Suspected Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuerman locked a large room in his basement and when an interior designer tasked with measuring his home wanted in – he was told it was filled with guns, DailyMail.com can reveal.
Speaking exclusively to DailyMail.com, Kathryn Shepherd recalled how she found Human’s reaction strange at the time and now wonders what else he could be hiding in the 12’x15′ space.
‘I couldn’t understand why he was so weird about it, and now I’m wondering “what was he hiding?” ‘ said the shepherd.
‘It was a big room. What was happening in that room? Is that where he took the women?’
Interior designer Kathryn Shepherd, 47, worked with suspected serial killer Rex Heuerman, 59, for five years, including a 2005 project on his Massapequa Park home.
Shepherd developed a friendly, working relationship with Heuerman and other colleagues while sharing an office space with him for two years in Manhattan. Exclusive photos obtained by DailyMail.com show them during a social outing at Pitt’s Tavern.
Heuermann has lived on the Long Island property with his wife Asa Ellarup and their two children since the 1980s. She planned to renovate her kitchen with Shepherd’s help
Shepherd, 47, who worked with Heuerman for five years, spent three hours in 2005 appraising the house in Massapequa Park, New York, for a renovation project — she had several intimate interactions with him that kept him awake at night following his arrest last week.
Speaking to DailyMail.com, she described how she developed a friendly, working relationship with the 59-year-old architect who can be seen mingling with interior designers and colleagues in exclusive photos released for the first time.
He revealed that Heuerman even once took him to a firing range in the Bronx where he taught him how to fire a 9mm handgun.
On another occasion when she fell on the ice, Heuerman took her to a hospital and then back to his apartment in Manhattan where he gave her medicine.
Shepherd worked with Heuerman from 2002 to 2007 and shared office space with him during those two years in Manhattan, where he ran an architecture firm.
As a freelance interior designer she regularly traveled with him to job sites. At the time she found him smart and mostly friendly, if socially awkward.
He now compares him to a real-life Dexter, the Showtime character who led a double life as a serial killer.
‘He’s like Dexter,’ she tells DailyMail.com. ‘You wouldn’t know it when you met him. Dexter was also very normal and then there was the other side of him.’
Shepherd admitted he hadn’t even heard of the Gilgo murder until an old boss reached him via text message Saturday.
Drone footage of Heuerman’s home shows police outside the one-story building and the basement entrance
The interior designer, who shared a photo of a social outing with Heuerman and colleagues, said she regularly travels with him to work sites as a freelance interior designer.
Shepherd said at the time she thought he was smart and mostly friendly, if socially awkward, but now compares him to a real-life Dexter, the Showtime character who led a double life as a serial killer.
‘I Googled his name, Jesus, there he was,’ Shepherd said. ‘There was this picture of my colleague that I remember very well.
Manhattan architect Rex Heuerman (pictured), 59, is charged with three murders for the Gilgo Beach serial killer, and is the prime suspect in the killing of a fourth victim.
‘Then I spent the next eight hours reading every article I could find. I was grieving. How can this be the same man?’
‘I’m shaking now,’ she said, describing her relationship with Heuerman, which ended years before he allegedly dumped the bodies of several women on a beach not far from his home. South Shore of Long Island.
He has so far been charged with the murders of Gilgo Beach victims Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello, whose bodies were found in 2010.
He is the prime suspect in the murder of Maureen Brainard-Barnes and is being sought in the 2011 murders of six other women whose bodies were found.
Heuermann has lived on the property since the 1980s with his wife Asa Ellarup and their two children.
Speaking to DailyMail.com, Shepherd said ‘you’d never know’ Heuerman would be suspected of his alleged crimes if you met him.
Shepherd reveals that he met Heuerman in the Bronx at this firing range where he has been hired to do renovation work. He is pictured left at the venue in 2005
Shepherd knew the property well. On a snowy morning in February 2005, she took a train from New York City to meet him in Massapequa Park.
He picked her up at the station and took her to his home, where he met his wife and children.
Shepherd remembers how Elarup was washing the dishes and the children were chatting at the time.
Heuermann planned to renovate the kitchen but also wanted precise measurements of the rest of the house.
Shepherd went door to door to take measurements and she followed him downstairs.
‘In the basement, this one room was locked, and he said I couldn’t go in that room,’ he recalled.
‘I was – what the hell? It’s boring. And he kind of joked, like, oh you can’t go there because there’s stuff. And then he said, “I’ve got a bunch of guns.”
‘He was weird about it, and I was like, OK,’ she told DailyMail.com. ‘I could measure around it.’
On Sunday, New York state police removed a large cache of weapons from a home, a day after scouring the property to determine if there were any ‘trophies’ from three victims accused of murdering Humane.
Exclusive photos from DailyMail.com show officers taking at least four long-barreled firearms from the architect’s ‘dungeon’-like home, as well as several blue plastic boxes containing the weapons.
Rex Heuerman is featured in his Tinder profile picture. Police tracked down the fictitious email account used in his profile and his burner phone number in the case
Heuerman’s yearbook photo from the Barner High School class of 1981. He was arrested on July 13 outside his office in midtown Manhattan
In 2005, Shepherd moved away from Long Island with her boyfriend, who picked her up.
After a month of working on the house, he met Human at a firing range in the Bronx where he had been hired to do some renovations.
While there, he gave her a lesson.
‘I met him there and measured the gun range,’ he said. ‘And later, he taught me how to fire a 9mm. I didn’t know he was in the gun, but here we were.
‘He was telling me how to put my hand under the hammer so it wouldn’t hit me when it came back,’ he explained.
‘I fired four or five shots and I hit the target, a picture of a beer bottle. It was quite intense.’
Shepherd also recalled a time alone with a future accused serial killer in his apartment.
The day before, he had slipped on the sidewalk and could barely walk when he came to work.
‘Rex took me in a cab to urgent care and waited for me while I got the MRI and everything else,’ she said. ‘And then he took me back to my apartment.
New York state police on Sunday removed a large weapon from the Long Island home of suspected Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuerman, a day after searching the property to determine if there were any ‘trophies’ from his alleged victims.
An officer was seen removing two additional firearms from the home on Sunday
‘My roommate left at the time,’ she said. ‘Rex put me in my room, and then he went to get my medicine.
‘When he came back, he made sure I had something to eat and I had medicine. And then he went home.
‘He took care of me,’ she said.
A once sweet memory haunts him now.
‘This is the same man who is allegedly killing women, and he could have killed me in my apartment if he wanted to,’ he said. ‘There was nobody.’
‘I’m not an ugly girl, but I guess I wasn’t on the menu, which is great,’ she continued, both horrified and slightly amused by her experience.
‘It’s all quite surreal,’ she said. ‘I watch those crime shows and all, but you never think in a million years it’s going to be you, or someone you know.
‘How do I know a serial killer? What are the chances of that?’