For more than three decades, Rex Heuermann drew up building blueprints by day and, investigators say, executed a far darker set of plans after hours. On Wednesday, the 62-year-old architect stood inside Suffolk County Court and, one by one, admitted to killing eight women.
He did not break down. He did not look away. In a flat, composed tone, Heuermann answered each count on the charge sheet with a single word: “guilty.” Asked how he killed his victims, he offered one more: “Strangulation.”
It was the first time the hulking Long Island man had ever admitted to being the Gilgo Beach serial killer — and the first time a courtroom had heard how his victims actually died.
The plea covered seven counts for which he had already been charged, plus an eighth murder he had never been formally accused of committing — the killing of 34-year-old Karen Vergata. Under the agreement, Heuermann surrendered all rights to appeal and will face no further prosecution tied to the eight murders. He returns to court June 17 for sentencing, where he could receive up to seven consecutive life terms.
All eight women had been working as sex workers in the New York City and Long Island area when they vanished. Their remains — some dismembered, some mutilated — turned up scattered across remote stretches of Long Island, left like refuse along the margins of the island he called home.
That home was in Massapequa Park, the same house where Heuermann had grown up, and where he later chose to raise his own children. Investigators now believe the basement of that house served as the site where victims were held, tortured, killed, and in some cases dismembered. While his family traveled on vacation, Heuermann allegedly stayed behind — and hunted.
He had been doing this, prosecutors say, since at least 1993. That year, Sandra Costilla — a Trinidad and Tobago native living in Queens — disappeared. Her body turned up days later in a wooded area in North Sea, bearing sharp force injuries. For years, her death was tied to a different suspect entirely. It was only through advanced DNA testing that a hair on her body was matched to Heuermann, making her the earliest known victim in the case.
The killings continued across the following decade and a half. Valerie Mack, long known only as “Fire Island Jane Doe,” was last seen in Manhattan in February 1996 while working as an escort. Her dismembered remains surfaced in pieces — legs wrapped in plastic on Fire Island’s Blue Point Beach in April of that year, her skull found off Ocean Parkway in April 2011. She was not identified until 2020. Jessica Taylor, 20, vanished in July 2003 after last being seen at the Port Authority bus terminal — a short walk from Heuermann’s Midtown Manhattan office. A tattoo on her body had been deliberately disfigured, consistent with instructions found in a document recovered from Heuermann’s hard drive that prosecutors described as a killing blueprint, complete with a section on how to clean and dismember bodies and remove identifying marks.
The four murders that first drew national attention came later. Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, left to meet a client in July 2007 and never came back. Her body was bound with three leather belts, one of which carried DNA belonging to Heuermann’s wife. Nearly two years later, 24-year-old Melissa Barthelemy disappeared after going to meet a client. While her family searched frantically for her, someone used her phone to call her relatives — mocking them and bragging about the killing. Megan Waterman, 22, was last seen leaving a Hauppauge hotel in June 2010. Amber Costello, 27, left her home to meet a client that September. Her roommate later told investigators the client was “ogre-like” and drove a distinctive green Chevy Avalanche — the same vehicle Heuermann owned at the time.
Three months after Costello vanished, the stretch of Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach gave up its secrets. Barthelemy’s remains were found first. Within days, Brainard-Barnes, Waterman, and Costello were discovered nearby, forming what investigators would call the “Gilgo Four.” By spring 2011, ten bodies had been recovered in the surrounding area.
Heuermann was not arrested until July 2023. Investigators cracked the case through a witness tip about his pickup truck, burner phone location data placing him near both his home and his office, and a discarded pizza crust whose DNA matched a hair recovered from Waterman’s body. Hairs linked to his wife and daughter turned up on six of the seven victims originally charged — though neither woman is considered a suspect. Investigators say the family was out of town during each of the murders.
For nearly three years following his arrest, Heuermann maintained his innocence. Then came Wednesday.
His defense attorney, Michael Brown, said after the hearing that his client chose to accept responsibility rather than go to trial, though he offered no further explanation. Brown acknowledged the prosecution’s case was overwhelming, saying the state “did a great job.” Asked whether Heuermann was sorry, Brown answered: “I would hope so.” Brown added that he believes entering the plea brought his client a “sense of relief,” and that Heuermann is expected to speak at his sentencing.
Outside the courthouse, Heuermann’s ex-wife Asa Ellerup and their daughter Victoria briefly faced reporters. Ellerup read from a prepared statement, describing the pain her husband caused the victims’ families as “immeasurable,” before turning away and refusing questions. Their attorney, Bob Macedonio, told reporters that Ellerup “never wanted to believe the man she was married to for 27 years, the father of Victoria, was capable of such heinous acts.”
Inside the courtroom, Ellerup had gripped the seat in front of her as each guilty plea was entered. She and Victoria held hands as Heuermann was escorted out.Since news broke two weeks ago that Heuermann planned to change his plea, Valerie Mack’s son has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Heuermann, Ellerup, and Victoria — the first of what legal observers expect could be additional civil actions, according to the Daily Mail.
Heuermann has been held in isolation at Suffolk County Jail since his arrest. Sentencing is set for June 17.
