Suspected serial killer’s 1980s summer job may have been road map to murders: prosecutors

close Video

Did Rex Heuermann call Long Island serial killer documentarian in 2016?

Josh Zeman, a producer and filmmaker of "The Killing Season," which investigated the Gilgo Beach murders, received an unexpected call that some suspect was Rex Heuermann.

Join Fox News for access to this content Plus special access to select articles and other premium content with your account – free of charge. By entering your email and pushing continue, you are agreeing to Fox News’ Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, which includes our Notice of Financial Incentive. Please enter a valid email address. By entering your email and pushing continue, you are agreeing to Fox News’ Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, which includes our Notice of Financial Incentive. Having trouble? Click here.

As a young adult, suspected Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann worked summer jobs at Jones Beach, another sandy stretch in the same area he would be accused of dumping half a dozen victims’ bodies decades later. 

Prosecutors revealed at a hearing this week that Heuermann’s alleged motive was to “identify and ‘hunt’ women for the purpose of committing murder” and that the job patrolling sandy stretches of Jones Beach at night made him intimately familiar with the area.

The 61-year-old Heuermann, who sources say picked up the nickname “Sexy Rexy” at the Suffolk County Jail, worked there from 1981, the year he graduated from high school, until 1984, according to court documents.

SUSPECTED SERIAL KILLER REX HEUERMANN CHARGED WITH SEVENTH SLAYING

Rex Heuermann worked at Long Island’s Jones Beach in New York. (Harry Hamburg/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)

“Part of defendant’s work at the beach entailed the defendant getting on All-Terrain Vehicle and going from field to field to ensure beachgoers were off the property once the beach was closed, a role that made the defendant extremely familiar with Ocean Parkway at night,” Assistant Suffolk County District Attorney Andrew Lee wrote in a court filing unveiled Tuesday.

SERIAL KILLER SUSPECT REX HEUERMANN FACES MORE POSSIBLE CHARGES A YEAR AFTER ARREST

A sign welcoming visitors to Gilgo Beach outside the tunnel that connects the parking lot to the beach underneath Ocean Parkway. (Michael Ruiz/Fox News)

GILGO BEACH SERIAL KILLER SUSPECT ALLEGEDLY HAS MORE VICTIMS, HUNTING GROUNDS THAN POLICE FIRST IMAGINED

Heuermann is a South Shore native who bought the Massapequa Park house he grew up in from his mother in the early 1990s. That neighborhood is near both beaches. 

Jones Beach is less than 7 miles from Gilgo down Ocean Parkway. Six of the seven victims’ remains were recovered in whole or in part east of Gilgo Beach, and prosecutors call the area the “central disposal site.”

The filing came as prosecutors voiced their opposition to Heuermann defense lawyer Mike Brown’s request to have the slew of charges against his client split up across multiple trials. 

GET REAL TIME UPDATES DIRECTLY ON THE TRUE CRIME HUB 

Heuermann is accused of seven murders dating back to 1993, committed under gruesome circumstances and involving allegations of torture, mutilation and dismemberment. Prosecutors argued that the crimes shared the same modus operandi and that many witnesses overlap.

Rex Heuermann was a 1981 graduate of Berner High School in Massapequa, according to his yearbook. (Tom Conigliaro)

SIGN UP TO GET TRUE CRIME NEWSLETTER

The victims were all described as “petite” women, many of them around 5 feet tall and barely over 100 pounds. An eyewitness in the case who was the last to see one of them alive described Heuermann, whose identity was unknown at the time, as an “ogre” driving a Chevrolet Avalanche.

Heuermann’s job patrolling the beach has drawn comparisons to the convicted serial killer Dennis Rader, whose BTK nickname stands for bind, torture, kill.

Rader spent years working for the home security company ADT, installing systems for people who may have wanted house alarms after his first set of slayings, the home invasion murder of the Otero family in 1974. 

Rex Heuermann, the suspected Gilgo Beach serial killer, is shown as he appeared in a 2009 New York driver’s license photo included in court documents. (Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office)

FOLLOW THE FOX TRUE CRIME TEAM ON X

Rader then went on to work as a compliance and animal control officer in Park City, Kansas.

“Dad even built his animal control officer outfit based on a county sheriff look, including a large night stick, a large Maglite, [and he] carried a shotgun in his truck,” Rader’s daughter, Kerri Rawson, told Fox News Digital. “He looked imposing and absolutely like a cop.”

John Kelly, a criminal profiler who has interviewed numerous serial killers and developed an early profile in the Gilgo Beach case, said the beach patrol job could have sated a desire “for authority and control.”

Attorney Michael Brown speaks alongside his client, Rex Heuermann, during a pre-trial hearing at Suffolk County Court in Riverhead, N.Y., on Feb. 25, 2025. (James Carbone/Newsday via Pool)

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

“It shows and feeds his need for control at an earlier age and being in a position of authority like BTK,” he said.

Heuermann later became an architect and was accused of abusing his power when dealing with city compliance issues, the New York Times reported in the days after his arrest. He was arrested in July 2023 outside his Manhattan office after police say DNA collected from a discarded pizza box helped them identify him as the suspect.