A former assistant to Rex Heuermann is revealing new information about her interactions with the accused Gilgo Beach serial killer, WABC-TV reports.
Heuermann faces charges of first- and second-degree murder for the deaths of Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Costello, Megan Waterman and Maureen Brainard-Barnes, whose bodies were found on the shoreline of Gilgo Beach not far from Heuermann’s house in Massapequa Park, Long Island.
But years before Heuermann’s July 2023 arrest, he hired Donna Sturman as an assistant at his architectural firm in Manhattan in 2017.
Sturman says in a new interview with WABC-TV that she felt uneasy working for Heuermann, but she was having financial problems and needed work.
“He offered me so much money and, again, my situation being rendered without any money, I took it,” Sturman told the television station.
Yet, Sturman says Heuermann never properly compensated her for overtime or vacation time.
The New York State Department of Labor in 2021 determined that Heuermann owed Sturman $20,000, but he did not pay her any of the money. The agency this past September issued a judgment against Heuermann.
“No, he hasn’t paid me,” Sturman told the television station. “He’s obviously not in jail writing checks.”
Following years of investigation mired by internal strife inside Suffolk County law enforcement, authorities eventually took Heuermann into custody July 14 on a Manhattan sidewalk near his architectural office. A key factor in cracking the case was that police obtained Heuermann’s DNA after he discarded a pizza box near his office.
Sturman said she remembers buying pizza for her boss.
“I used to buy him that pizza,” Sturman told WABC-TV. “It always kind of bothered me that he didn’t eat the crust.”
A lawyer for Heuermann declined to comment to the television station about Sturman’s lost wages.
Heuermann has pleaded not guilty to the murder charges.
[Feature Photo: Rex A. Heuermann, the architect accused of murdering at least three women near Long Island’s Gilgo Beach, appears before Judge Timothy P. Mazzei in Suffolk County Court, Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2023, in Riverhead, N.Y. (James Carbone/Newsday via AP, Pool)]
