“I’m the best friend of a serial killer.’’
City architect David Jimenez, 63, reveals in his first public interview in the new Peacock docu-series, “The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets” that it only took one prison visit with suspect Rex Heuermann to come to that realization.
“I expected to hear, ‘David, I’m innocent, can you help me out?’ ” Jimenez said of his unsettling 2023 jailhouse chat with the 61-year-old married Manhattan architect. “And that’s when I get the feeling.
“I think he did it,” the shattered friend told the show, which began airing Monday.
Jimenez said he only wanted to hear Heuermann deny the sickening allegations — but that the response he got fell far short of giving him any comfort.
” ‘Did you do it?’ ” Jimenez said he asked the suspect. “He teared up a little bit, and he started crying. I’m like, ‘Rex, this is really bad.’ I said, ‘It’s like it looks like you did it. It looks really bad.’ And it’s like, ‘Can you tell me something?’
“I said, ‘They’re even accusing you of killing prostitutes in Vegas,’” Jimenez recalled. “And he had a very visceral reaction: ‘All I did was gamble and drink there.’ “
Jimenez said he still struggles to reconcile how the gifted architect he once buddied up to could possibly be the monster accused of one of the most notorious serial killer cases in the US.
“I’m in a story that I never wanted to be [in]. I’m the best friend of a serial killer,” Jimenez said. “It’s like I hit Lotto, but I didn’t win any money. You know, like not a good Lotto.
“He was a great friend,” Jimenez said. “I feel like it’s a loss because he was my buddy.”
The hulking Heuermann was arrested in July 2023 at his Midtown office and charged with three cold-case murders of young sex workers on Long Island in a case that shocked the nation.
Suffolk County prosecutors later charged him with the murder and mutilation of four more missing women, with all of the victims sex workers whose bodies were dumped in the area of Ocean Parkway over nearly 30 years, bringing the murderous tally to at least seven.
DNA and other evidence definitively linked the dad of two to the slayings, officials have said. Heuermann allegedly kept news clips of the brutal killings in his basement.
Jimenez told the filmmakers he met Heuermann in 2006, when the “family man” architect walked into a New York City Building Department office, where Jimenez was working, to discuss his latest project.
The two men quickly bonded over their shared passions: architecture, guns and a fondness for antiques.
“I could tell he’s a confident man, and he’s very secure,” Jimenez said. “And he comes across as, you know, sort of a tough guy, but he was, he’s still very nice.
“Because we were both architects we have a lot of things in common, certain political views, the scotch, the cigars, the guns,” he added. “All the macho stuff. He was easy to be friends with.”
Jimenez said the pair took frequent trips to shooting ranges and gun shows, including one in Las Vegas. He said he was given a tour of Heuermann’s massive gun collection in his basement vault, where he stored as many as 300 weapons, according to Suffolk County prosecutors.
The pal said Heuermann’s family — wife Asa Ellerup and their adult children Victoria and Christopher — appeared respectful of his friend, who was clearly the man of the house.
Ellerup, in her own interview with the show, has called Heuermann her “hero” and described falling in love with him all over again when she first saw him behind bars.
“He was a family man,” Jimenez said of his accused buddy. “He’s the man of the house, and there was a certain respect when [his family] would speak with him.”
Then the close kinship between the two men came to a crashing halt July 14, 2023.
Jimenez told Peacock he was driving to a Building Department office in Brooklyn when he got a call from his son, who wanted to know how to spell Heuermann’s last name.
“I freaked out,” the friend said when told why his son wanted to know. “I was completely shocked. I pulled over because I couldn’t drive anymore, and I just stood there. How could it be? It’s like, it can’t be.”
Additional reporting by David DeTurris
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