In the city of the Welcome signs, many residents answer “I don't want to talk”.
More than two weeks have passed, on this last Saturday in July, since the police arrested Rex Heuermann, a 59-year-old architect, a resident of Massapequa Park, on Long Island (New York). He is in pretrial detention on charges of killing three women, waiting for other murders to be attributed to him, and daily life continues to be disrupted in this place not very conducive to noise.
That married neighbor (his wife, Asa Ellerup, 59, has filed for divorce), with two grown children, in a suit and briefcase, who every day went to and from the office in the middle of Manhattan, less than an hour away by train, discreet despite the size of his humanity –hence the nickname “ogre”–, rather unsocial, today enigmatic, has caused a cataclysm in this town.
Suddenly, one of those anonymous sites emerges in the global spotlight, dozens of cameras, reporters, onlookers and tourists approach the house on First Avenue. The researchers spent 15 days digging in the back and searching through the corners. In addition to 279 weapons, scores of items were seized, from furniture to possible trophies from his hunt.
Heuermann is considered one of the most elusive suspected serial killers in living memory in the United States, with crimes pending adjudication dating back to at least 1996. Between 2010 and 2011, eleven were found on the nearby coastline. corpses: some, whole; a pair, quartered. There was a man who dressed as a woman and a two-year-old girl. Nor is it ruled out that he acted in other parts of the US.
Among the victims are "the four from Gilgo beach", about 20 minutes away by car. Of the four, handcuffed and in burlap sacks, the evidence links Heuerman to three (Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello) and he is the main suspect in the death of Maureen Brainard-Barnes. They were in their twenties, petite prostitutes contacted with disposable cell phones through their online ads.
“It is a morbid fascination, a freak show. I have a show with which I travel the country, 1,000 people a night who are obsessed and want to listen to me for two hours talking about serial killers”, explains Scott Bonn, doctor of criminology, researcher and author, to justify the passion to feel that converted house. in evil tourist attraction.
“People can't get enough of the news, they need to watch it up close. He's being crazy, a little out of control,” says Jim, one of the few neighbors willing to chat. His home is on the same avenue, a couple of corners away. She often passed Heuermann, hello and goodbye. "Last night [Friday] you couldn't cross the street, it seemed like a highway," Brooke, his wife, intervenes.
The police set strict rules. It does not allow cars to stop and it is forbidden to stop to look at the home of horror, to which the now ex-wife and two children have returned. This does not prevent a procession of vehicles that slow down, drive ahead and immediately turn around to pass again and take photos.
Jim's house, supervisor of a company in New York, is in line with those around him. They are individual properties with magazine gardens. In the window of a real estate agency, houses of good dimensions are offered, from 550,000 to 800,000 dollars. This is the Long Island in between, in the middle of the expensive metropolis and the luxury of the Hamptons.
The contrast between the white color of the residents –according to the census, 96% of the 17,100 inhabitants are white– and the darker skin of the Hispanic gardeners (González Landscape) is eloquent.
It is also very shocking the disparity of the good care of the group of houses and the dilapidated of the Heuermann.
“It's always been like this,” says Jim, who moved here ten years ago. “It is strange, because, as an architect, it is assumed that he earned money and that he was interested in structures. He maybe he didn't want to attract attention, but he called her even more. We all knew that house as a dilapidated shack, ”he adds.
But a case like this was not expected. Like other neighbors, he was surprised by this double life. Bonn, on the other hand, profiled Gilgo's possible killer in April 2011 for The New York Times that squared it off.
“I predicted he would be a white male, professional, educated, probably with family, living in the neighborhood, meticulous, articulate, and it all fits Heuermann,” he replies.
“Based on how he left the bodies, with great order, in isolated areas, I understood that he was a type of murderer consistent with other similar ones, with family and a sadistic, psychopathic, narcissistic alter ego, who have the ability to flip the switch and become in another”, he specifies. “They think they are very smart and brilliant artists,” she says.
That his wife didn't know anything (according to the police) or that his house was a mess only confirms the “compartmentalization” of his personality or the ability to be someone different. “There were two important things, business and killing, everything else did not concern him. What gave him satisfaction was killing”, he qualifies.
Those who knew him at the Massapequa school describe his life stages. In the first, he was the sack of everyone's jokes, and in the second, when he became a hulk, a nasty and bully guy.
“The most interesting thing is that, being a big guy, he chose very small women, almost like dolls, which allowed him to be in a state of total domination,” adds Bonn.
The case has taken almost 13 years to partly solve, since in December 2010 Officer John Mallia and his dog Blue set out to search for Shannan Gilbert, who had gone missing. Instead of her, that opened the path to Gilgo's Four. Gilbert and the rest were discovered throughout 2011.
The investigations stalled, to a large extent, due to corruption. James Burke, the Sufolk County Police Chief, ended up in prison in 2015 for beating up a robber who stole cigars and a bag of pornography and sex toys from his car. The district attorney, Thomas Spotta, was also jailed for trying to cover it up.
In 2022 there was a radical turn with the new police chief, Rodney Harrison, who created a task force under the supervision of prosecutor Ray Tierney.
They reviewed the investigation on mobile phones, an investigation in which they learned, from the communication towers, that the devices were used during the day in downtown Manhattan and at night and in the early hours, in an area of Long Island. There, the use of the telephone of one of the victims was also detected, from which a man called her sister and said: "Do you think you will see her again?"
The key piece of information was finding misplaced the statement of the only witness who saw the murderer, of whom he gave a physical description. She confessed in 2010, when Amber Costello disappeared, that she saw that man with a green Chevrolet. That led them to Heuermann. After months of being surrounded, a policeman saw that he was throwing away a piece of pizza near his office. He picked it up and the DNA matched a hair recovered from one of the burlap sacks.
“This has only just begun,” prosecutor Tierney remarked after the arrest.
A question arises: if Heuermann is truly the persecuted one, has he stopped killing since 2011? “I don't think so,” replies Joseph Giacalone, a former NYPD sergeant and professor at John Jay College. "Maybe he stopped burying in that area, but if he was doing this for 20 years, I see no reason for him to stop," he reiterates.
"I'm not going anywhere, I like my city," stresses Louisa Angello, with a house two doors away from the tourist attraction and tired of being in the spotlight.
