Accused Gilgo Beach killer Rex Heuermann “got off” when talking about his victims, a former Long Island escort who barely escaped his clutches told the Daily News.
Nicole Brass, 34, who said she “dated” the suspected serial murderer eight years ago to make money to feed her opioid addiction, told The News on Tuesday that Heuermann made small talk about the then-unsolved killings during a dinner and then tried to lure her back to a private liaison.
Police closed in on Heuermann last Friday, charging him with the murder of three of the 11 victims found slain in the weeds on a desolate stretch of marshland in Long Island. Suffolk County prosecutors expect to tie him to at least one more woman who was killed, and possibly others. He’s pleaded not guilty.
“He brought (the Gilgo Beach murders) up on his own,” Brass said of her encounter with Heuermann. “He asked me if I’m a true crime fan. ... We talked briefly about other serial killers, then he said, ‘Have you heard of the Gilgo Beach murders? That’s when he got real weird.”
Brass said she’d turned to websites like Seeker and BackPage in 2015 to feed her opiate addiction, which she kept fed with a series of “dates” with high-paying clients.
“At the time, I was in my early 20s and I was an addict and I wasn’t really thinking about safety,” she said in an exclusive interview with The News. “I was thinking about getting money. So I would go on dates with wealthy guys and have them pay me for my time.”
It was through one of these websites that she connected with Heuermann, who wanted to meet her in a hotel room near Massapequa Park, she said.
Brass said that a private meeting didn’t sit well with her, so she convinced him to take her to dinner.
“He originally wanted me to come to Nassau and meet him there,” she said. “He said he would get a room. I didn’t feel comfortable not meeting in public or an area I didn’t know, so I convinced him to meet me in Port Jeff.”
After some back and forth, they agreed to meet in the Steamroom, a seafood restaurant in Port Jefferson.
They made small talk at the table and at first, nothing seemed out of the ordinary about the architect.
“In the beginning, he seemed totally normal,” Brass said. “He talked about his job and just seemed really normal — until he brought up the Gilgo Beach murders.”
Heuermann became more animated talking about the Long Island killings, even mentioning details that Brass, who had followed the case since news of the killing broke in 2010, hadn’t heard of.
“I was following the case, and he mentioned one of the girls I hadn’t heard about yet. It seemed like he was talking about it from experience, not a point of view,” she said.
Brass said that he seemed to lack empathy for the women who were killed and could barely contain his enthusiasm.
“It didn’t seem like somebody who feels bad when he talked about the victims. It seemed like somebody who really wanted to brag about what they did, but couldn’t,” she said.
“When he spoke, something about it his body language changed, the look in his eyes changed, and it seemed like talking about the victims was enjoyable for him.”
Brass said that Heuermann seemed to get lost in the conversation, becoming excited by the details of the murders.
“When he spoke about it, it was almost like he was visualizing it in his head and getting off to what he was saying,” she recounted.
Brass said she found the experience deeply unsettling and did everything she could to quickly wrap up the dinner.
“The way he talked about it was really weird, and it gave me the worst gut feeling. I was so scared at the end of it,” she recalled. “I didn’t try to keep the dinner going long after that.”
Heuermann didn’t seem to take the hint. He tried to convince Brass to leave her car in the parking lot at the Steamroom and ride with him to the room he’d arranged somewhere in Nassau. When Brass refused, Heuermann got upset, she said.
“He was like, leave your car; come in mine,” she told The News. “He was very adamant about me leaving my car. Looking back, he didn’t want to have to kill somebody and get rid of their car.”
A few years later, she told Francis Donoghue, 34, a friend of her fiancé, about the encounter.
“I remember a few years ago when I met her, she told me about that. She was certain, and she even showed me a picture of him,” Donoghue told The News.
While he didn’t at first believe Brass, Heuermann’s arrest stunned him.
“It was pretty shocking,” Donoghue said. “To have it verified like that, that’s actually a pretty amazing thing.”
Brass never spoke to police because she didn’t have any hard evidence and was on parole at the time for a felony drug possession charge.
“I’m a felon and had a history and didn’t want to get involved with cops. I think he went after girls who were addicts or had a record, or anyone less likely to talk to police.”
She feels vindicated following Heuermann’s arrest but says she has second thoughts about not telling police her story.
“When I saw he got arrested I felt almost relieved, but I was also like — holy s—t, I was right. Maybe I should have spoken to the cops, but I knew they wouldn’t listen to me.”
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(Anna Gratzer contributed to this article.)
