A Long Island architect who led a secret life as a serial killer pleaded guilty on Wednesday to murdering seven women and admitted he killed an eighth in a string of long-unsolved crimes known as the Gilgo Beach killings.
Rex Heuermann, 62, entered the pleas in a courtroom packed with reporters, police and victims' relatives, some of whom wept as he detailed his crimes for the court. He will be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole at a later date.
Heuermann's guilty pleas – to three counts of first-degree murder and four of intentional murder – bring finality to a case that bedevilled investigators, agonised victims' relatives and tantalised a true-crime obsessed public for years.
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Although he wasn't charged in her death, he also admitted that he killed Karen Vergata in 1996.
Heuermann strangled the women, many of them sex workers, over a 17-year span and buried their remains in remote locations, including along an isolated beach highway across the bay from where he lived, authorities said.
Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney has scheduled a news conference for later on Wednesday.
He will be joined by victims' family members and members of the Gilgo Beach Homicide Investigation Task Force, which cracked the case with the help of clues that included DNA lifted from a discarded pizza crust.
The investigation began in earnest in 2010 after police found numerous sets of human remains while searching for a missing woman along Long Island's South Shore, setting off a search for a potential serial killer that attracted global interest and spawned a Hollywood movie.
A message seeking comment was left on Tuesday for Heuermann's lawyer, Michael Brown.
Major public interest
There has been intense interest in the case, and reporters, investigators and members of the public packed the hearing. Reporters and camera operators swarmed Heuermann's ex-wife, Asa Ellerup, and their daughter as they walked into the building.
"It's a difficult day," said Robert Macedonio, an attorney for Ellerup.
"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."
In the courtroom, about half the seats were blocked off for victims' family members and law enforcement officers.
Heuermann, wearing a black blazer and white button-down shirt, gave brief answers to Tierney, the prosecutor, when asked if he understood and agreed to the charges he was pleading guilty to.
He never looked back at the packed courtroom gallery, keeping his gaze fixed straight ahead.
A shocking find
The Gilgo Beach investigation began in earnest in 2010 after police found numerous sets of human remains along a remote beach highway on Long Island's South Shore, setting off a search for a potential serial killer that attracted global interest and spawned a Hollywood movie.
Investigators used DNA analysis and other evidence to identify victims. In some cases, they were able to connect them to remains found elsewhere on Long Island years earlier.
Remains of six victims — Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Lynn Costello, Valerie Mack, Jessica Taylor and Megan Waterman — were found in the scrub along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach. The remains of another victim, Sandra Costilla, were found more than 100 kilometres away in the Hamptons.
Police also identified the remains of Vergata, which were found on Fire Island, more than 32 kilometres west, in 1996, and near Gilgo Beach in 2011.
But despite the attention, including a documentary series and the 2020 Netflix film, Lost Girls, the investigation dragged on for more than a decade, punctuated by fleeting leads and dashed hopes.
A fresh look yields results
In 2022, six weeks after a new police commissioner formed the Gilgo Beach task force, detectives identified Heuermann as a suspect by using a vehicle registration database to connect him to a pickup 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 across a causeway spanning South Oyster Bay to the sandy stretch where the women's remains were found.
Some of the victims were believed to have disappeared from that community and their mobile phones were found to have pinged towers in the area, authorities said.
After the truck discovery, a grand jury authorised more than 300 subpoenas and search warrants, allowing the task force to dig in to Heuermann's life.
Detectives collected billing records for burner phones he allegedly used to arrange meetings with the victims, retested DNA found with the bodies and scoured Heuermann's internet search history, which showed that he had viewed violent torture pornography and exhibited an intense interest in the Gilgo Beach killings and the renewed investigation. Mobile phone data showed Heuermann was in contact with some victims just before they disappeared, investigators said.
To obtain Heuermann's DNA, a task force surveillance team tailed him in Manhattan, where he worked, and watched as he threw the remnants of his lunch — a box of partially eaten pizza crusts — into a rubbish bin on the footpath.
Investigators rushed in, grabbed the box, and sent it to the crime lab, which matched DNA from the crust to a male hair found on 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 vault that contained 279 weapons.
On his computer, investigators said, they found what they described as a "blueprint" for the killings, including a series of checklists with reminders to limit noise, clean the bodies and destroy evidence.
Last year, a judge rejected Heuermann's bid to exclude DNA evidence obtained through advanced techniques that prosecutors say proves he's the killer.
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