Path to Violence: The Development of Rex Heuermann

Rex Heuermann's story isn't one of a switch being flipped. It is the tale of a slow rot that permeated his existence.

He doesn't remember the precise moment “it” started.

The seed was sown in his adolescence, and the terrible plant grew as he did.

For years, he unknowingly watered it.

By the time he identified it as a problem, it was already quickly growing out of control.

The first visible sign of this growth was a turn inward.

During his formative years, Heuermann retreated into a world of fantasy.

However, his fantasies weren't normal. They were compensatory and excessive. An unhealthy coping mechanism that allowed him to escape from reality.

While boys his age were daydreaming about becoming famous athletes or dating the popular girl at school, he was beginning to construct a new world in which he held absolute power and control.

In his narrative, he turned the tables on the bullies. He got back against those who humiliated and physically abused him in real life.

Over time, the fantasy became stronger, more recurrent, and more precise. He refined it endlessly. Details were modified, characters rotated, and the locations changed.

But despite the changes, there was always one central component: control.

Relatives, classmates, and neighbors at the time would have noticed that Heuermann was withdrawn. An excessive daydreamer who kind of just existed, hovering around the periphery.

While Heuermann was spending his days inside his inner world, another key part of himself started to emerge.

His sexuality.

This set the stage for a catastrophic collision. Unbeknownst to everyone, a shy, bespectacled boy in his basement bedroom was about to embark on a path that would shatter dozens of people’s lives and cause immense loss and tragedy.

Heuermann crossed the line quietly inside his head. There was no bang.

During his early teenage years, his fantasy and sexuality began to intersect.

The vivid, recurring narrative of dominating and controlling someone didn't just feel empowering. It started to excite him.

His tale of capturing a school bully or getting back at an adult abuser began to mutate.

Now, there was suddenly a new character: a girl.

At first, she may have merely witnessed and admired his power. However, the script would soon change to suit his needs, just like it always did.

Conveniently, she became the bully's ally, making her complicit and worthy of punishment.

By that point, the fantasy was no longer about revenge or compensating for feelings of powerlessness. It had morphed into one that gave him pleasure. The usual, healthy boundaries between sex and violence were beginning to break down.

Consequently, he would eventually drop all pretenses and remove the bully entirely, leaving the girl as the sole focus of his imaginings.

From there, escalation was almost inevitable. He continued to revise the story and progressively increase the violence in his “script.”

At this stage in his development, Heuermann would have realized he was different. When the other boys talked about sex, they didn’t speak of things like control, domination, or violence.

As he grew older, he began to collect certain materials and hide them in his room. Depending on what he had access to, this could have been sexually violent adult material and specific images from detective magazines. He may have also started drawing his own illustrations and diagrams.

The material acted as fuel, intensifying his fantasies and creating an insatiable thirst for even more extreme content. This created a vicious cycle: the richer the fantasy, the more potent the material needed to be.

It was a disastrous feedback loop. A self-perpetuating engine that required continuous escalation to sustain sexual arousal.

The fantasy intensified until it started spilling out into the real world. He may have started engaging in voyeurism or stealing undergarments. When he began soliciting sex workers, he may have asked them to act out certain violent scenarios. He might have even launched non-lethal attacks on some of them.

However, when those acts no longer provided the desired gratification, a single, life-altering question began to emerge:

“How could I get away with it?”

And thus, the final, most terrible seed was planted.

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Author's note: This speculative timeline of events is based on one development pathway to sexual sadism, as well as past interviews with serial killers. It is an attempt to explain Heuermann's possible development in a way that isn't loaded with clinical terms. It must be unequivocally stated that Heuermann's paraphilia does not excuse his actions in the slightest. Instead of seeking help, he coldly and calmly decided to escalate his fantasies to real-world violence. Furthermore, he was not insane or "unable to stop himself." He made a very deliberate and calculated choice that required extensive planning.