Serial Killers

You can’t get away from them. Click on any streaming service and serial killers are everywhere—Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, the Zodiac Killer and John Wayne Gacy, all over Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu. And there are enough books about serial killers to fill a city library, not to mention countless true crime podcasts to keep you entertained in your car for years. We are so inundated with tales of serial killers that we may think we’d know one when we saw one. Certainly, many are lonely white men acting out psychosexual urges. The most recent example is suspected serial killer Rex Heuermann, arrested in July 2023 and charged with the murders of three prostitutes whose bodies were dumped on or around Gilgo Beach, Long Island, in New York. While he…

“We have never stopped working on this case,” Steve Bellone, Suffolk County executive, told reporters in July 2023. Wearing a short-sleeve shirt and tan pants on a hot summer evening, the tall, heavyset man walks down Fifth Avenue, his left hand in his pocket with a satchel over his shoulder. He could have been any one of countless office workers on an ordinary night in Manhattan, attan, but for the three men following him. They are dressed in dark business suits and dark ties, like characters from Men in Black. Near a crosswalk, they confront the man. There’s a tense discussion. Then the man is taken away. The men in suits are FBI agents; the man is a suspected serial killer. On July 13, 2023, a 13-year investigation culminated in…

They became known as the Gilgo Four, women in their 20s connected by their work as prostitutes and their murders by an apparent serial killer, with their skeletal remains turning up around Gilgo Beach on the South Shore of Long Island, New York, but they were not the only possible victims. Police also found the body of a toddler, an Asian man and other women in their search of the area. Investigations into their identities and possible links to the Long Island Serial Killer are ongoing. The Gilgo Four Maureen Brainard-Barnes The first of the Gilgo Four victims, the 25-year-old Connecticut woman worked as an escort out of Manhattan motels, advertising on Craigslist and Backpage. She was last heard from on July 9, 2007, when she phoned a friend to…

Residing in a neglected single-story house on a quiet block in a tree-lined suburb, the man police had been seeking for 13 years was apparently hiding in plain sight, no different than the tens of thousands of other Long Islanders who commute to Manhattan each day. Rex Heuermann, the prime suspect in the Gilgo Beach, Long Island, serial killings, is a married father of two who commuted from his Massapequa Park, New York, home to his architectural firm, RH Consultants & Associates, in Manhattan, where his daughter, Victoria, was also listed as an employee. Among his impressive client list were American Airlines, Catholic Charities and the Trump Organization. His home is now a crime scene. Authorities in hazmat suits tore up the place in search of body parts, clues or…

Rex Heuermann’s longtime wife, Asa Ellerup, has been plunged into a “waking surreal nightmare,” according to her attorney. Her quiet suburban life on Long Island in New York has been jolted by the incendiary charges, not to mention a police search that ransacked her home. Ellerup has also been pummeled with questions about her own innocence. How could she not have known her husband of 27 years was the man prosecutors claim he is: a vicious murderer preying on sex workers. Ellerup’s attorney insists she was totally in the dark about the architect’s “complete double life” and evidence shows that she was out of town when most of the killings took place. Shortly after her husband’s arrest, Ellerup—who has not been charged or named as a suspect in any of…

In 2002, Katherine Shepherd, a 26-year-old interior designer, moved to New York from San Jose, California, to launch her career. She shared office space in a midtown Manhattan building with architect Rex Heuermann, whom police have charged in the Gilgo Beach Serial Killer case. What were your first impressions of him? He’s a big man, a great big man in my eyes, very intimidating physically. He was very loud and likes to talk. The women who worked for him said he was kind of a know-it-all, a little pompous, but nothing violent. It is not like he had anger issues or anything like that. But I saw him as a gentle giant. He never seemed like anybody who would hurt anyone. I just felt like he was a really nice…