Rex Heuermann biography: 13 things about Massapequa Park, New York architect

Rex Andrew Heuermann is an American architect from Massapequa Park, Town of Oyster Bay, Nassau County, Long Island, New York, United States. He and Craig Arnold Heuermann are the sons of Theodore J. Heuermann, an aerospace engineer who helped build satellites and crafted furniture at home, and Dolores R. Heuermann.

Rex is 6’4″ tall. He used burner phones to contact prostitutes or massage parlors and false names to set up an email account to search for sex workers, sadistic pornography related to torture and imagery and videos of women and children being sexually assaulted, according to investigators.

In 1981, Rex and Billy Baldwin graduated from Alfred G. Berner High School in Massapequa, Town of Oyster Bay. Rex went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in architectural technology at the New York Institute of Technology in Westbury, New York.

In 1987, Rex started working in Manhattan, New York City, New York. Between 2010 and 2021, he was subject to six tax liens filed by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in Nassau County.

According to the IRS, Rex owed a total of more than $425,000 for taxes he had failed to pay going back to 2005. Tax lien releases filed by the IRS show that he repaid or no longer owed about $215,078 of that debt and the most recent documents were filed in October 2022.

In 2022, Rex examined water damage on a building in Manhattan and offered an analysis of proposed waterproofing. Here are 13 more things about him:

1. In 1975, his father died at age 50.
2. On September 29, 1990, he and his first wife Elizabeth R. Ryan got married at Saint Peter’s Church in New Brunswick, Middlesex County, New Jersey, USA. Craig was his best man. At that time, he was an intern architect at Greer Construction Corp. in Freeport, New York.
3. In 1994, he founded RH Consultants & Associates in Manhattan. In the same year, he bought his mother’s house in Massapequa Park for $170,000.
4. In 1996, he and his second wife Asa Ellerup got married and he became the stepfather of her son from a previous marriage. In the same year, she gave birth to their daughter Victoria K. Heuermann.
5. He is accused of killing Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, who went missing in July 2007. In September 2007, a seven-story apartment building in Harlem, New York City that he had been hired to renovate was declared unsafe by fire officials, who ordered at least 26 families to evacuate.
6. From 2009 to 2010, he owned a Chevrolet Avalanche truck. He is accused of killing Megan Waterman, 22, who disappeared in June 2010, and Amber Lynn Costello, 27, who was last seen on September 2, 2010. He is also accused of killing Melissa Barthelemy, 24, whose body was found on December 11, 2010, and Shannan Gilbert, 23, whose body was found on December 13, 2010. He allegedly hid their bodies in the brush at Gilgo Beach on the South Shore of Long Island.
7. Between 2014 and 2022, he filed four lawsuits in courts in New York against drivers who he said had hit him with their cars, causing him serious and permanent personal injuries.
8. In 2017, he sent coordinating a renovation project in the Bronx, New York City.
9. In April 2018, in his deposition in a case he filed, he was asked if he played sports. He replied, “Really only thing I competed in was competition rifle.”
10. In March 2022, investigators learned about the Chevrolet Avalanche truck he owned at the time of the killings of Barthelemy, Waterman and Costello. They also found that there were calls to the victims that originated from a location near his home in Massapequa Park and another location near his office in Manhattan. In July 2022, a detective took 11 bottles from a trash can outside his house in Massapequa Park and the deoxyribonucleic acid from the bottles was an apparent match for his wife.
11. By January 2023, he was under regular surveillance. Investigators saw him throw a pizza box into a sidewalk garbage can outside his office building in Manhattan and the Suffolk County Crime Laboratory swabbed the discarded crusts for DNA. In June 2023, the DNA matched with a hair found on Waterman’s body.
12. On July 13, 2023, he was arrested in Manhattan. On July 14, 2023, he pleaded not guilty to three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of second-degree murder in connection with the murders of Barthelemy, Waterman and Costello. He is represented by Michael J. Brown.
13. He was 59 years old when Ellerup filed on July 19, 2023 a summons and complaint for divorce against him.