Architect turned suspected serial killer spent whole life less than 3 miles from ‘Amityville Horror’ massacre

MASSAPEQUA PARK, N.Y. – The suspected Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann’s longtime home is less than three miles from the infamous Amityville Horror house – where a 23-year-old man murdered his entire family in 1974, shocking Long Island’s South Shore community and inspiring a book and movie.

Heuermann, 59, purchased the Massapequa Park house he grew up in from his mother in the 1990s, according to property records. He lived there for all of his childhood and most of his adult life, staying briefly in New Jersey before his first marriage ended.

The architect and father of two commuted from his dilapidated Long Island home to an office in Manhattan for decades, but between 2007 and 2010, prosecutors allege, he was picking up prostitutes, killing them and dumping their bodies on a remote waterfront highway nearby. 

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He is also tied to a storage depot just up the road from the Amityville house. Police have been searching through his belongings for days.

Heuermann allegedly spent years hiding in plain sight – with Nassau County’s old police academy just up the block.

Five decades ago and 2.9 miles away, Ronald DeFeo Jr. slaughtered his own family inside their pristine colonial home on Ocean Avenue in 1974.

He killed his parents, Ronald and Louise, both 43, two sisters and two brothers as they slept on Nov. 13, 1974. He was 23. His siblings ranged from 9 to 18. A year later, the home’s new owners fled in horror shortly after moving in.

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George and Kathy Lutz bought the house – and were so shocked by alleged paranormal activity that they left a month later.

The waterfront house, which has a backyard boathouse connected via canals and the Great South Bay to Gilgo Beach, is still standing today, and again, the address was changed in an effort to reduce visits from gawkers.

According to court documents, DeFeo tossed evidence into a canal and down a storm drain, then went to work in Brooklyn. He came back that evening and pretended to have stumbled across the bodies.

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At first, he blamed a mob hit man for the murders, but then confessed and led police to where he ditched the murder weapon and other evidence.

DeFeo was sentenced to 25 years to life and died in prison in 2021. He was 69.

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Heuermann pleaded not guilty Friday to charges of first- and second-degree murder in the deaths of Melissa Barthelemy, 24, Megan Waterman, 22, and Amber Costello, 27.

They were killed between June 2007 and September 2010 and found wrapped in camouflaged burlap off Ocean Parkway in December 2010.

Heuermann is also the prime suspect in the death of a fourth victim, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25.

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A task force with members from multiple law enforcement agencies allegedly linked Heuermann to the crime scene with a witness statement in Costello’s disappearance and through phone records and a DNA sample collected from a box of pizza the suspect tossed in a New York City trash can.

They said genetics taken from the crust matched a hair sample taken from the victims.

The remains of all four were found in the brush off Ocean Parkway in December 2010. The remote road runs through a stretch of sparsely populated beaches, marshes and parkland east of New York City.

Heuermann is due back in court on Aug. 1.

He faces up to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole if convicted.