have observed in the sky; and Prada items are plasmoids, or structures made of plasma and magnetic fields.
Curiously, the largely male audience that listens to podcasters like Joe Rogan and Shawn Ryan, a former Navy SEAL, has also adopted the term and used the hashtag #diorbags in their own videos.
“There were truckers with skull caps and guys on oil rigs talking about Dior bags,” laughed Ms. Frankel.
One group not talking about it apparently is Christian Dior SE, the French company behind the Dior brand. Its representatives did not return a request for comment.
Ms. Frankel hasn’t heard from Dior either, though she wouldn’t be surprised if that were to happen, given that the company may not want its name associated with an online community sharing wild theories about the drones.
“I can’t believe Dior corporate hasn’t called me at this point,” said Ms. Frankel. She clarified: “We’re not mad at Dior. This is just what I used.”
The conversation around “Dior bags” is happening just as another handbag discussion is dominating social media: the look-alike Birkin bag being sold at Walmart.
For anyone not in on algospeak, having a conversation about actual handbags can suddenly lead to confusion. The other day, Ms. Frankel posted about “why the Walmart Birkin is fascinating.” She was quick to clarify, “And this is legitimately about bags — it’s not code.”
The number of felony assaults and rapes in New York City rose last year even as the overall crime rate fell, Jessica Tisch, the police commissioner, said on Monday.
Shootings fell 7 percent last year compared with 2023, to 903, and there were 377 homicides reported in 2024, the lowest number of killings since 2020, according to police figures. The number of burglaries, robberies, car thefts and larcenies also dropped in 2024, Commissioner Tisch and Mayor Eric Adams said during a news conference.
But two crime categories — sexual assaults and felony assaults, a major crime category defined as an attack in which a dangerous weapon is used or a serious injury results — continued to buck the trend. There were 29,417 felony assaults last year, the highest number in at least 24 years and a 5 percent increase from 2023.
For the mayor, the decline in several major crime categories was an opportunity to tout his policies at a time when he is trying to persuade New Yorkers to re-elect him, even as he faces criminal prosecution and a perception that the leadership of the Police Department descended into dysfunction under his watch.
“I was clear from Day 1, not only on the campaign trail, but when I became mayor, the prerequisite to our prosperity is public safety, and I was committed to driving down crime,” Mayor Adams said. “We’re the safest big city in America. The numbers are clear.”
The department said it had received 1,748 complaints of sexual assault, nearly half of which were connected to domestic violence incidents, Commissioner Tisch said.
The number of rapes was the highest since 2020, though it was slightly lower than in 2019, when the department received 1,771 complaints of sexual assault, according to department figures. About a quarter of the rapes reported last year occurred in the Bronx.
The announcement of a drop in crime comes as headlines have been dominated by terrifying incidents, such as the killing of Debrina Kawam, a 57-year-old woman who was burned to death on the F train three days before Christmas, and the shooting of 10 people outside a club in Queens on New Year’s Day. Mr. Adams acknowledged on Monday that reporting a drop in most crime categories may not comfort many New Yorkers who are fearful of being randomly attacked on the subway or on the street.
“These high-profile random acts of violence have overshadowed our success,” he said. “We have to deal with the perception.”
Commissioner Tisch, whom Mayor Adams appointed on Nov. 20, said she had issued an order for 200 officers to patrol the city’s trains. More officers will be deployed to subway platforms in the 50 highest-crime stations in the city, she said.
“We know that 78 percent of transit crime occurs on trains and on platforms, and that is quite obviously where our officers need to be,” Commissioner Tisch said. “This is just the beginning.”
Mayor Adams said that kind of presence “will allow New Yorkers to feel the omnipresence” of the police “and feel safe.”
The number of sexual assaults was down during the first part of 2024 but began to rise later in the year. Commissioner Tisch attributed that increase in part to a rise in the number of sexual assaults connected to domestic violence incidents and a change in state law in September that expanded the definition of what constitutes rape.
Under the law, the definition was expanded from strictly vaginal penetration by a penis to include acts of oral, anal and vaginal penetration.
Felony assaults have been persistently high since 2020, however.
Commissioner Tisch pointed to recidivism, citing police figures that showed a large increase in the number of people arrested three times for the same crime.
Mayor Adams cited mental health as a factor in many of these crimes. He has directed the police and emergency medical workers to hospitalize people they deemed too mentally ill to care for themselves, even if they did not pose a danger to others.
On Monday, he broached that issue again as he pointed to recent random acts of violence committed by people who appeared to have “severe mental health issues.”
“The many cases of people being pushed on the subway tracks, of women being punched in the face,” he said, “it’s the same profile.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul has called on state legislators to pass a law that would allow hospitals to force more people into mental health treatment. Mayor Adams supports that plan, though the New York Civil Liberties Union said it “threatens New Yorkers’ rights and liberties.”
Christopher Herrmann, an associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said that while mental health is an important factor, other societal ills can drive felony assault numbers up.
“Is it housing insecurity? Are there food shortages? Is it the economy? We need to consider all of it,” he said.
Mr. Herrmann said crimes like assaults and robberies are the type “that really fuel public fear.”
“It’s just more of a reason we’ve got to get those numbers under control,” he said.
Chelsia Rose Marcius contributed reporting.
Wain Chin, a New York City taxi driver, felt unlucky on Sunday morning.
From 9 a.m. to 10:45 a.m., he cruised in his yellow cab up and down the avenues between 57th Street and Houston Street in Manhattan. Only one woman could be seen raising her hand to hail a taxi — and the driver in front of Mr. Chin picked her up.
“You’ve got to hustle,” Mr. Chin said.
But he also noticed something positive: The streets seemed less crowded than usual.
“It might be less traffic,” he said, steering through Times Square with his eyebrows raised.
It was the first day of New York’s congestion pricing program, which tolls drivers entering the busiest section of Manhattan in an effort to reduce gridlock. Taxi rides are also subject to tolls, which are tacked on to passengers’ fares. For the first time, paper receipts in Mr. Chin’s cab showed a 75-cent fee marked “CRZ,” for “congestion reduction zone.”
“I have no comprehension on how it’s going to turn out,” he said.
But Mr. Chin, 57, is worried about how the new tolls might affect his profession. When traffic resurged as the coronavirus pandemic waned, cab ridership didn’t. During the 12-hour shifts he works Monday through Saturday, he previously averaged 20 to 25 fares. Now it is 15 to 20. Worse, his rides tend to be shorter — blocks, not miles, with charges of $20 instead of $40.
With an estimated 80 percent of his work in the tolling zone — below 60th Street — Mr. Chin worries that the additional fee will deter future riders, especially those going short distances.
Even marginal losses could be meaningful for Mr. Chin. A married father of three sons, he still owes about half a million dollars for the taxi medallion he inherited from his father. (He is trying to refinance.)
“We’re concerned for our survival,” said Mr. Chin, a Burmese immigrant who has driven a cab for nearly 30 years and is a member of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance.
Any time of day, he noted, riders south of 96th Street in Manhattan start out paying $7.75 — $4.75 in fees, $3 to the taxi driver. During evening weekday rush hours, the starting price jumps to $10.25. How much more, Mr. Chin wonders, will riders take?
“We don’t know how it’s going to affect us,” he said. “We’re going to find out in a few weeks.”
He is, however, sympathetic to the needs of the city’s public transit system, which is in dire need of repairs and upgrades that will be financed with revenue from congestion pricing tolls. Cruising past the heavily guarded Trump Tower, he mused on President-elect Donald J. Trump’s promise to end congestion pricing.
“It would be great for us,” he said. “But who’s going to pay for the subway then? The federal government?”
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