Gilgo Beach suspect Rex Heuermann almost killed classmate

It could have been curtains for her.

Accused Gilgo Beach killer Rex Heuermann nearly offed a member of his high school drama club in a backstage incident, a former classmate told The Post. 

In 1980, Berner High School in Massapequa on Long Island put on a production of “Arsenic and Old Lace,” the macabre Joseph Kesselring play about a deranged pair of sisters who lure, poison and bury a dozen old men in their cellar.

Heuermann had been working behind the scenes as a stage tech for the school play, as was the classmate, who also helped paint the sets.

During one rehearsal, Heuermann — without telling anyone — added additional weights to the bottom of the pulley system that raised and lowered the stage curtains, the classmate recalled.

When she pulled on a lever to drop the curtains while holding onto a rope connected to the system, her 95-pound body suddenly went soaring toward the auditorium ceiling.

“I thought I was going to die,” she said.

She said Heuermann quickly helped her down and apologized.

But the former classmate said she thought the hulking, 6-foot-4 teen was “marking his domain” by making it hard for other students to handle the curtains under the additional weight.

“He had reweighted all of them so that only he could do it, or somebody strong could do it,” she said. “It created a dangerous situation.” 

Criminologist Scott Bonn said the backstage drama was no mere accident but the work of a “fledgling psychopath in development.”

Who is Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect Rex Heuermann?

A suspected serial killer has been arrested over the notorious Gilgo Beach murders in Long Island, The Post can confirm.

Rex Heuermann, 59, a married dad of two and architect at a New York City firm, has a home on 1st Avenue in Massapequa Park, sources told The Post.

His arrest is tied to the “Gilgo Four,” four women — Melissa Barthelemy, 24, Megan Waterman, 22, Amber Lynn Costello, 27, and Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25 — found wrapped in burlap within days of each other in 2010. 

The body of Barthelemy was first found along Ocean Parkway on Dec. 11, 2010, sparking fears of a serial killer in the area.

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By spring 2011, the number of bodies had climbed to 10, including eight women as well as an unidentified man and toddler.

Heuermann’s arrest comes after Suffolk County’s new police commissioner created a special Gilgo Beach Homicide Investigation Task Force in February 2022.

He noted that Heuermann also got off from allegedly calling the sister of one of the victims, Melissa Barthelemy, and taunting her.

“He did it for his own selfish, narcissistic, and psychopathic pleasure,” Bonn said. “That same mind that would do that would embarrass and attempt to hurt his classmate at an early age.”

Heuermann, an architect and father of two, was arrested last week outside of his Midtown Manhattan office and charged in the deaths of Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello.

The Massapequa Park resident, who lived with his family in his childhood home, also has been named the “prime suspect” in the death of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, but has not been charged yet in her killing.

Heuermann pleaded not guilty to first- and second-degree murder charges on July 14.

The four women’s bodies, which were discovered wrapped in burlap along Ocean Parkway in December 2010, were among 11 sets of remains found on Gilgo Beach over the years.

Since Heuermann’s arrest, others have shared their own bizarre encounters over the years with the accused Long Island killer.

NYPD Lieutenant Kevin Young recently recalled a heated moment with Heuermann on a train from Long Island into Manhattan, which he described as being like “road rage without the car.”

“We had a very innocuous interaction [where] he took umbrage to something that I was doing … and it just escalated into some heated words,” Young told the “The Ops Desk” podcast.