Rex Heuermann, suspected in Gilgo beach murders, compared himself to a hammer in an interview last year

• Cops have arrested NYC architect Rex Heuermann, 59, in the cold-case Gilgo Beach murders.
• Heuermann was linked to three of the murders through DNA, and pleaded not guilty on Friday.

He's an affable, seemingly nondescript suburban guy, a building-code wonk who gets a glint in his eye while talking about his vintage copy of New York City's 1970s plumbing regulations.

But architect Rex Heuermann — charged Friday with the first degree murder of three sex workers in Long Island's long-unsolved, Gilgo Beach serial killings — also relishes his powers of persuasion.

Sure, it's fine to have book learning, the 59-year-old married father of two explained in an interview last year, describing how his Fifth Avenue consulting firm steers clients through New York City's centuries of building codes.

"But it's the people — how, they're all so different — and how you deal with the people, I think is one of the more interesting aspects," he said proudly, a year before he would be charged in murdering three sex workers and leaving their bodies to rot along the banks of South Oyster Bay, across from his Long Island home.

Heuermann was linked to three of the 11 Gilgo Beach murders by DNA recovered from the women's bound and hidden bodies, officials said.

The cold case was revitalized by a team of federal, state, and Suffolk County law enforcement officers, who first connected Heuermann to the spree through a pickup truck a witness reported seeing back in 2010, when one of the victims disappeared.

The architectural consultant had also spent recent months conducting hundreds of internet searches relating to the women he's accused of killing, officials said.

He pleaded not guilty at an arraignment in Riverhead, New York and is being held without bail on the request of prosecutors based in Sufffolk County.

Heurermann's alleged victims are Melissa Barthelemy, 24, who vanished in 2009, and Megan Waterman, 22, and Amber Costello, 27, who went missing the following year, officials said. He is also the prime suspect in another of the Gilgo Beach deaths, officials said.

In last year's interview, Heuermann described himself as a "a troubleshooter born and raised on Long Island."

Asked what single "tool" he would choose to be, "to bring your business to greater heights," Heuermann said he'd choose a delicate, but persuasive, cabinet maker's hammer.

"It is persuasive enough, when I need to persuade something," he explained. "Not someone!" jokes his interviewer, Antoine Amira of Bonjour Realty. "Something," Heuermann deadpanned, his hands clasped. "And it always yields excellent results."

"Sometimes, I have to be the heavy framing hammer," he added, as his interviewer laughs. "Sometimes, I'm the lightweight hammer just to nudge things along."

Heuermann was arrested late Thursday at the Massapequa Park home where, as he said in last year's interview, he keeps his carpentry workshop and, in his home office, his library of old building, fire and plumbing code books.

He kept to himself in that somewhat dilapidated old house, neighbors told the Associated Press, though he would sometimes be seen leaving to take the train to the city, dressed in a business suit and carrying a briefcase.

"This house sticks out like a sore thumb. There were overgrown shrubs, there was always wood in front of the house," Gabriella Libardi, a 24-year-old teacher, told the wire service.

"It was very creepy. I wouldn't send my child there."

"He grew up here," neighbor Barry Auslander, 72, told the New York Post. "I never thought he was anything but a businessman."

Heuermann counts builders, developers, and city and not-for-profit agencies among his clientele.

Reps for RH Architecture Design, Heuermann's Fifth Avenue-based company for eleven years, did not immediately return a call for comment.

"We're happy to see that they're finally active, the police, in accomplishing something. Let's wait and see what it all leads to," attorney John Ray told the Associated Press.

He is the attorney for the families of two victims, Shannan Gilbert and Jessica Taylor.

It was the 2010 dissapearance of Gilbert, a 24-year-old sex worker, that led to the unearthing of the grisly secrets in the underbrush along Gilgo Beach.

A police cadaver dog had been searching near the Oak Beach home of her last client. In a thicket along Ocean Parkway, the dog found not Gilbert's remains, but those of a different woman.

Three more bodies, all a short walk from each other, were found within days.

By the spring of 2011, the total had climbed to 10 sets of human remains, eight of them women, one a man, and one a toddler, and the crime scene stretched from the border of New York City to Fire Island, a resort on eastern Long Island.

"This is a day that is a long time in coming, and hopefully a day that will bring peace to this community and to the families — peace that has been long overdue," New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said Friday.

Who was victim Melissa Barthelemy?

Barthelemy, a petite sex worker who stood only four feet, 10-inches tall, was last seen at her basement apartment in the Bronx on July 12, 2009, according to the Suffolk County Police Department Gilgo News website.

"She used the aliases Chloe and VerySexyChloe," the site said. "She had tattoos of the words "Blaze" and "Focus" on her back, and letters on her chest. She was also known to meet clients at bars, restaurants and hotels on the West Side of Manhattan."

On the night she disappeared, "she told a friend she was going to see a man and would be back in the morning. This friend was aware she was a sex worker, but Barthelemy offered no other details. Her cellphone records show she traveled from the Bronx to Manhattan, most likely via taxi," the website said.

The investigation showed cellphone activity in Manhattan, Freeport, Massapequa and Lindenhurst. Motels in and near these neighborhoods were investigated," the website added.

She was found nearly a year and a half later on the north side of Ocean Parkway, during the search for Gilbert. While the first victim found, she is believed to be the second killed.

Who was victim Megan Waterman?

Waterman was 22 when she was last seen, on June 6, 2010. She lived in Scarborough, Maine, and advertised her sex work under the names "Lexxy" and "Sexy Lexi," according to the Gilgo News website.

She was staying at a Holiday Inn Express in Hauppauge, New York at the time she disappeared. She left the hotel at 1:30 a.m. to meet a client. Her last call was likely to her pimp, who was in Brooklyn at the time, "to tell him she was going to a convenience store near the hotel," the website said.

Police in Scarborough, Maine, reported her missing two days later. "Family members felt it was unlike her not to call them to check on her then-3-year-old daughter," the website said.

Her body was six months later during the search for another of the Gilgo Beach victims, Gilbert. She is believed to be the third victim.

Who was victim Amber Costello?

Amber Lynn Costello, described by police as a sex worker and heroin addict, was 27 years old and living in West Babylon, New York, when she disappeared.

She was last seen on September 2, 2010, leaving on foot to meet a client, "to support her and her roommates' heroin addictions," the Gilgo News website said.

She was just 4 feet, 11 inches tall, and worked under the names "Carolina" and "Mia," the website said. She had a tattoo reading "Kaos" on her neck, a butterfly on her lower back, and the word "Margaret" on her leg.

She had moved to New York from Clearwater, Florida, and had completed a 28-day drug rehab, but had relapsed not long before her disappearance, police said.

She was last seen leaving on foot to meet a client who was picking her up at her house. She was never reported missing. Instead, she was found two months later on the north side of a parkway, near Gilgo Beach, during the Gilbert search. She is believed to be the fourth victim.