The suspect arrested in connection with Long Island’s Gilgo Beach murders is a twice-married New York City architect, Rex Heuermann, 59, who attended the same high school as Alec Baldwin.
Heuermann, who has a daughter and a stepson, was described by neighbors as a ‘family man’ living in a ‘messy house’ in Massapequa Park, around a 25-minute drive north of the beach where the bodies of ten women and a toddler were found in 2010 and 2011.
The Long Island native was taken into custody outside his midtown Manhattan office last night.
He has been arrested in relation to the first four of 11 murders along the Oyster Bay area between 2010 and 2011.
The ‘Gilgo Beach four’ were all young prostitutes in their 20s who were all strangled before their bodies were found in burlap sacks along the beach in December 2010.
A 1981 Berner High School yearbook photograph of Gilgo Beach murder suspect Rex Heuermann (left), who graduated just five years after Hollywood actor Alec Baldwin (right)
Long Island architect Rex Heuermann, 59, has been arrested today in connection with the Gilgo Beach serial killings in a major police breakthrough.
Another six women and a toddler were found in the following months.
Police are still investigating whether he had anything to do with the other murders.
Born and raised in Long Island, he has lived in a ramshackle bungalow worth around $195,000 in Massapequa since the 1980s.
Today, the ‘tight-knit’ neighborhood was left reeling after cops swarmed the house.
A neighbor who shared a backyard and grew up alongside the murder suspect described him ‘as a family man with a messy house’, adding ‘it’s an eyesore in a nice neighborhood’.
Neighbor Barry Auslander told DailyMail.com he would see the suspect at the train station in the mornings between 5.30am and 6.30am when he dropped off his wife.
He had just seen him days ago dressed in a business suit with a briefcase, ‘just like a normal businessman getting onto the Long Island Rail Road’, he added.
When he heard it was the suspect was arrested, he was floored.
‘I want to know who is buried in the backyard,’ he said.
Heuermann was arrested last night outside his office in Midtown Manhattan
The street in Massapequa Park, Long Island, where a suspect was this morning arrested in connection with the Gilgo Beach murders
The street in Massapequa Park, Long Island, where a suspect was this morning arrested in connection with the Gilgo Beach murders
A map showing where the victims remains were located along the barren stretch of Ocean Beach Parkway in Gilgo Beach, located on the South Shore of Long Island
The Irish-Italian area is best known for featuring on many hit TV shows, including Seinfeld, Friends and Saturday Night Live, owing much to the fact that Alec Baldwin and Jerry Seinfeld grew up locally.
Indeed, Heuermann and his brother Craig attended the same school, Berner High, as Baldwin, and graduated five years after the Hollywood star in 1981.
Yearbook photographs show Heuermann was part of the school drama club.
Alec Baldwin’s brother, Billy, tweeted that he was a classmate of Heuermann’s. He said: ‘Woke up this morning to learn that the Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect was my high school classmate Rex Heuermann…
‘Married, two kids, architect. ‘Average guy… quiet, family man.’ Mind-boggling… Massapequa is in shock.’
Heuermann went onto study architectural technology at the New York Institute of Technology, before getting his start in the business at Greer Construction Corp in Freeport, New York.
He married Elizabeth Ryan in 1990, but the couple has since divorced. He now has an Icelandic wife, a stepson and a daughter, Victoria, 26, from his second marriage.
Victoria works with her father at the architecture firm, RH Consultants & Associates, where he was arrested last night.
Heuermann founded the company in 1994 and its clients included American Airlines and ‘other major tenants’ at the JFK International Airport, according to an online biography.
Heuermann (circled) was in the Drama Club at Berner High School, which he attended alongside his brother Craig, and Hollywood stars Billy and Alec Baldwin
Actor Billy Baldwin was classmates with Gilgo Beach murder suspect Rex Heuermann
Billy Baldwin (right) at Berner High School Graduation in Massapequa, NY, in June 1981
William ‘Billy’ Baldwin’s Berner High School yearbook photograph from 1981
Residents of Massapequa Park watch in disbelief as police search the home on the quiet residential street
He was a member of a New York City-based networking group known as The Dream Team.
He attended weekly meetings, according to one group member, who did not want to be identified said, and who described Heuermann as friendly, organized and available.
The Dream Team’s website describes it as a referral club, to grow members’ businesses. ‘We don’t let just anyone in our group,’ the website says. ‘You have to have drive, passion, ethics, and above all, you have to be a good person.’
‘I knew him as a friend and a colleague,’ she told NBC. ‘And I am completely surprised.’
Heuermann attended the group’s weekly meeting and she said she spoke to him on Zoom on Tuesday.
‘I did not see this coming,’ she said.
Heuermann boasted of his career success in an interview with a French journalist more than a decade after the Gilgo Beach murders were committed.
