His expertise was in expediting projects through arcane city building codes rather than in architectural design.
Ginia Bellafante, writing for
The New York Times, examined how Heuermann exerted influence in the tonier townhouses of Brooklyn, where architects of more visible prestige would need his help shepherding through their wealthy clients’ renovations. “As a journeyman who held bureaucratic authority, he could veto the plans of architects with degrees from Yale and projects in Nantucket.”
Mary Shell, an employee of his around the time of the murders,
wrote in
New York that “his office was mostly staffed by women like myself, young and petite, the girl-next-door type” and that “whether or not he had any real political clout, he believed he did and tried to convince others that he did, too.”
Niv Miyasato, a designer who worked with Heuermann starting in the ’90s and shared office space with him in the early 2000s, described to me a similar picture of his workaday life. “He did what he needed to do,” Miyasoto said, referring to Heuermann’s work as a building code compliance consultant. “He certainly communicated with all of us on a regular basis that he was an expert at that.” He found Heuermann a bit awkward but didn’t think much of it at the time.
More striking, Miyasoto said, was that Heuermann seemed to him like a doomsday prepper: “He talked about his hunting, and would maybe occasionally drop things like, Well, you never know what’s going to happen. ‘You gotta be prepared’ kind of stuff.”
In the weeks since the Gilgo Beach murder suspect was arrested, his alleged double life has cast new light on an otherwise mundane professional life in the city and its suburbs.
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