As Rex Heuermann Marks 2nd Year in Jail, New Doc on 1970's Serial Killer Set for Release

Recent court appearance of Rex Heuermann during pre-trial hearing in June (Photo: James Carbone).

Sunday, July 13, will mark two years since police investigators surrounded architect Rex Heuermann near his Fifth Avenue office and accused him of being the Long Island (Gilgo Beach) Serial Killer, known as LISK. He remains behind bars, while awaiting a trial that will likely begin in 2026. He's charged with torturing and murdering seven women between 1993 and 2010, mostly in the basement of his family home. He's also being looked at for other, unsolved cases on Long Island.

Many of the investigative tools used to identify Heuermann didn't exist on August 10, 1977, when postal worker David Berkowitz was seized outside his Yonkers, New York apartment building and accused of being the infamous "Son of Sam" serial killer.

David Berkowitz’s mug shots were taken on August 11, 1977.

The 24 year old Berkowitz, a U.S. Army veteran, was charged with six murders and seven attempted murders, more than a year after he started terrorizing young New Yorkers, many of them in cars, using a .44 caliber Bulldog revolver. He sometimes prowled lovers' lanes and taunted the police and press with letters, once telling cops "I'll Do It Again," and starting another note with the phrase, "I love to hunt." Berkowitz originally told cops that he was getting orders to kill from a barking dog owned by his neighbor, Sam.

Letter from “Son of Sam” serial killer in 1977.

Berkowitz, now 72, is the subject of a new Netflix series from director Joe Berlinger that's launching on July 30. It's called Conversations with a Killer: Son of Sam Tapes.

Berlinger said his series will "delve into the world of David Berkowitz and his chilling influence on 1970's New York City." The director interviewed me about what it was like to live through the Son of Sam frenzy when I was a teenager, a case that later inspired me to become a crime reporter.

Berkowitz was nailed by a parking ticket left near the scene of the final shooting on July 31, 1977 in Brooklyn. It led detectives to Berkowitz's 1970 yellow Ford Galaxie in Yonkers. When Berkowitz left his apartment building to get into his car, NYPD detectives arrested him and found the .44 caliber gun, along with multiple weapons he allegedly planned to use for a mass shooting in the Hamptons. Berkowitz ultimately pleaded guilty to six counts of murder and remains incarcerated 48 years after his arrest at Shawangunk Correctional Facility in upstate New York. It later emerged he had started a stabbing and shooting spree earlier than thought, in 1975.

Yet while "Son of Sam" apparently took delight in feeding the media frenzy surrounding the police manhunt in 1977, Suffolk County prosecutors believe Rex Heuermann made elaborate preparations to hide his crimes, evidenced in a planning document they extracted from one of his 400-plus electronic devices. The only taunting Heuermann allegedly did was calling the teenage sister of victim Melissa Barthelemy. Prosecutors said Heuermann used Melissa's own cell phone to make repeated calls to the younger sister in 2009, using crude words about the victim's escort work and announcing that he'd killed Melissa.

Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney briefed the media on Day 12–the final day of first police search at Heuermann home in Massapequa Park. Investigators did a second search ten months later.

Thirteen years after the first bodies were discovered on Gilgo Beach, Heuermann was indicted with the use of cell phone data and computer evidence, DNA from hairs on victims' bodies, and one, crucial description from Amber Costello's roommate of a hulking man who looked like an "ogre" and drove a first-generation Chevy Avalanche.

Former PIX11 News photographer John Frasse operated a drone that flew over Rex Heuermann’s home as investigators collected evidence in Massapequa Park.

Heuermann's next, pre-trial hearing will take place Thursday, July 17, in Riverhead.

His defense team continues its efforts to keep nuclear DNA evidence out of the trial.

Judge Timothy Mazzei will have to make a ruling on that.

Heuermann's only daughter, Victoria, recently told producers of a LISK docuseries that her father is "most likely" the Long Island Serial Killer, based on publicly available information.

The speculation is ongoing about whether Rex Heuermann will one day plead guilty to the charged crimes against him, following the lead of serial killers like David Berkowitz and Joel Rifkin, a one-time Long Island gardener.