Accused Gilgo Killer Dug In Backyard Overnight, Neighbor Says: Report

MASSAPEQUA PARK, NY — Neighbors of Rex Heuermann, who one week ago was charged with six murder counts in the deaths of three sex workers in the Gilgo Beach killings, continue to share strange and bizarre stories about living near the Massapequa Park resident.

Dominick Cancellieri told Chris Cuomo on News Nation that he found his neighbor behaved oddly, burning his household garbage every few weeks — which is illegal in Nassau County.

Once during his teen years, Cancellieri said he was watching TV in his home’s basement around 1 a.m. when he heard Heuermann digging around in the backyard, the New York Post reported.

"I really wanted to go and check out what it was and look through the fence … but something stopped myself from doing it," Cancellieri recalled.

Heuermann would also frequently sit in his running car, which was parked in front of his Nassau County home, with all the lights on as late as 2 a.m., according to Cancellieri.

The new anecdotes come a day after investigators told CBS News they believe Rex Heuermann killed at least one victim at his Massapequa Park home.

Heuermann was charged with murdering Amber Costello, Melissa Barthelemy, and Megan Waterman, whose remains were found in 2010 along Ocean Parkway.

Since 2010, at least 11 sets of remains have been found, believed to be related to the Gilgo Beach killings. Police have searched for a serial killer ever since. At least four of the killings included strangulation, and two showed signs of blunt-force trauma. The cause of death remains inconclusive for some victims.

Law enforcement officers last week swarmed a small red house in the suburb about 40 miles east of midtown Manhattan. Dozens of neighbors watched, along with police and media, as investigators in protective suits gathered outside the front porch, which The Associated Press described as being in disrepair, with its roof propped up by 2-by-4s.

So far, officials obtained a menagerie of items from the house including: a trove of more than 200 guns; a painting of a fair-skinned blonde woman with large, deep-set, dark eyes, a gash on her right cheek; and a childlike doll enclosed in a display case.

Law enforcement also raided an Amityville storage unit this week, in attempts to obtain evidence. It has not been confirmed who the storage unit belongs to.

Louis Schlesinger, a forensic psychologist and professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told Patch that the serial slayings of three sex workers appear to be sexually motivated, — and could have been fantasized about decades earlier.

“Somebody doesn't wake up one day and say, I think I'll go out and kill five women — that sounds like a good idea,” he said. “This begins 20 to 25 years earlier in the offender’s mind, in the offender’s fantasies. And of those individuals, who have these very disturbed fantasies, a much smaller group actually acts them out. And this is what you see.”

The sexual instinct is very strong, according to Schlesinger.

His remarks come after Dr. Carole Lieberman, a Los Angeles-based psychiatrist who went to Stony Brook University, told Patch this week she found it troubling that Heuermann, according to prosecutors, kept a close eye on the victim's families.

Heuermann even went a step further — calling at least one of those distraught family members.

"He continued the torture of the women to the torture of the families," Lieberman said. "He needed more satisfaction of his sadistic urges."