Michael R. Sisak and Philip Marcelo
New York: A Long Island architect who led a secret life as a serial killer has confessed to killing seven women and admitted to killing the eighth in a series of unsolved crimes known as the Gilgo Beach murders.
Rex Heuermann, 62, entered the plea on Wednesday (US time) in a courtroom filled with reporters, police and relatives of the victims, some of whom wept as he explained his crimes to the court.
He will be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Heuermann’s guilty plea — to three counts of first-degree murder and four counts of first degree murder — ends a case that has dogged detectives, tormented victims’ relatives and exposed the public to true crime for years. Although he was not charged in her death, he also admitted to killing Karen Vergata in 1996.
Heuermann strangled the women, most of them sex workers, over a 17-year period and buried their remains in remote locations, including a coastal highway across the bay from where he lived, authorities said.
The Gilgo Beach Homicide Task Force worked on the case with the help of tips which includes DNA lifted from discarded pizza crust.
There has been great interest in the case, and journalists, investigators and citizens crowded the hearing. Reporters and camera operators mobbed Heuermann’s ex-wife, Asa Ellerup, and their daughter as they entered the building.
“It’s a tough day,” said Robert Macedonia, Ellerup’s attorney. “Nobody can ever imagine in their life standing here in court on a line surrounded by the media where their ex-husband is being charged with seven, possibly eight, murders. It’s unimaginable. There’s no way to prepare for that.”
In the courtroom, about half of the seats were reserved for family members of the victims and law enforcement officers.
Heuermann, dressed in a black blazer and white button-down shirt, gave brief answers to Suffolk District Attorney Ray Tierney, the prosecutor, when asked if he understood and agreed to the charges to which he was pleading guilty. He no longer looked at the packed courtroom, looking straight ahead.
The Gilgo Beach investigation began in earnest in 2010 after police found dozens of human remains along the beach’s main road on Long Island’s South Beach, sparking a hunt for a serial killer that drew worldwide attention and spawned a Hollywood movie.
Investigators used DNA analysis and other evidence to identify the victims. In some cases, they were able to link them to remains found elsewhere on Long Island years earlier.
The remains of six victims – Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Lynn Costello, Valerie Mack, Jessica Taylor and Megan Waterman – were found in scrub along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach. The remains of another victim, Sandra Costilla, were found more than 100 kilometers away in the Hamptons.
Police also identified an eighth woman, Karen Vergata, whose remains were found on Fire Island, more than 232 kilometers west, in 1996, and near Gilgo Beach in 2011.
But despite the attention, including Netflix’s 2020 documentary and film series, The Lost Girlsthe investigation continued for more than a decade, plagued by fleeting leads and despair.
In 2022, six weeks after the new police commissioner created the Gilgo Beach task force, detectives identified Heuermann as a suspect by using a vehicle registration database to link him to a 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 via the highway that runs through South Oyster Bay to the sandy area where the women’s remains were found. Some of the victims were believed to have disappeared from the community and their cell phones were found to have ping towers in the area, authorities said.
After the discovery of the truck, a grand jury authorized more than 300 subpoenas and search warrants, allowing the task force to investigate Heuermann’s life.
Detectives collected records of the arson calls he claimed he used to arrange meetings with victims, and re-examined the DNA found on the bodies. and browse Heuermann’s internet search historywhich showed that he had viewed pornography of violent torture and showed great interest in the Gilgo Beach murder and re-investigation. Cell phone data showed Heuermann was in contact with some of the victims before he disappeared, investigators said.
To get Heuermann’s DNA, a team of task force investigators tailed him in Manhattan, where he worked, and watched him throw the remains of his lunch — a box of partially eaten pizza crusts — into a curbside trash can.
Investigators quickly moved in, took the box and took it to the crime lab, which matched DNA from the crust to a male hair found on the 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 that contained 279 weapons. On his computer, investigators said, they found what they described as a “plan” for the murderincluding a series of checklists with reminders to reduce noise, clean up bodies and destroy evidence.
Last year, a judge denied Heuermann’s request to exclude DNA evidence obtained through sophisticated techniques that prosecutors said proved he was the killer.
AP
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