Gilgo Beach Killings Arrest Confirms Decade-Old Prediction
Gilgo Beach Killings Arrest Confirms Decade-Old Prediction
In April 2011, just a few months after the deaths of four women were discovered buried along Gilgo Beach on Long Island’s South Shore, numerous specialists and criminologists collaborated with The New York Times to create a sketch of the features they anticipated seeing in a suspect. The sketch was published in the newspaper.
They indicated that a white male in his mid-20s to mid-40s had probably killed the women and buried them within a quarter mile of each other in an area where the remains of a total of 11 persons would eventually be located. The women had been wrapped in hessian and were buried in the same place. It is known that he is married or that he has a girlfriend.
He has a commanding presence and an impressive education. He is not in need of financial assistance, he is employed, he has an expensive automobile or truck, and he currently resides or once resided in close proximity to the location where the victims were discovered.
On Friday, new information started coming to light about Rex Heuermann, the guy who was detained and charged with murder in connection to the deaths of three of the women. According to the public defender, he was the primary suspect in the murder of the fourth woman. Mr. Heuermann is a white married guy who is 59 years old and works as an architect in Manhattan. He currently resides in Massapequa Park, which is approximately 15 miles from Gilgo Beach. According to the authorities, he was the owner of a Chevrolet Avalanche truck at the time of the killings.
Experts have pointed out that profiles are often used to analyse persons who have already come to the attention of investigators. None of this evidence suggests that Mr. Heuermann is the serial murderer, and it is important to emphasise that profiles are utilised in this manner. However, the parallels were not overlooked by any of the specialists who contributed to the compilation of the 2011 profile.
“When I heard the news yesterday, I sort of had to smile to myself because it was pretty much what I had predicted,” Scott Bonn, a criminologist, author, and serial-killer researcher who has spoken about the deaths at Gilgo Beach, said in a phone interview on Saturday that he has spoken about the killings at Gilgo Beach.
Mr. Heuermann, who is being detained at the Suffolk County Correctional Facility in Riverhead, New York, without the possibility of posting bail due to the charges against him, has entered a not guilty plea. His attorney stated on Friday outside the courthouse that he had denied his client was responsible for the killings.
A request for comment was made to the attorney Michael Brown on Saturday evening, but he did not immediately answer. The police prevented anyone other than Mr. Heuermann’s neighbours from entering the neighbourhood around his house for the whole Saturday morning. Items that were gathered as evidence were loaded into many box trucks, which were positioned in front of the house.
Creating a profile of a killer is not an exact science. And the picture that the experts painted in 2011 might be used to characterise a great number of males who live on Long Island but make their living in Manhattan.
“The thing about serial killers — at least the ones that are more prolific — is that they are often extraordinarily ordinary,” said James Alan Fox, a professor at Northeastern University who has studied serial killers for more than 40 years. Fox has conducted research on serial killers.
Mr. Fox remarked, “You can’t use a profile to find the killer,” and he added that there have been instances in which profiles have been proven to be inaccurate.
In 2011, Dr. Bonn, who was working as an assistant professor of sociology at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, made the prognostication that the perpetrator would be “someone who can walk into a room and seem like your average Joe.”
He anticipated that the other person would be methodical and well-organized in his approach to the assignment. He stated in an interview with The Times that it was conceivable that the murderer would be “persuasive enough and rational enough” to convince his victims to meet him on his terms.
Dr. Bonn expressed on Saturday that the revelation that Mr. Heuermann is a physician did not come as a surprise to him. He asked, “Who is more organised, who is more meticulous, than someone who studied engineering and architecture?” He was referring to the professions of engineering and architecture. He noted that in order for Mr. Heuermann to sell his skills, he would need to be convincing.
According to the experts, prolific serial killers have a tendency to be very careful not to leave behind any evidence and are able to conceal themselves in plain sight by integrating into the areas in which they operate.
“They generally have jobs and families, and they kill part time,” Mr. Fox said. “They kill part time.” “It is not the only thing that they do in their life.”
According to those who had the opportunity to collaborate with Mr. Heuermann, he was very meticulous, to the point where his attention to detail annoyed some customers but won over others. A few of his neighbours claimed that he was a “average” man who they would never consider to be “anything but a businessman.” Others saw him as someone they should steer clear of because he was intimidating and towered over them when they saw him in the front yard of a run-down home that was falling apart.
“We would cross the street,” Nicholas Ferchaw, a neighbour who is 24 years old, stated. “He was the kind of person you didn’t want to get too close to.”According to Dr. Bonn, serial killers can have personalities that appear to be in direct opposition to one another.
He noted that Mr. Heuermann “obviously functioned very highly — had his own architecture firm and picked up his briefcase, got on the train, went into the city every day, went into Manhattan and was able to function.” He observed that “these individuals live compartmentalised lives.”
“But then,” he continued, “it’s almost like they flip a switch and just become another individual completely.”
