The broken family of accused Gilgo Beach murderer Rex Heuermann got a helping hand from one of the few people who could provide it — the daughter of a notorious jailed serial killer.
“I know what it’s like to live with a psychopath,” Kerri Rawson, the daughter of “BTK Killer” Dennis Rader, who butchered 10 victims, said in Peacock’s new docu-series on the Gilgo Beach case.
Rawson’s father, was one of the nation’s most infamous serial killers, adopting his nickname for his affinity for binding, torturing and killing his victims — all while a married father of two.
“When Rex was arrested my PTSD hit right away, because of what my family had gone through,” Rawson said in the three-part series, “The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets.”
Her thoughts “immediately” went to Heuermann’s family — including wife Asa and two kids, who were “similar ages to what my brother and I were when my father was arrested ’05,” she said.
“My heart just broke in two,” Rawson said. “I was shocked by the similarities.”
Rader — a former Cub Scout leader and Christ Lutheran Church higher-up — was finally busted Feb. 25, 2005, decades after slaughtering victims in the Wichita and Park City areas between 1974 and 1991.
“My father lived a double life,” Rawson told the filmmakers. “He was hiding in plain sight for 31 years.”
The similarities between Rader and the allegations against Heuermann are chilling.
Heuermann, a 59-year-old married architect with two children when he was arrested in July 2023, is accused of killing seven sex workers over a span of more than 30 years, mutilating several victims.
Rader was also 59 when he was busted, with two children, including Rawson, who was 26 at the time of her dad’s capture — the same age as Heuerman’s daughter, Victoria, at the time of his arrest.
Both men were arrested thanks to DNA matches drawn from the victims.
The similarities weren’t lost on Rader, who wrote to Fox News from inside the Kansas jail cell where he is serving a life sentence that Heuermann was “a clone of me.”
Rawson, who is seen visiting Heuermann’s wife, Asa Ellerup, and daughter, Victoria Heuermann, in the three-part Peacock series, said she understands their nightmare.
“When you’re talking about a father, their actions get placed on the family,” she said. “I wasn’t alive for seven of the 10 of my father’s murders, and I was at the most 12 years old for the last.
“Why are you as a society putting that back on me? Why are you putting this on Rex’s kids?” she asked. “They had nothing to do with any of this.”
But Rawson also believes Ellerup is in denial — and even rolls her eyes at the long-suffering wife’s loyalty to her accused serial killer hubby during the docu-series.
“I’m seeing that Asa’s stuck in that loop of going, he was here on this date and he was gone this day and he did this. And I understand what that’s like, that fog of not knowing and questioning everything,” she told the filmmakers.
“I understand having reasonable questions. [But] is she in denial, is she lying, is she disassociated?” Rawson continues. “The thing is when you’re sitting in the cheap seats with popcorn, you’re in hindsight land.”