Gilgo Beach Monster Rex Heuermann Transferred to Notorious ‘Little Siberia’ Prison — Home of One of America’s Most Daring Escapes!
Serial killer Rex Heuermann is finally heading to hell.
That hell takes the form of one of New York State’s oldest prisons — a bleak facility isolated in the frigid Adirondack Mountains near the Canadian border.
Known as “Little Siberia,” the infamous Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, opened in 1845 and has housed some of the nation’s most notorious killers.
It was also the site of a dramatic prison escape in 2015 that was later immortalized on film.
The former Manhattan architect, who pleaded guilty to the murders of eight women, will join fellow Long Island serial killer Joel Rifkin and New York Zodiac killer Heriberto Seda behind the prison’s 60-foot-high, 7-foot-thick concrete walls as “the classification and assessment process continues,” according to state prison spokesman Thomas Mailey.
Clinton is the state’s largest maximum-security prison, and many of its aging cells measure approximately 6 by 8 feet, containing only a steel-framed bed, toilet, sink, and a small writing surface.
At Dannemora, the 62-year-old Heuermann will be housed alongside some of the most notorious serial killers in history, including Rifkin, 67, who is serving a 203-year sentence for murdering 17 prostitutes.
He will also join Seda, who is serving a 232-year sentence for killing three people and wounding five others in the early 1990s after becoming obsessed with California’s infamous Zodiac Killer.
Seda, who shot and stabbed his victims, was arrested before he could complete his plan to kill 12 people representing all the Zodiac signs.
Another serial killer, Altemio Sanchez, died in 2023 while serving a sentence of 75 years to life at the prison.
Known as the “Bike Path Rapist,” Sanchez murdered three women between 1990 and 2007 in western New York.
Other notorious inmates at Dannemora have included former NYPD officer Michael Valva, 47, who was convicted in the 2020 freezing death of his autistic 8-year-old son.
Convicted killers David Sweat and Richard Matt carried out an elaborate prison escape on June 6, 2015, drawing international attention.
Two prison employees — including Joyce Mitchell, a sewing instructor nicknamed the “Shawshank” because she was reportedly involved in relationships with both inmates — helped smuggle tools into the prison. The pair cut through their steel cell walls, navigated a maze of utility corridors, and cut through a steam pipe before emerging through a manhole outside the prison walls.
A three-week manhunt followed, spanning 75 square miles of heavily wooded terrain.
Matt was shot and killed by law enforcement officers, while Sweat was shot and captured alive two days later.
The 46-year-old Sweat is now serving his sentence at Mid-State Correctional Facility.
The escape inspired the 2018 true-crime miniseries Escape at Dannemora, directed by Ben Stiller.
