Michael R. Sisak and Philip Marcelo
Warning: Graphic content
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 in June 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 trial that has dogged investigators, tormented victims’ relatives and exposed the true crime to the public for years. Although he was not charged in her death, he also admitted to killing Karen Vergata in 1996.
Under questioning by Suffolk District Attorney Ray Tierney, Heuermann admitted that he strangled all eight victims and dismembered some of them, that he used arson phones to communicate with them, and that he covered their bodies in sheets before disposing of them.
Dressed in a black suit jacket and white button-down shirt, Heuermann appeared emotionless as he answered questions from Tierney and the judge, keeping his eyes fixed on the front.
The women, most of them sex workers, were killed over a 17-year period and buried in remote locations, including a coastal highway across the bay from where she 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.
Investigators and citizens crowded the meeting. Reporters and camera operators swarmed Heuermann’s ex-wife, Asa Ellerup, and their daughter outside the courthouse.
“My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families,” Ellerup said. “Their loss is immeasurable and the focus should be on them at this time. I ask that you give my family privacy as they go through this difficult time.”
Ellerup and her daughter, Victoria, had no knowledge or involvement in the murder, said their attorney, Robert Macedonia. Ellerup said she had a hard time believing her husband was a serial killer because he never gave any warning signs when they were together.
“There came a point in this defense where Rex said, ‘I want to plead guilty,'” defense attorney Michael Brown told reporters, noting that one of Heuermann’s concerns was to spare the victims’ families and his own family the suffering of the trial.
Asked if Heuermann was sorry, Brown replied: “I would hope so … I would hope at sentencing he would have something to say.”
As part of his guilty plea, Heuermann agreed to fully cooperate with the FBI’s behavioral analysis unit.
The case began in 2010 after police found human remains while searching for a missing woman, Shannan Gilbert, along Long Island’s South Beach, sparking a hunt for a killer that drew worldwide attention and spawned a Hollywood movie.
Although her relatives contested the findings, authorities ultimately determined that Gilbert had drowned, and Brown said Wednesday that Heuermann “had nothing to do with Shannan Gilbert.”
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 Parkabout a 25-minute drive through the main road that runs past South Oyster Bay to the sandy area where the women’s remains were found.
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.
AP
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