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Rex Heuermann, a Long Island architect accused of seven murders known as the Gilgo Beach killings dating back to 1993, pleaded guilty on Wednesday – and added an eighth murder to his gruesome tally.
Heuermann, who has been held in custody since he was arrested on a Manhattan street in July 2023, appeared in court in Riverhead, Long Island, and changed his plea to guilty in the murders of women whose remains were found years after they disappeared.
Their remains were mostly found in marshland along Long Island’s south coast, including and most notably on Gilgo Beach.
Many of the victims, who were mostly sex workers, remained unidentified for years, but a break in the long-running mystery came through the identification of Heuermann through a discarded pizza crust, an SUV, cellphone records and mitochondrial DNA matches to the victims. After his arrest, Heuermann pleaded not guilty.
Judge Timothy Mazzei asked Heuermann a series of questions about his readiness to enter a guilty plea on Wednesday. Asked if he was entering the plea of his own free will, Heuermann said: “Yes, I am.”
Of the first charge to be addressed by prosecutors, on the murder of Melissa Barthelemy in 2009, Heuermann said he had caused her death. Asked how, he said: “Strangulation.”
Heuermann repeated his guilty plea and description for other victims charged in the case: he is charged with killing Amber Costello, Megan Waterman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Valerie Mack, Jessica Taylor and Sandra Costilla.
He also admitted to contacting his victims with burner phones, to luring them with money, and wrapping their bodies in burlap sacks and dumping them near Gilgo Beach.
Heuermann said it was his intent to kill the victims during a two-year period, satisfying the first-degree murder charges, and admitted to dismembering Taylor and Mack and spreading their remains in Manorville and near Gilgo Beach.
Heuermann said he’d committed the murders in Nassau county, where he lived with his former wife and their daughter, but had dumped the bodies further east, in Suffolk county.
In a surprise twist, Heuermann also said he killed an woman who was not named in the indictment. He said that he intentionally killed Karen Vergata and transported her body to Suffolk county.
After making the admissions, Heuermann confirmed his guilty plea.
“I’ll accept your pleas of guilty,” Mazzei said.
Heuermann will be sentenced to life without parole on the first-degree counts and to four terms of 25 years to life in prison for the four second-degree counts when he is sentenced on 17 June.
Michael Brown, Heuermann’s attorney, said his client “had a right to change his plea, and accept responsibility”. He added: “Today gave peace and hope to the families.”
Before changing his plea, Heuermann was scheduled for trial later this year after his defense team had lost a bid to exclude DNA evidence extracted from hairs found on the victims’ bodies.
Heuermann’s former wife, Asa Ellerup, and their daughter Victoria, attended the hearing. They did not speak to reporters as they entered court.
“It’s a difficult day,” said Robert Macedonio, an attorney for Ellerup, told Newsday. “No one can envision ever in their life standing here in a courthouse on a line surrounded by media having their ex-husband accused of seven, potentially eight homicides. It’s unimaginable. There’s no way to prepare for it.”
The Gilgo Beach murder investigation began in 2010 after police found four sets of human remains while they were searching for another missing woman, Shannan Gilbert. The discoveries, along with other sets of remains, some dismembered, set off a search for a potential serial killer.
The body of one of Heuermann’s victims, Sandra Costilla, was found more than 60 miles away in the Hamptons. Vergata’s partial remains were found on Fire Island in 1996, matching other remains found near Gilgo Beach five years later.
For years, the case went cold. But in 2022, a new police commissioner formed the Gilgo Beach task force and called in the FBI. Six weeks later, detectives identified Heuermann from a vehicle database that connected his pickup truck to a vehicle seen when one of his victims disappeared.
Investigators collected data records for burner phones he used to arrange meetings with the victims and retested DNA evidence using more advanced techniques than had been previously available.
As part of the investigation, detectives tailed Heuermann in Manhattan, where he worked. When he threw a box of partly eaten pizza in a garbage can, they were able to match the DNA to a male hair found one one of the victims.
Following his arrest, investigators spent 12 days searching the family home in Massapequa Park on Long Island. They found a basement vault that contained 279 weapons, a computer containing a “blueprint” for his system of murder, checklists and queries on how to reduce noise, clean bodies and destroy evidence.
