Can the Gilgo Beach Suspect’s House Become a ‘Nice Starter Home’?

Neighbors breathed a sigh of relief this week when an empty shipping container appeared outside the dilapidated red house in Massapequa Park that has become known as the home of the accused Long Island serial killer.

“The best thing that could happen is they knock that house down and build a brand-new one so that the memory of all this is obliterated,” said a neighbor, Albert Cella, 80.

“All this” referred to the sensation caused by the arrest last year of Rex Heuermann, 61, who prosecutors say presented himself as a family man in the little red house all while committing the Gilgo Beach murders.

With Mr. Heuermann in jail awaiting trial after pleading not guilty, and his wife, Asa Ellerup, being paid to participate in a documentary series, the family is moving out. Ms. Ellerup and the couple’s two adult children are relocating to a South Carolina property purchased years ago as a retirement home, and she will put the Long Island home up for sale after her divorce from Mr. Heuermann becomes final in about six months, their lawyers said.

At once, talk of the house as a headquarters of horror shifted to its potential as a real estate parcel: speculation about price, banter about a bargain buy and the hope that a sale will end an ugly chapter for the neighborhood.

Mr. Heuermann had lived his entire life in the dilapidated ranch house with the unkempt yard on First Avenue, including the past three decades with his wife and two children.