In Gilgo Beach Killings, an Arrest Bears Out a Decade-Old Prediction
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In April 2011, just months after the bodies of four women were discovered buried near Gilgo Beach on Long Island’s South Shore, several experts and criminologists put together a sketch for The New York Times of the characteristics they expected to see in a suspect.
The women, wrapped in burlap and buried within a quarter-mile of each other in an area where the remains of 11 people in total would eventually be found, were probably killed by a white man in his mid-20s to mid-40s, they said. He is married or has a girlfriend. He is well educated and well spoken. He is financially secure, has a job, owns an expensive car or truck, and lives or used to live near where the bodies were found.
On Friday, details began emerging about Rex Heuermann, who was arrested and charged with murder in the killings of three of the women. Prosecutors said he was the prime suspect in the death of the fourth woman. Mr. Heuermann, 59, is a married white man who works as an architect in Manhattan and lives in Massapequa Park, about 15 miles from Gilgo Beach. He owned a Chevrolet Avalanche truck at the time of the killings, prosecutors said.
None of this proves that Mr. Heuermann is the serial killer, and experts noted that profiles are typically used to evaluate individuals who have already come to the attention of investigators. But the similarities did not go unnoticed by some of the experts who put together 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 Gilgo Beach killings, said in a phone interview on Saturday.
Mr. Heuermann, who is being held without bail at the Suffolk County Correctional Facility in Riverhead, N.Y., has pleaded not guilty to the charges. His lawyer said outside the courthouse on Friday that he had denied committing the killings.
The lawyer, Michael Brown, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday evening. On Saturday morning, the block around Mr. Heuermann’s home remained closed by the police to everyone but residents. Several box trucks were parked outside the house to take away items gathered for evidence.
Profiling killers is not a precise science. And the portrait the experts drew in 2011 could describe many men who live on Long Island and commute into Manhattan for work.
“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.
“You can’t use a profile to find the killer,” Mr. Fox said, adding that there have been cases where profiles were incorrect.
In 2011, Dr. Bonn, then an assistant professor of sociology at Drew University in Madison, N.J., predicted that the killer would be “someone who can walk into a room and seem like your average Joe.”
The man would be organized, he believed, and careful about his work. He told The Times that the killer was likely to be “persuasive enough and rational enough” to persuade his victims to meet him on his terms.
Dr. Bonn said on Saturday that he was not surprised to learn about Mr. Heuermann’s profession. “Who is more organized, who is more meticulous, than someone who studied engineering and architecture?” he said. Mr. Heuermann would have to be persuasive to sell his skills, he added.
Prolific serial killers tend to be extremely careful not to leave behind evidence and can hide in plain sight, blending into their communities, the experts said.
“They generally have jobs and families and they kill part time,” Mr. Fox said. “It’s not their sole activity in life.”
Those who worked with Mr. Heuermann said he was extremely fastidious, impressing some clients while exasperating others with his attention to detail. Some of his neighbors described him as an “average” man whom they wouldn’t think of as “anything but a businessman.” To others, he was someone to avoid — a glowering, towering individual they would see in the front yard of a low-slung, dilapidated house.
“We would cross the street,” said Nicholas Ferchaw, 24, a neighbor. “He was somebody you don’t want to approach.”
Serial killers can have seemingly contradictory personalities, Dr. Bonn said.
“These individuals live compartmentalized lives,” he said, noting 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.
“But then,” he said, “it’s almost like they flip a switch and just become another individual completely.”
Corey Kilgannon contributed reporting.
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