A 2011 story on the likely profile of the Gilgo Beach serial killer came remarkably close to the real-life traits of the suspect who was nabbed for at least three of the infamous murders this week.
The perpetrator who killed at least four young women and dumped their bodies along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo State Park between 2007 and 2010 was probably an educated, professional white male with a family living on the South Shore of Long Island, forensic profilers and serial killer experts told the New York Times in April 2011.
“This is someone who can walk into a room and seem like your average Joe,” Scott Bonn, an assistant professor of sociology at Drew University in Madison, NJ, said of the person responsible for the deaths of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello.
“He has to be persuasive enough and rational enough that he is able to convince these women to meet him on these terms. He has demonstrated social skills. He may even be charming.”
All of those descriptors apply to Rex Heuermann, the Massapequa Park architect, husband and father of two who was arrested for the murders of three of the so-called “Gilgo Four” on Thursday night.
The experts estimated that the potential suspect was anywhere between his 20s to his 40s.
Now 59, Heuermann would have been around 46 when the last Gilgo victim, Costello, was killed in September 2010.
When the “Gilgo Four” went missing is another telling connection, as former FBI profiler Jim Clemente mulled there was a “seasonal nature” to the then-unknown suspect’s ties to the area where the bodies were found.
“It may be the time his wife or kids or parents are away for the summer. There are many possibilities,” he told the Times.
Investigators said Friday that Heuermann’s wife, Asa Ellerup, and children were out of town around the time three of the woman vanished. She was in Maryland when Waterman disappeared, his bail application revealed.
She was in New Jersey when Costello vanished and Iceland when Barthelemy was last seen alive, the document showed.
‘He’s a weirdo’
By mid-morning Friday, dozens of neighbors were gathered outside Heuermann’s modest 1st Avenue home, where investigators spent hours combing the property for additional evidence.
Barry Auslander, 72, told The Post that Heuermann looked like an “average guy who had a family and went to work.”
“He grew up here. I never thought he was anything but a businessman,” he said.
Heuermann — who was divorced from his first wife, Elizabeth Ryan, and is currently married to Asa Ellerup, 59 — has been the president of his own Manhattan-based company, RH Architects, since 1994.
“I’m a troubleshooter born and raised on Long Island,” he told French YouTuber Antoine Amira in an interview for Bonjour Realty last year.
One former professional acquaintance told The Post that Heuermann was known in the industry as “a big talker.”
“He was always odd. He’d mosey around. We knew something was odd about him,” the individual said.
“I feel like it makes sense he’s a serial killer. He’s a weirdo.”
Heuermann’s daughter, Victoria, who is believed to be around 26 or 27 years old, was listed as an employee of RH Architects until Friday, when the company scrubbed its team page after news of his arrest.
Heuermann also has a son who is a few years old than Victoria, neighbors told The Post.
“His kid is a nice kid, a special needs kid,” neighbor Etienne DeVilliers told CBS News of Heuermann’s son.
‘I hope he goes to hell’
Classmates from the Berner High School Class of 1981 — including actor Billy Baldwin — had sparse, mixed recollections of their now-infamous peer.
“He flew under the radar,” one fellow graduate who was in Heuermann’s homeroom class told The Post.
“[I’m] sick to my stomach,” she said of his arrest, noting that the former drama club member’s current home is just “a couple of blocks away” from hers.
Other Berner High grads discussed Heuermann’s shocking arrest in a public alumni Facebook group.
“He used to leave me little love notes in my locker,” classmate Maureen Boyle Holpit wrote underneath a post announcing the development.
“Omg I hope he goes to hell,” Massapequa resident Barbara Gaulrapp-Cox added.
Heuermann pleaded not guilty to a slew of charges — including three counts of first-degree murder — stemming from the deaths of Waterman, Barthelemey, and Costello.
He was tied to the cases in part through DNA evidence from a discarded pizza crust, which matched him to a hair found on the burlap used to wrap Waterman’s body, his bail application stated.
Heuermann also remains the prime suspect in the death of Brainard-Barnes, though he has not been definitively tied to her disappearance in 2007.
All four Gilgo Beach victims were discovered in December 2010, while authorities were scouring the Ocean Parkway area for Shannan Gilbert, 23, who vanished in May of that year.
Like Shanann, the Gilgo Four all advertised as sex workers, and were last seen during or around alleged appointments with clients.
