“They’re having barbecues on the front lawn — they never did anything like that before,” said Etienne de Villiers, 68, a retired New York City firefighter who lives next door. “Suddenly, they’re out there all the time.”
“It’s literally piled floor-to-ceiling with debris,” the lawyer, Vess Mitev, said. “It’s like someone broke in and tore the place apart.”
“Who in their right mind would come back to a house equated with the most horrible thing to ever happen in this town?” one neighbor, Chris Duncan said.
“She knew nothing about any of this,” Mr. Macedonio said in a phone interview. “If it happened, he was leading a complete double life.”
“She hasn’t even begun to process what he’s being charged with,” Mr. Macedonio said. “She’s still putting her own life back together.”
“They’re sitting outside smiling,” Mr. Ray said. “She seems very out of sync with what is really happening.”
“We’re getting a slew of emails from people wanting to help and a slew from other people saying, ‘I hope you burn in hell,’” Mr. Mitev said.
“Some are sympathetic and some say, ‘When can we get this thing out of here?’” he added, regarding the unsightly home. “But there’s no getting it out of here because they have nowhere to go.”
For now, Mr. Mitev added: “They are going to rebuild; they want to fix it up,” He said investigators had violated the family’s rights with what he called their reckless search.
“I really think the best thing for everyone is for them to move on and for the house to be torn down once and for all,” Mr. Ferchaw said while walking his dog near the house on a recent evening as the family barbecued on the front lawn.
“This is all that they’ve known, so there’s no real options,” Mr. Mitev said.
After Rex Heuermann was charged in a notorious string of murders, neighbors assumed his wife and children would vanish. They haven’t.
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