He had a word document on a hard drive in his basement.

It had sections labeled, Targets, Supplies, Body Prep, and Things to Remember.

Under Things to Remember, he had written, use heavier rope and don't charge gas.

He was an architect by trade, a husband and a father.

He had a house in the suburbs where he grew up, and for at least 30 years he was also

a serial killer operating out of Long Island. This is Rex Heurman and the Gilgo Beach murders.

This is Rex Heurman lived in for nearly his entire life. He grew up there as a kid, bought it from his mother in 1994,

and raised his own family inside it. Neighbors thought it was a bit spooky looking,

always slightly run-down looking, the sort of house where kids dare each other to go ring the

doorbell.

The man who lived there was, by all outward appearances, just a large, somewhat disheveled architect

who commuted to Midtown Manhattan and mostly kept to himself. He ran his own firm,

RH consultants and associates, built a professional reputation over the decades, had a wife, two kids,

and a personality that coworkers described as socially awkward but professionally competent.

In the way suburban Long Island produces people who are just quietly there,

occupying space without much ceremony, Rex Heurman seemed thoroughly unremarkable other than his size.

He was also, as of April 26, confirmed, a serial killer who had been operating out of that

house since at least 1993. Rex Andrew Heurman was born September 13, 1963. Long Island South Shore in the early 60s ran on post-war suburban aspiration. A place where you kept the lawn trimmed. You kept the front door painted and projected normalcy outward without asking too many questions about what was behind it. His father, Theodore, was a World War II veteran, a former Air Force

Second Lieutenant, an aerospace engineer, and a cabinet maker. That blend of technical

precision and physical craft left a mark, pulling Rex toward architecture, a field that

required the same synthesis of abstract spatial planning and hands-on execution.

Theodore died in 1975 when Rex was 11 or 12.

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