A neighbor of accused Long Island serial killer Rex Heuermann says cops told him they found a soundproof room in the 59-year-old suspect’s Massapequa Park basement.
“This guy is a wacko,” 64-year-old Robert Musto, a retired Long Island Rail Road worker, told The New York Post on Sunday.
Police have been on the scene at Heuermann’s ramshackle home since his arrest on July 13 and were seen over the weekend in the home’s backyard, where they dismantled a deck, as CrimeOnline reported.
Heuermann has pleaded not guilty to the murders of three women whose bodies were found on Gilgo Beach in December 2010. He’s been named the prime suspect in the death of a fourth woman who, like the other three, was found on just off the roadway on Gilgo Beach wrapped in burlap.
“He’s got a soundproof room in his basement,” Musto told the Post cops told him. “What do you think that was for?
“They’re saying there’s evidence he killed at least one of the girls down there,” he said. “The cops are going to dig all that out. Said they’re focused on the soundproof room in the basement but they’re going to look at everything.”
Investigators have not described the interior of the house they’re thoroughly searching and have named only a few of the items they’ve found. An interior designer said last week that Heuermann stopped her from going into a locked room in the basement, which he contained guns, and Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison has said that investigators found between 200 and 300 weapons in the house. Heuermann only had licenses for 92 guns.
There has been speculation, including from CrimeOnline’s Nancy Grace, that Heuermann may have killed one or more of his victims in the house, since police have said that his wife and children were out of state when three of the victims were killed.
A law enforcement source told The Post that investigators were looking for evidence that might show the victims in the house but have found “nothing yet.”
Investigators had ground penetrating radar and cadaver dogs on the property while state troopers described a “major excavation” taking place in the back.
Last week, police searched a pair of nearby storage units belonging to Heuermann. They’ve also impounded two Chevrolet Avalanches, including an older model they took from a secluded property he owns in Chester County, South Carolina. A witness reported a large man driving a Chevy Avalanche may have been connected with the death of Amber Costello.
Seven other bodies, including a man and a toddler, have been found along the highway where the so-called “Gilgo 4” — Costello, Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy, and Maureen Brainard-Barnes — were found, but so far, police have not linked those deaths to Heuermann. He is charged in the deaths of Costello, Waterman, and Barthelemy and is suspected in Brainard-Barnes’s death.
Read more from CrimeOnline about this continuing story.
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[Featured image: Investigators scour Heuermann’s Massapequa Park home for evidence/AP Photo/John Minchillo. Inset: Rex Heuermann/Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office via AP]
