Gilgo Beach murders: NY police tow apparent Chevy Avalanche from SC
A New York State Police tow truck on Tuesday towed what appeared to be a green Chevy Avalanche from Chester, South Carolina. (Audrey Conklin/Fox News Digital)
MASSAPEQUA PARK, N.Y. – The suspected Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann’s longtime home is less than three miles from the infamous Amityville Horror house – where a 23-year-old man murdered his entire family in 1974, shocking Long Island’s South Shore community and inspiring a book and movie.
Heuermann, 59, purchased the Massapequa Park house he grew up in from his mother in the 1990s, according to property records. He lived there for all of his childhood and most of his adult life, staying briefly in New Jersey before his first marriage ended.
The architect and father of two commuted from his dilapidated Long Island home to an office in Manhattan for decades, but between 2007 and 2010, prosecutors allege, he was picking up prostitutes, killing them and dumping their bodies on a remote waterfront highway nearby.
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Real estate photograph of a house in Amityville, New York, March 31, 2005. Ronald DeFeo Jr. killed his parents and four siblings in the house. (Paul Hawthorne/Getty Images)
He is also tied to a storage depot just up the road from the Amityville house. Police have been searching through his belongings for days.
Heuermann allegedly spent years hiding in plain sight – with Nassau County's old police academy just up the block.
Five decades ago and 2.9 miles away, Ronald DeFeo Jr. slaughtered his own family inside their pristine colonial home on Ocean Avenue in 1974.
Ronald DeFeo in court in June 1992 during a hearing seeking a new trial on charges he murdered his family in Amityville, New York, in 1974. (Newsday/Getty Images)
He killed his parents, Ronald and Louise, both 43, two sisters and two brothers as they slept on Nov. 13, 1974. He was 23. His siblings ranged from 9 to 18. A year later, the home's new owners fled in horror shortly after moving in.
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Suspected Long Island serial killer Rex Heuermann's Massapequa Park home, which he grew up in and then purchased from his mother, pictured in a 2021 Google Maps image. (Google Maps)
George and Kathy Lutz bought the house – and were so shocked by alleged paranormal activity that they left a month later.
The waterfront house, which has a backyard boathouse connected via canals and the Great South Bay to Gilgo Beach, is still standing today, and again, the address was changed in an effort to reduce visits from gawkers.
According to court documents, DeFeo tossed evidence into a canal and down a storm drain, then went to work in Brooklyn. He came back that evening and pretended to have stumbled across the bodies.
Rex Heuermann, an architect who lived a 20-minute drive from Gilgo Beach in Massapequa Park, appears in what investigators decribe as "selfie" photographs taken from the fictitious Springfieldman9 AOL account, as part of a bail application by the Suffolk County District Attorney's office July 14, 2023. ( Suffolk County Court/Handout via Reuters)
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At first, he blamed a mob hit man for the murders, but then confessed and led police to where he ditched the murder weapon and other evidence.
DeFeo was sentenced to 25 years to life and died in prison in 2021. He was 69.
Authorities execute a search warrant of Rex Heuermann’s home in Massapequa Park, New York, on Tuesday, July 18, 2023. (Mega for Fox News Digital)
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Heuermann pleaded not guilty Friday to charges of first- and second-degree murder in the deaths of Melissa Barthelemy, 24, Megan Waterman, 22, and Amber Costello, 27.
Clockwise from top left, Amber Lynn Costello, 27, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, Megan Waterman, 22, and Melissa Barthelemy, 24, disappeared after meeting with a client on Craigslist. The remains of the women were found in December 2010 at Gilgo Beach on Long Island. (Suffolk County Police Department)
They were killed between June 2007 and September 2010 and found wrapped in camouflaged burlap off Ocean Parkway in December 2010.
Heuermann is also the prime suspect in the death of a fourth victim, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25.
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A task force with members from multiple law enforcement agencies allegedly linked Heuermann to the crime scene with a witness statement in Costello's disappearance and through phone records and a DNA sample collected from a box of pizza the suspect tossed in a New York City trash can.
The discarded pizza box and the bin where it was thrown away. The pizza crust was used to collect DNA allegedly linking Heuremann to one of the dead bodies. (Suffolk County DA)
They said genetics taken from the crust matched a hair sample taken from the victims.
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The remains of all four were found in the brush off Ocean Parkway in December 2010. The remote road runs through a stretch of sparsely populated beaches, marshes and parkland east of New York City.
Heuermann is due back in court on Aug. 1.
He faces up to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole if convicted.
