Gilgo Beach suspect’s chilling date with former escort

Nicole Brass, 34, who went to dinner with Rex Heuermann eight years ago to earn money to feed her opioid addiction, claimed in an interview with the New York Daily News he gleefully talked about the Gilgo Beach murders — before trying to pressure her into going to a hotel with him.

“When he spoke about [the murders], it was almost like he was visualising it in his head and getting off to what he was saying,” Ms Brass said of the eerie conversation from nearly a decade ago, the New York Post reports.

In a separate sit-down with ABC’s Good Morning America, Ms Brass said Heuermann “had this smile on his face” and “glossed-over look in his eye” when talking about the Gilgo Beach killings, which left her with “a really, really bad feeling”.

“My gut was telling me I had to get away from him,” she said.

In 2015, Ms Brass said, she was advertising on classifieds websites looking for wealthy men to go out with to earn money for drugs.

“At the time, I was in my early 20s and I was an addict and I wasn’t really thinking about safety,” she explained.

Ms Brass reportedly said she connected with Heuermann through one of those sites, leading to their fateful encounter at the Steamroom seafood restaurant in Port Jefferson, New York. The woman said Heuermann initially wanted to rent a hotel room for them in Nassau County, but she did not feel comfortable meeting him in private, so she convinced him to take her out to dinner instead.

“In the beginning, he seemed totally normal,” Ms Brass recalled. “He talked about his job and just seemed really normal — until he brought up the Gilgo Beach murders.”

According to the former escort, her “date” first asked Ms Brass if she was a true-crime fan, and the two spent a short time talking about other famous serial killers.

“Then he said, ‘Have you heard of the Gilgo Beach murders?’ That’s when he got real weird,” she said.

Ms Brass claimed Heuermann mentioned details about the killings that she had not heard, despite closely following the investigation.

“I was following the case, and he mentioned one of the girls I hadn’t heard about yet. It seemed like he was talking about it from experience, not a point of view,” she said.

Ms Brass added that it seemed like the man did not feel at all sorry for the victims and was excited to discuss the killings.

“It seemed like somebody who really wanted to brag about what they did, but couldn’t,” she told the paper.

As Heuermann spoke, Ms Brass said that “something about … his body language changed, the look in his eyes changed, and it seemed like talking about the victims was enjoyable for him.”

Ms Brass recalled getting “the worst gut feeling” about Heuermann during their dinner date, which she rushed to bring to a close as quickly as possible because she was “so scared”.

Heuermann allegedly tried to talk Ms Brass into leaving her car in the parking lot and riding with him to the hotel room he had booked for them — but she refused.

“He was like, leave your car; come in mine,” she reportedly said. “He was very adamant about me leaving my car. Looking back, he didn’t want to have to kill somebody and get rid of their car.”

Ms Brass said she never went to the police with her suspicions about Heuermann because she said she did not have any concrete evidence against him — and on top of that, she was on parole for a drug conviction at the time.

“I’m a felon and had a history and didn’t want to get involved with cops,” Ms Brass explained. “I think he went after girls who were addicts or had a record, or anyone less likely to talk to police.”

Heuermann, 59, a married father of two and an architect, was arrested last week and pleaded not guilty to murdering Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello.

He was also named the prime suspect in the killing of Maureen Brainard-Barnes.

The skeletal remains of the so-called “Gilgo Four” were discovered along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach in December 2010 during a search for missing sex worker Shannan Gilbert.

When Ms Brass learned of Heuermann’s arrest, she felt both vindicated and conflicted about not going to the cops after her eerie dinner date, according to the report.

“I was also like, holy s**t, I was right. Maybe I should have spoken to the cops, but I knew they wouldn’t listen to me.”

This article originally appeared on the New York Post and was reproduced with permission