Police swarmed the basement of accused Long Island serial killed Rex Heuermann on Monday, following his arrest for the murders of three women.
According to Fox News Digital, police were seen Monday removing several boxes of evidence, along with cabinets and a toolbox, from Heuermann’s Massapequa Park home. They were seen carrying these items out and even dragging the toolbox up from his basement.
“He had an arsenal in a vault that he had downstairs,” Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison told Fox News.
Harrison reportedly added that 200 firearms were confiscated from Heuermann’s home during the investigation. District Attorney Ray Tierney said last week that a burlap material used to dump the victims’ bodies was similar to the kind utilized in duck blinds. The defendant was supposedly a duck-hunting fan.
As CrimeOnline previously reported, the investigation began in May 2010 when Shannan Gilbert, a 24-year-old sex worker from New Jersey, disappeared after leaving a client’s home in Oak Beach.
As investigators searched for Gilbert, they found the remains of four more women — Melissa Barthelemy, 24; Megan Waterman, 22; Amber Lynn Costello, 27; and Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25.
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Brainard-Barnes was abducted in 2007, Barthelemy in 2009, and Waterman and Costello in 2010. They were dubbed the “Gilgo Four” and their bodies were found wrapped in burlap sacks.
The following March, Suffolk police found partial remains of Jessica Taylor along Ocean Parkway: Other remains belonging to Taylor had been found in 2003 in Manorville, police said in 2020.
Investigators then found the body of 24-year-old Valerie Mack (who was not identified until 2020), a toddler girl, and a man. Then came the two bodies found in Nassau County.
Following an investigation that reportedly uncovered evidence linking Heurmann to at least three of the deaths, he was arrested earlier this month and charged with killing three women. He’s also a suspect in a fourth murder.
In an interview with DailyMail, Katherine Shepherd, who worked on Heurmann’s home in 2005, recalled he refused to allow her into his basement.
“I didn’t understand he was being so weird about it, and now I’m thinking, ‘What was he hiding?’” Shepherd told DailyMail. “It was a big room. What was happening in that room? Is that where he took the women?”
“In the basement, there was this one room that was locked, and he said I couldn’t go into that room. I was like – what the hell? That’s weird. And he was kind of joking, like, oh you can’t go in there because there’s things in there. And then he said, ‘I’ve got a bunch of guns.’”
“He’s just like Dexter. You’d never know if you met him. Dexter was also super normal and then he had that other side.”
See earlier reporting from CrimeOnline about the Gilgo Beach murders.
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[Featured image: Rex Heuermann/RH Consultants and Associates]
*Additional reporting by KC Wildmoon*
