Rex Heuermann pleads guilty in connection with the Gilgo Beach serial killings during a hearing at Suffolk County Court in Riverhead (Picture: AFP)
An unassuming architect living a secret life as a serial killer has finally admitted to killing eight women in a spree that haunted families and detectives for nearly two decades.
Rex Heuermann, 62, strangled all his victims and dismembered some of them, after using he used burner phones to contact them. He then wrapped their bodies in burlap before dumping them.
Heuermann’s guilty pleas — to three counts of first-degree murder and four of intentional murder — bring finality to a case that bedevilled investigators, tormented victims’ relatives and tantalised a true-crime obsessed public for years.
The women, many of them sex workers, were killed over a 17-year span and buried in remote locations, including along an isolated beach highway across the bay from where he lived, authorities said.
Although he wasn’t charged in her death, he also admitted that he killed Karen Vergata in 1996.
Wearing a black suit coat and white button-down shirt, Heuermann appeared matter-of-fact and unemotional as he answered questions from the judge. He never looked back at the packed courtroom gallery, keeping his gaze fixed straight ahead.
The court room was packed with reporters and detectives who cracked the case with the help of DNA lifted from a discarded pizza crust
Gilgo Beach murders victims Tanya Denise Jackson (right) and her daughter Tatiana Marie Dykes (left) have been identified (Pictures: Nassau County Police Department)
Killer’s ex-wife calls it a ‘difficult time’
Investigators and members of the public packed the hearing. Reporters and camera operators swarmed Heuermann’s ex-wife, Asa Ellerup, and their daughter as they entered and left the courthouse.
‘My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families,” Ellerup said afterward. ‘Their loss is immeasurable and the focus should be on them at this time and moment. I ask that you give some privacy to my family as they navigate through this very difficult time.’
Ellerup and her daughter, Victoria, had no knowledge of or involvement in the killings, said their lawyer, Robert Macedonio. Ellerup has said she found it very difficult to believe her husband was serial killer, because he never gave off warning signs during their time together.
Asked about Heuermann’s admissions, his defence attorney, Michael Brown told reporters, ‘There came a point in this defence where Rex said, ‘I want to plead guilty,’ noting that one of Heuermann’s concerns was sparing the victims’ families and his own family from the ordeal of the case going to trial.
In response to a question about whether Heuermann was sorry, Brown responded, ‘I would hope so. … I would expect at sentencing he would have something to say.’
As part of his guilty plea, Heuermann agreed to cooperate fully with the FBI’s behavioural analysis unit.
Rex Heuermann admitted to strangling an eighth woman (Picture: AFP)
The case began in earnest in 2010 after police found numerous sets of human remains while searching for a missing woman, Shannan Gilbert, along Long Island’s South Shore, setting off a search for a potential serial killer that attracted global interest and spawned a Hollywood movie.
Although her relatives disputed the finding, authorities eventually determined that Gilbert drowned, and Brown said Wednesday that Heuermann ‘had nothing to do with Shannan Gilbert.’
Investigators used DNA analysis and other evidence to identify victims. In some cases, they were able to connect them to remains found elsewhere on Long Island years earlier.
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Remains of six victims — Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Lynn Costello, Valerie Mack, Jessica Taylor and Megan Waterman — were found in the scrub along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach. The remains of another victim, Sandra Costilla, were found more than 60 miles away in the Hamptons.
Police also identified the remains of Vergata, which were found on Fire Island, more than 20 miles west, in 1996, and near Gilgo Beach in 2011.
But despite the attention, including a documentary series and the 2020 Netflix film, “Lost Girls,” the investigation dragged on for more than a decade, punctuated by fleeting leads and dashed hopes.
A fresh look yields results
In 2022, six weeks after a new police commissioner formed the Gilgo Beach task force, detectives identified Heuermann as a suspect by using a vehicle registration database to connect him to a pickup truck that a witness reported seeing when one of the victims disappeared in 2010.
Heuermann lived for decades in Massapequa Park, about a 25-minute drive across a causeway spanning South Oyster Bay to the sandy stretch where the women’s remains were found. Some of the victims were believed to have disappeared from that community and their cellphones were found to have pinged towers in the area, authorities said.
After the truck discovery, a grand jury authorised more than 300 subpoenas and search warrants, allowing the task force to dig into Heuermann’s life.
Detectives collected billing records for burner phones he allegedly used to arrange meetings with the victims, retested DNA found with the bodies and scoured Heuermann’s internet search history, which showed that he had viewed violent torture pornography and exhibited an intense interest in the Gilgo Beach killings and the renewed investigation. Cellphone data showed Heuermann was in contact with some victims just before they disappeared, investigators said.
To obtain Heuermann’s DNA, a task force surveillance team tailed him in Manhattan, where he worked, and watched as he threw the remnants of his lunch — a box of partially eaten pizza crusts — into a sidewalk garbage can.
Investigators rushed in, grabbed the box, and sent it to the crime lab, which matched DNA from the crust to a male hair found on burlap used to restrain one of the victims. He was arrested in July 2023.
After Heuermann’s arrest, detectives spent more than 12 days searching his yard and home, where they found a basement vault that contained 279 weapons. On his computer, investigators said, they found what they described as a ‘blueprint’ for the killings, including a series of checklists with reminders to limit noise, clean the bodies and destroy evidence.
He will be sentenced in June to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
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