Rex Heuermann’s family revealed the mess left after authorities tore through their Massapequa Park house for weeks.
The alleged serial killer‘s wife and two grown children have released photos of the inside of their house, showcasing broken interiors and rooms piled high with items haphazardly strewn across the floors.
A storage room was in shambles, with cardboard boxes flipped over, storage containers nearly toppling over, and miscellaneous items stacked to the ceiling.
In another room, bedding, pillows, and stuffed animals were collected in a corner.
And in the backyard, a line of boxes were left behind.
The garage area was also piled high with cardboard boxes marked with yellow tape.
Heuermann’s estranged wife’s lawyer also disputes the home had a soundproof room, saying it was just a 6-foot safe to hold his collection of guns.New York Post
The bathtub was also cut apart and drain pipes were removed from the bathroom sinks, according to photos obtained by Fox News.
However, Heuermann’s estranged wife’s lawyer, Bob Macedonio, disputed earlier reports that the home had a soundproof room, saying it was just a 6-foot safe to hold his collection of guns.
In one room, bedding, pillows, and stuffed animals were collected in one corner as any floor space is visible. And in the backyard, a line of boxes were left behind.Macedonio & Duncan
Some of the interior was ripped up during the searches.Macedonio & Duncan
A storage room appeared unable to walk into as cardboard boxes were flipped over, storage containers nearly toppling over, and miscellaneous items were stacked to the ceiling.Macedonio & Duncan
The garage area was also piled high with cardboard boxes and items.Macedonio & Duncan
“I’ve also had the opportunity to view the so-called vault, or the ‘soundproof room’ in the basement. It is not a soundproof room,” he said.
The 59-year-old architect was arrested July 13 for the murders of Melissa Barthelemy, 24, Megan Waterman, 22, and Amber Costello, 27; and is a prime suspect in Maureen Brainard-Barnes’ slaying.
Macedonio said the family is doing “better” as time passes.
The 59-year-old architect was arrested on July 13 in connection for the murders of Melissa Barthelemy, 24, Megan Waterman, 22, and Amber Costello, 27; and is a prime suspect in Maureen Brainard-Barnes’ slaying.via REUTERSHis estranged wife Asa Ellerup (pictured with her son) has started treatment for cancer, her lawyer revealed.Dennis A. Clark
The lawyer also revealed the architect’s estranged wife, Asa Ellerup, who divorced Heuermann last month, has started cancer treatment.
John Ray, a lawyer for two of the women’s families, said the Ellerup should be a suspect in the case as her DNA was found on one of the victims, but DA Ray Tierney and the ailing woman was out of town when they were killed.
A trendy four-star hotel in Long Island City has now become a migrant shelter as the Big Apple scrambles to house the swarm of asylum seekers arriving in the city — even as Gov. Kathy Hochul said she’d meet with federal officials Sunday in an effort to ease the squeeze on the Big Apple.
That did little to soothe concerns in Long Island City, where locals griped that the hotel’s new “guests” were ruining their neighborhood.
The industrial-hip Collective Paper Factory hotel — which was once home to a historic paper factory — began housing migrants Friday after being converted into a Department of Homeless Services emergency shelter site for families, City Hall officials confirmed to The Post Saturday.
Workers at the hotel-turned-shelter, located at 37-06 36th Street, said that 16 families had already moved in, as plans are underway to fill all of its 125 loft-style rooms with asylum seekers.
The five-story building also includes a gym, communal spaces, meeting rooms, a bar, and a restaurant.
“It’s not a hotel anymore – it’s a shelter, for asylum seekers, families,” one staffer told The Post.
Mayor Eric Adams’ office would not elaborate on how many migrants they expect to be housed at the once-funky hotel.
Neighbors are already complaining that migrants using the hotel are ruining the neighborhood.Robert Miller
Concerned local residents, however, have already complained about their new neighbors.
One man, who lives next door to the new shelter, fumed that the migrants are drinking and tossing their trash in the street.
“There is already littering on the streets — cans and Coca Cola bottles. It’s just a day later,” the resident, who wanted to remain anonymous, told The Post.
“Last night, I saw a family of five [or] six children, a mother and a father sitting on their cars with some friends just having some beers, and I was walking my dog on the street and a little kid was going ‘Woof! Woof!’ to my dog,” he said.
“What are the regulations for them coming in here? Are there background checks? I don’t know,” he continued.
Mayor Eric Adams has repeatedly warned that the migrant crisis would eventually “decimate” the Big Apple if more federal funding doesn’t come fast.ZUMAPRESS.com
“It just makes us nervous. We don’t want the whole block to become a hangout spot.”
Michael Cohen, who owns a nearby 85-unit rent-stabilized apartment building, told the Queens/LIC Post that he is “appalled” by the city’s decision to convert the 4-star hotel into a migrant shelter.
The Queens/LIC Post first reported Friday that the hotel was being converted into housing for homeless asylum seekers.
“This use of this building is taking the neighborhood in exactly the opposite direction, given all the time, energy, zoning changes, and financial investments put into it, including from the city,” Cohen seethed.
“I’m appalled by this action from this city because it is contrary to everything that has happened to the area in the last 15 years.”
The average one-bedroom rental in Long Island City goes for $3,956 – more than any other neighborhood in Queens, according to a June report by MNS Real Estate.
The average condo in the neighborhood sold for $989,677 during the second quarter of 2023 – even though it represented a 6.3% drop from the previous year, according to a report by broker Ryan Serhant.
More than 100,000 asylum seekers have arrived in New York City since last spring.
Currently, almost 60,000 migrants are being housed in 198 shelter sites throughout the five boroughs, putting significant strain on the Big Apples shelter system.
To try and ease the pressure, Mayor Eric Adams struck a deal with Gov. Kathy Hochul this week to relocate 1,200 migrant families outside the city — the most substantial move by the state to take ownership of the crisis, The Post reported Friday.
Almost 60,000 migrants are being housed in 198 shelter sites throughout the five boroughs.Robert Miller
To try and ease the pressure, Mayor Eric Adams struck a deal with Hochul this week to relocate 1,200 migrant families outside the city — the most substantial move by the state to take ownership of the crisis, The Post reported Friday.
On Saturday, Hochul said she was scheduled to meet with officials from the US Department of the Interior about the migrant mess on Sunday.
She said the state was also providing the Big Apple with a $250 million boost to help with the migrant costs — part of a $1 billion “commitment” the governor claimed was allocated for the city in the 2024 budget.
The governor said the budget calls for Albany to reimburse New York City for 29% of the costs incurred by the crisis, including for security, staffing, transportation, food and supplies and cleaning.
“Since asylum seekers first arrived in New York we have been providing significant humanitarian aid as New York City works to meet their obligation to provide shelter,” Hochul said in a statement.
Migrants were already being sheltered at several state-owned sites in the five boroughs, including at JFK International Airport and the Creedmore Psychiatric Center in Queens, she added.
Hochul also said she was deploying more National Guard troops to upstate shelters, bringing the total number assigned to the migrant crisis to more than 1,800 — including at more than 30 hotels in the city.
This week, Rep. Maxine Waters, (D-California) declared she was“deeply concerned”with payments giant PayPal (PYPL) for launching a stablecoin under the New York Department of Financial Services regulatory framework before federal legislation addressing such crypto instruments has been debated. The moment had echoes of the battle over thedoomed Libra project, which Waters also vehemently opposed.
But the circumstances are quite different from four years ago, when Facebook, now known as Meta Platforms (META), rolled out a basket-based stablecoin to a barrage of regulator criticism around the world. The attacks were so heavy that they ultimately stymied Libra’s advance, leaving it to wither and die, even after a radical redesign intended to appease regulators and a name change to Diem.
Libra was one of those rare issues that generated bipartisanship — in opposition to the project, rather than for it — in part because at that time other concerns about Facebook’s treatment of user data had turned it, briefly, into a pariah for politicians.
By contrast, the stablecoin industry now seems to have won over a decent number of backers in Congress, mostly from one side. Last month, House Republicans successfully pushed stablecoin legislation through the House Financial Services Committee. And, while its passage was more contentious than many had hoped, with Waters herself leading Democrat resistance, the bill seems likely to win support in the Republican-controlled House when it goes to a floor vote.
PayPal has now complicated the outlook for this bill’s passage through the Senate. I tend to agree with observers, cited in a piece by CoinDesk’s Jesse Hamilton this week, who argued that PayPal, in upsetting Democrats by jumping the gun on the legislation, will harden the resolve of the party’s anti-crypto crusaders in the Senate, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts). And that could halt the bill’s passage in the upper chamber, where Warren’s party controls the majority.
But in the grand scheme of things, PayPal’s project is in a far stronger position politically than the universally mistrusted Libra ever was. Republicans are thrilled that the payments company launched its stablecoin, known as PYUSD, at this moment. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-North Carolina), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, called the move a “clear signal that stablecoins — if issued under a clear regulatory framework — hold promise as a pillar of our 21st-century payments system” and made it “more important than ever” to keep moving the legislation forward.
Just as importantly, PayPal’s move follows a slew of initiatives from financial establishment players to prod policymakers to support their own engagement in the crypto industry. BlackRock (BLK), Fidelity Investments, Invesco and many more are now pushing the Securities and Exchange Commission to support newly revived submissions seeking approval of bitcoin exchange-traded funds. Meanwhile, Charles Schwab (SCHW), Fidelity and Citadel are jointly seeking regulatory approval for a new crypto exchange. These institutions do their homework in Washington before going down paths like this, as does PayPal.
People are rightfully concerned about the polarization and politicization of the crypto debate. But with six Democrats — a surprisingly large number — breaking ranks in the House Financial Services Committee to support a separate McHenry-sponsored bill that creates a broad regulatory framework for crypto, the risk of gridlocked stalemate mightn’t be as high as feared, especially given the clout of the companies now showing their support for the industry.
The other factor in PayPal’s favor is that, unlike Libra, it is offering up a dollar-only stablecoin, which could boost demand for the U.S. currency around the world and that it doesn’t have nearly the same global footprint as Facebook had at the time of the Libra launch. Libra’s first iteration was a token pegged to a multicurrency basket, which many policymakers saw as a threat to monetary sovereignty. They feared that, if Facebook’s billions of users shifted to using the token, it would directly diminish demand for their domestic currencies.
PayPal may well face some grandstanding opposition from Democrats and that might hold up legislation. But it’s hard to see this development as being on the wrong side of history. Sooner rather than later, stablecoins will enjoy a constructive regulatory framework in the U.S. and that could spur a dramatic change in money that newcomers like PayPal and old-timers like Tether and Circle will be well placed to exploit.
Some Affordable Care Act health plans could see big rate hikes in 2024 after Virginia lawmakers failed to reach agreement on a widely supported program that reduced premiums this year, state officials and insurance companies said this week.
At issue is the state’s relatively new reinsurance program, which the General Assembly voted to create in 2021. Launched this calendar year, the program works by essentially pooling certain expensive claims and using mostly federal and some state money to cover them. By reducing risks and costs to insurers, it aims to lower premiums in the “Obamacare” individual marketplace — and did so successfully this year, according to state data.
But now, due to a lack of consensus among lawmakers, the widely supported program is headed toward suspension for 2024, officials said Wednesday at a State Corporation Commission meeting. A range of observers said in interviews that they believed the program could still be salvaged, but time is quickly running out.
The commission, an independent state agency that regulates insurers,warned publicly in June that it needed guidance from the politically divided General Assembly regarding a key reinsurance program input: the premium reduction it should seek for 2024. Otherwise, that number could be set at zero, effectively suspending the program, the agency said.
An SCC official from the agency’s Bureau of Insurance made clear in the Wednesday morning forum that lawmakers had yet to deliver a consensus on the target for 2024.
“So without that direction, the SCC established a 0% premium reduction for the reinsurance program for 2024. That means that the effects of the premium people are seeing now on the individual market during 2023 will go away, and we’ll see rates increasing back to the level they would have been without reinsurance for 2024,” said the official, Julie Blauvelt.
Executives from three insurance companies went on to present their proposed rates for 2024, each making clear that the end of the reinsurance program was a major driver in the proposed hikes for individual plans.
An SCC presentation projected a 28.4% average rate change for individual plans in 2024 from the current year, based on rate filings.
The proposed rates still need commission approval.
That lawmakers failed to reach agreement on the premium reduction goal is not surprising. They’ve also failed to compromise and pass a state budget despite a multibillion-dollar surplus. Private talks have gone on for months without much apparent urgency.
Del. Barry Knight, the money committee chairman leading negotiations for House Republicans, said in a text message Wednesday that the reinsurance program was still up for discussion. Asked about the timeline for those talks and whether the program could be reinstated for 2024, he responded: “Depends if we get a budget. I would say yes.”
His Senate Democratic counterparts, finance committee co-chairs Janet Howell and George Barker, didn’t respond to phone calls seeking comment. Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s press team did not respond to questions about whether the administration supports the continuation of the program.
“There is time to save this from my perspective,” said Doug Gray, executive director of the Virginia Association of Health Plans.
But any effort to do so needs to happen quickly, he added, partly because insurers will soon face administrative deadlines about sending certain customers notices about the potential rate increases.
If the program isn’t revived, the people who will be hurt most are not low-income customers, who receive subsidies, but middle or higher-income individuals who “pay the full bill” for the insurance they purchase, often entrepreneurs and small-business owners, Gray said.
Reinsurance also helps workers in the gig economy afford insurance, said Democratic Del. Mark Sickles, who carried the House version of the bill that established the program.
Sickles said he is hopeful the program can be salvaged. So is Sara Cariano, senior health policy analyst with the Virginia Poverty Law Center.
Other advocacy groups who support the program warned in testimony last month to the commission that suspending the program could throw the market “into turmoil.”
It could also force Virginians who rely on the individual market to “choose between paying more for the same health coverage they have now, selecting a plan with less robust coverage, or becoming uninsured. This would most seriously impact older adults and individuals with chronic health conditions who cannot go without health coverage,” said the letter from a broad coalition of groups including AARP Virginia, the Virginia Poverty Law Center and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.
A recent analysis of preliminary rate filings by the nonprofit KFF found that “Obamacare” marketplace insurers are seeking a median premium increase of 6% for next year, Freddy Mejia, deputy director of policy at the Richmond-based Commonwealth Institute, noted.
“Virginia is likely going to see the highest increase in ACA marketplace premium rates in the country,” Mejia said.
