Rex Heuermann, a Long Island architect, pleaded guilty Wednesday to murder charges tied to the Gilgo Beach killings and also admitted to killing an eighth woman, the Associated Press reported. The pleas came in a case that has stretched for more than three decades since the first killing, according to the AP account. He appeared in court without emotion and did not look back at the packed gallery of victims’ relatives as he entered the pleas, the AP said.
The AP said Heuermann pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder and four counts of intentional murder involving the killings of seven women between 1993 and 2010. Prosecutors also said he admitted strangling eight female victims, dismembering some of them, and dumping their bodies along remote stretches of New York coastline. He will be sentenced in June to life in prison without the possibility of parole, the AP reported.
As the case developed from the discovery of human remains beginning in late 2010, investigators pursued the possibility of a serial killer, drawing global attention, the AP said. Families of the victims grew doubtful that their killer would ever be caught as the investigation dragged on for more than a decade, the AP reported.
The AP said Heuermann was arrested in 2023 after a DNA match. The AP account described detectives identifying Heuermann as a suspect in 2022 by using a vehicle registration database tied to a pickup truck a witness reported seeing in 2010 when one of the victims disappeared. Investigators also pulled cellphone data showing Heuermann was in contact with some victims just before they disappeared, and the AP said his internet search history showed interest in the Gilgo Beach killings.
Prosecutors described additional forensic work as investigators followed Heuermann in Manhattan while he worked, according to the AP. The AP reported that surveillance officers watched as he discarded a box of partially eaten pizza crusts into a sidewalk garbage can and sent it to a crime lab. The AP said prosecutors linked DNA from a hair found on burlap used to restrain one of the victims to Heuermann through that evidence.
Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney described Wednesday how investigators tried to keep the probe quiet so Heuermann would not realize police were onto him. Tierney said, “We wanted the one person who mattered, the murderer, to think it’s business as usual,” the AP reported. As part of the guilty plea, Heuermann agreed to cooperate fully with the FBI’s behavioral analysis unit to help catch other serial killers, the AP said.
The AP said the victims whose remains were found included Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Lynn Costello, Valerie Mack, Jessica Taylor and Megan Waterman near Ocean Parkway by Gilgo Beach, and Sandra Costilla more than 60 miles (100 kilometers) away in the Hamptons. The AP reported that Karen Vergata’s remains were found on Fire Island in 1996, and then near Gilgo Beach in 2011; the AP said Heuermann admitted killing Vergata in 1996, though he has not been charged in her death.
At court, several family members of the victims attended and some wept as Heuermann detailed the murders, the AP reported. Taylor’s mother, Elizabeth Baczkiel, said she was glad the case had ended for the family, telling the AP that “I am glad that this is over as far as him pleading guilty,” and that it “took a big chunk of stress off of me and my family.” Melissa Cann, the sister of Brainard-Barnes, described the moment as the end of a long wait, saying at a news conference after the hearing that “This has been a long journey of hope — hope that one day we would stand here and say her name with justice beside it” and that “Today, that long, painful journey brings us to this moment.”
The AP also reported that Heuermann’s ex-wife, Asa Ellerup, and their daughter were present when he entered the guilty pleas. Ellerup told the court she asked for privacy for her own family and that she and their daughter had no knowledge of or involvement in the killings, according to the AP account, with their lawyer identified as Robert Macedonio.