Suspected Long Island serial killer Rex Heuermann had a locked basement room that he claimed was filled with guns, causing him to react anxiously when an interior designer attempted to enter.
In an interview with DailyMail, Katherine Shepherd, who worked on Heurmann’s home in 2005, recalled the incident and said she now wonders what Heurmann was hiding inside the basement, following his arrest for allegedly killing three women at New York’s Gilko Beach.
“I didn’t understand he was being so weird about it, and now I’m thinking, ‘What was he hiding?'” Shepherd told DailyMail. “It was a big room. What was happening in that room? Is that where he took the women?”
“In the basement, there was this one room that was locked, and he said I couldn’t go into that room. I was like – what the hell? That’s weird. And he was kind of joking, like, oh you can’t go in there because there’s things in there. And then he said, ‘I’ve got a bunch of guns.'”
Shepherd, 47, said she had multiple interactions with Rex Heuermann and shared a “friendly working relationship” with him. In 2005, she did work on his Massapequa Park home; she then accompanied Heuermann to a firing range and he took her to an area hospital when she once fell on ice and injured herself.
“He’s just like Dexter,” she added. “You’d never know if you met him. Dexter was also super normal and then he had that other side.”
As CrimeOnline previously reported, the investigation began in May 2010 when Shannan Gilbert, a 24-year-old sex worker from New Jersey, disappeared after leaving a client’s home in Oak Beach.
As investigators searched for Gilbert, they found the remains of four more women — Melissa Barthelemy, 24; Megan Waterman, 22; Amber Lynn Costello, 27; and Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25.
READ MORE:
Brainard-Barnes was abducted in 2007, Barthelemy in 2009, and Waterman and Costello in 2010. They were dubbed the “Gilgo Four” and their bodies were found wrapped in burlap sacks.
The following March, Suffolk police found partial remains of Jessica Taylor along Ocean Parkway: Other remains belonging to Taylor had been found in 2003 in Manorville, police said in 2020.
Investigators then found the body of 24-year-old Valerie Mack (who was not identified until 2020), a toddler girl, and a man. Then came the two bodies found in Nassau County.
Following an investigation that reportedly uncovered evidence linking Heurmann to at least three of the deaths, he was arrested earlier this month and charged with killing three women.
Shepherd met the defendant a few years before the murders and said she had no idea about the case until a colleague told her. She said she then “spent the next eight hours reading every article I could find.”
“I was shocked. How could this be the same man? I’m like shaking right now.”
For the latest true crime and justice news, subscribe to the ‘Crime Stories with Nancy Grace’ podcast.
[Featured image: Rex Heuermann/RH Consultants and Associates]
*Additional reporting by KC Wildmoon*
