Accused Gilgo Beach killer Rex Heuermann reveled in telling underlings how he stalked and butchered animals — and staked out a business rival to the point where freaked-out workers began locking themselves in, a new report says.
Mary Shell, who worked with the hulking architect for several years, wrote in New York magazine that Heuermann liked to hire petite women — fitting the description of his alleged victims — and once referred to a client of his Midtown office as a “target.”
Shell said co-workers “described how he gushed about his bear-hunting trips in particular: baiting an area and lying in wait.
“More than once, he gleefully described the process of dressing the game, seeming to delight in grossing his employees out,” Shell wrote. “Once, at a job site, he spotted a client approaching and, speaking to my boss over the phone, said, ‘Target in sight.’”
Shell said she first met Heuermann in 2007 when her employer hired the accused killer to work on a project.
“Just a few months earlier, authorities say he murdered his first known victim, 25-year-old Maureen Brainard-Barnes,” the woman noted.
Shell recalled that when she met Heuermann at his office, “his face turned red like that of a shy teenage boy who had been surprised by a hot girl in the cafeteria.”
She said Heuermann, who founded RH Consultants and Associates in 1994, peddled himself to clients as a master at navigating the Big Apple’s maze of building codes and zoning restrictions.
“His office was mostly staffed by women like myself, young and petite, the girl-next-door type,” said Shell, who eventually accepted a job with Heuermann’s firm as a consultant. “We knew he was married with a family in Massapequa, but he never spoke of them.
Accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann got a kick out of “grossing out” employees at his architecture firm by bragging about his passion for hunting and how he butchered the animals he killed, a former colleague claims. Suffolk Police Department
Heuermann was an avid hunter and “famously loved guns,” a former co-worker said. Cops seized 279 weapons from his home, authorities said Tuesday. Edmund J Coppa
“He famously loved guns, and we all knew that he was a collector,” she wrote. “He would frequently invite colleagues to go hunting or shooting at the range, including one of my attractive co-workers that he seemed to mention the idea to every time they spoke.
“She never accepted the offer, confiding in me it sounded dangerous and creepy.”
Who were the Gilgo Beach victims? Suspected serial killer Rex Heuermann — a New York City architect and married dad of two — was arrested in connection with the long-unsolved Gilgo Beach murders. The arrest is tied to the so-called “Gilgo Four,” women found wrapped in burlap within days of each other in late 2010. The years-long investigation that led to the arrest revolved around the discovery of more than 10 sets of human remains along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach in Suffolk County between December 2010 and April 2011. Most victims were petite female sex workers with green or hazel eyes. But there were also two exceptions: a 2-year-old girl and a young Asian man. Melissa Barthelemy, 24 Barthelemy was a sex worker who lived in the Unionport section of the Bronx and dreamed of one day opening her own beauty salon. She was last seen alive in her basement apartment on Underhill Avenue on July 12, 2009. Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25 Brainard-Barnes was living in Norwich, Connecticut. She went missing after taking an Amtrak train from New London, Connecticut, to Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan on July 6, 2007. Amber Lynn Costello, 27 Costello, 27, was a sex worker and heroin addict who lived in West Babylon, New York, at a home with a woman and two men. She advertised on Craigslist and Backpage to support her and her roommates’ drug habits. Costello was found in December 2010 after having been last seen leaving her home that September. Megan Waterman, 22 Waterman, a 22-year-old mom of one, was last seen on June 6, 2010. She lived in Scarborough, Maine, and earned a living as an escort. She was last seen by her family boarding a New York-bound Concord Trailways bus in Maine. Her body was found on December 13, 2010, on the north side of Ocean Parkway, near Gilgo Beach. Jessica Taylor, 20 Remains belonging to Jessica Taylor, a 20-year-old woman working as an escort in New York City, were found in a wooded area in Manorville on July 26, 2003. Her additional remains — initially labeled “Jane Doe No. 5” — were discovered on March 29, 2011, along Ocean Parkway. Valerie Mack, 24 Valerie Mack was 24 years old and living in Philadelphia when she went missing. She worked as an escort, using the alias “Melissa Taylor.” Relatives last saw Mack in the spring or summer of 2000 in Port Republic, New Jersey, but she was never reported as missing to the police. Her partial skeletal remains were found in Manorville in September 2000 but were initially known as “Jane Doe No. 6.” Unidentified Asian man The skeletal remains of a yet-to-be-identified Asian man were found along Ocean Parkway on April 4, 2011. It is estimated that the man was between 17 and 23 years old at the time of his death. He was approximately 5 feet 6 inches tall with bad teeth. ‘Peaches’ and her daughter An African American woman’s partial remains were discovered in Hempstead Lake State Park back in 1997, and she had become known as “Peaches” because of a bitten tattoo of a peach on her left breast. On April 4, 2011, police uncovered the remains of a toddler, who was about 2 years old at the time of her death. DNA testing confirmed that one of the skeletons was that of the 2-year-old girl’s mother, “Peaches.” Jane Doe No. 7 Remains found on April 11, 2011, along with the body of the woman dubbed “Peaches” was linked by DNA to a body that was found 15 years earlier on Fire Island. On April 20, 1996, skeletal remains of a young white female were discovered in Davis Park on Blue Point Beach. Two sets of remains, collectively known as “Jane Doe No. 7,” have not been identified. Shannan Gilbert, 23 Gilbert was a Craigslist escort who lived in Jersey City, traveled with her driver Michael Pak from Manhattan to meet a client, Joseph Brewer, at his home in the Oak Beach Association on the morning of May 1, 2010. She spoke with two neighbors before disappearing. Her body was discovered in a marsh near Oak Beach — about half a mile from where she was last seen alive — on December 13, 2011.
Shell said that in another particularly disturbing incident, Heuermann was furious when a female employee bolted to another firm, renting out space in her old employer’s office.
“This enraged him,” she said of the defection. “Knowing they kept late hours, he was spotted outside the building, gazing up into the second-floor windows in the early evening. My colleagues’ minds went quickly to his gun collection, and they began locking the elevator and the doors.”
State and Suffolk County police searched Rex Heuermann’s home for 13 days after his arrest. AP
According to police, this was during a time when Heuermann was allegedly soliciting escorts online. At least three of them were found dead along Gilgo Beach on the South Shore in 2010, cops say.
Heuermann, 59, has been charged with murder in the deaths of Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Lynn Costello and Megan Waterman and is the prime suspect in the slaying of Maureen Brainard-Barnes.
Shell said that when she heard about her old colleague’s arrest, she was nonetheless surprised.
“Even though his face was on the [social media] post, my immediate thought was how strange it is that there are two people named Rex Heuermann,” she said.
“Then it dawned on me. I called a former co-worker immediately and asked, ‘Is this real?’ ”
