Why Is LISK Rex Heuermann Only Reading About Serial Killers?

Rex Heuermann isn’t reading sports books in his cell. He’s not reading cookbooks or self-help or anything a person does when they’re processing what they’ve done. According to Suffolk County Sheriff Errol Toulon, the Gilgo Beach killer has been pulling crime novels from the jail library — specifically books about serial killers and the investigators who chase them.

That detail alone is disturbing. But it’s not the whole picture.

According to reporting, Heuermann also struck up a correspondence with Keith Hunter Jesperson, the Happy Face Killer, who reportedly sent over ten letters from his Oregon prison cell. Out of every piece of mail Heuermann received — interview requests, pen pal offers, collectors — Jesperson was reportedly the only person he wrote back to. And he described Jesperson’s letters as “a help and a comfort.”

I dug into the forensic psychology behind why killers seek each other out from behind bars. It’s a documented phenomenon. Convicted killers have been writing to other convicted killers for decades — seeking attention, affinity, and in the most disturbing cases, inspiration. The Gilgo Beach LISK case now has its own entry in that pattern.

What makes Heuermann’s case different is the behavioral profile. The sheriff who has watched him for more than a thousand days says the man has never once changed his facial expression. Never shown discomfort or despair. The reading list, the killer correspondence, the emotional flatness — taken together, they paint a picture of a man who appears to be settling into an identity rather than reckoning with one.

Every true crime case raises questions about psychology. This one answers some of them.

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Disclaimer:

This publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.

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