EXCLUSIVE: Gilgo Beach suspect Rex Heuermann was a ‘blank cipher who lacked empathy’ and pestered co-workers like harsh building code, former colleagues reveal, but still loved after-work happy hours in the manhattan pub

Suspected Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann was a “blank cipher” who seemed to lack empathy and had a habit of picking on colleagues, according to former colleagues.

Design director Niv Miyasota, who worked with the architect for years after meeting him in the 1990s, revealed that the two clashed on occasion while Heuermann worked with his firm to speed architectural drawings through the building department of the New York City.

Speaking to DailyMail.com on Monday, Miyasota, 62, described his co-worker as a tough architect who had “mad a lot of people because he liked to go into battle” and didn’t mince words as he pointed people out how to adhere to the code.

Another former colleague who also spoke shared similar sentiments, describing Heuermann as a stickler who liked to blow his own horn about his achievements in his field.

“We used to headbutt sometimes,” Miyasota said. “I’m a creative, so I wanted to keep my creative position, and he would bring things back to reality.”

Speaking to DailyMail.com, Miyasota, who was the design director at his firm, said the two sometimes “bumped” due to Heuermann’s listless and “stubborn” work ethic.

According to the designer, the 59-year-old murder suspect was perceived as an “odd” among his colleagues, but would still join the team for lunches, happy hours and other social events.

“He was socially awkward in a lot of ways,” Miyasota said. ‘I guess the word for that is, he just didn’t seem to have empathy.

‘It was some kind of cipher, like, what is this person? I didn’t get angry, kind or sad at him. I did not know what to say. I didn’t get the deal from him.

Manhattan architect Rex Heuermann, 59, is charged with three murders attributed to the Gilgo Beach serial killer, and is the prime suspect in the murder of a fourth victim.

Earlier on Monday, DailyMail.com published exclusive photos showing Heuermann having a few pints and mingling with his co-workers at a social gathering at Pete’s Tavern, a pub in the Gramercy Park neighborhood of Manhattan.

Heuermann, who ran RH Consultants & Associates, was arrested outside his Manhattan office last Thursday night, leaving his colleagues “shocked” by the sudden halt in the unsolved Gilgo Beach murders.

The married father of two, who lives in Massapequa Park on Long Island, is accused of killing victims Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello, whose bodies were found in 2010.

Miyasota is one of several colleagues who have since come forward with their encounters with the now-accused killer who had managed to slip under the radar of investigators for nearly two decades.

In his interview with DailyMail.com, he also recalled the strange sight of Heuermann’s car, which was littered with things, discarded wrappings, boxes and coffee cups.

DailyMail.com published exclusive photos showing Heuermann having pints and mingling with co-workers at Pete’s Tavern, a pub in the Gramercy Park neighborhood of Manhattan in 2005.

Several former colleagues have recalled their encounters with the ‘strange’ and ‘socially awkward’ architect who is now accused of murdering at least three women in 2009 and 2010.

Heuermann, who ran RH Consultants & Associates, was arrested outside his Manhattan office on July 13, after investigators abruptly halted the years-long cold case.

“It was full of junk, stacked to the top of the board,” he said. ‘I just thought what the heck.’

The description of the car echoed statements from Heuermann’s neighbors, who said their house was also in disarray.

Miyasota also knew that Heuermann owned several pistols and firearms.

Colleagues would speculate that he was stockpiling weapons in preparation for some kind of doomsday, but they did not suspect that he might be violent.

A colleague, who worked in his office for years, also told DailyMail.com that Heuermann made no secret of his love of firearms, telling his cohorts about time spent at the shooting range and in the woods hunting deer. , eating the deer of their kills.

He was strange, but not shy either, he explained. He liked to talk about his work and demonstrate his skill.

“He was a bit of a narcissist,” said the woman, who asked not to be named.

“He liked to talk about himself, you know, pat himself on the shoulder for all his accomplishments, that he was an architect, that he knew the building code well.”

“He was socially awkward, but he liked to talk,” she added. He certainly wasn’t a recluse. If you saw him lining up somewhere, he would strike up a conversation.

Heuermann had lived on his Massapequa Park, Long Island, property since the 1980s with his wife, Asa Ellerup, and their two children.

Drone footage of Heuermann’s home shows police outside the one-story building and the basement entrance.

Interior designer Katherine Shepherd, 47, worked with suspected serial killer Rex Heuermann, 59, on and off for five years, including a project at his Massapequa Park home in 2005.

But this former co-worker never visited his home or went out with him socially, saying Heuermann generally wouldn’t mix his professional and personal life.

“He kept his professional and private life completely separate,” he said. “I worked with him in the office together and we went to client meetings, and that was it.”

Days after his arrest, police officers were seen Sunday morning removing at least four long-barreled firearms from Heuermann’s ‘dungeon-like’ Massapequa home, as well as several blue plastic crates of weapons in they.

And in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com on Monday, interior designer Katherine Shepherd, who has worked on projects with Heuermann, recalled how he once refused to let her into a locked room in his basement when he was appraising the property. in 2005.

Heuermann was planning to renovate the kitchen but also wanted precise measurements of the rest of the house, for which he enlisted Shepherd.

She went from room to room taking measurements and he followed her down the stairs.

“In the basement, there was a room that was locked, and he said he couldn’t go into that room,” she told DailyMail.com.

‘I was like, what the hell? That’s weird. And she was joking, like, oh, you can’t go in there because there’s stuff in there. And then he said, “I have a bunch of guns.”

New York State Police removed a large quantity of weapons from Heuermann’s Long Island home on Sunday a day after searching the property to determine if he left any “trophy” for his three alleged victims.

An officer was seen removing two additional firearms from the home on Sunday.

“He was weird about it, and I was like okay, okay,” Shepherd told DailyMail.com. I could measure around.

She remembers finding his reaction strange at the time and now wonders what else he could have been hiding in the 12’x15′ space.

‘I didn’t understand why he was being so weird about it, and now I’m thinking ‘What was he hiding?’ said Shepherd.

It was a big room. What was going on in that room? Where did he take the women?

Shepherd described how she had developed a friendly working relationship with the architect, who even once took her to a shooting range in the Bronx, where he taught her how to shoot a 9mm pistol.

On another occasion, when she slipped on the ice, Heuermann accompanied her to a hospital and then back to her Manhattan apartment, where he gave her medication.

Shepherd worked with Heuermann, off and on, from 2002 to 2007 and shared an office with him for two of those years in Manhattan.

She regularly traveled with him to job sites as a freelance interior designer. At the time, she found him intelligent and mostly friendly, and like his other colleagues called him “socially awkward.”