Gilgo Beach serial killer’s wife says he calmly admitted to murdering victims in family home
For years, Rex Heuermann seemed to live a pretty ordinary life. He was a husband, a father and a successful architect who commuted into Manhattan before returning to his life and home in Massapequa Park, Long Island.
It was a routine that gave little away or suggested anything untoward. Prosecutors, however, suspected that behind that surface sat something far darker; something that would only fully emerge decades later.
Earlier this month, the 62-year-old pleaded guilty to murdering seven women and admitted an eighth killing.
But one of the most revealing accounts of the case may not come from a courtroom or a police file. A preview of a new Peacock documentary claims it came in the form of a private conversation with his wife.
In ‘The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets’, Asa Ellerup says she was sitting across from her husband after his arrest in July 2023 and asking the question that had been hanging over their lives.
It was, she said, the point where the reality of what he had done became impossible to ignore, even as the conversation itself remained controlled. ‘He looked very nervous – very, very nervous,’ she recalled.
She spoke to him formally, not as her husband of nearly 30 years, but as someone she no longer recognised.
‘I said to him, “So, Mr. Heuermann, I understand that you are confessing to me on these murders,”’ she says. ‘“Can you please tell me how many of these women did you kill?” He said “Eight.”’
There was no pause or hesitation in the answer. ‘No – he just told me the answer,’ she said later, describing how flat and immediate it felt.
According to Ellerup, he then told her that most of the killings had actually taken place inside their own home in Massapequa Park.
Asked directly if any victims were murdered there, she said: ‘He said yes, they were killed in his room downstairs, all except one.’
To get through the moment, Ellerup said she had to shut part of herself down. ‘Well, I put a wall up,’ she explained, describing it as a way of coping with what she was hearing. The conversation continued, but she suggests she was no longer fully present in it.
Her lawyer later pointed to the tone of the exchange as a sign of how far removed it was from their previous life together.
‘She called him “Mr. Heuermann”,’ he said. ‘So his response was, “Oh, are we formal now? Mrs. Ellerup?”’
Ellerup said that as he spoke, she could still recognise parts of the man she had known for years.
‘When he started talking, it started feeling like that’s the Rex I know,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t want to see that one. I wanted to see the one I needed to see.’ It left her trying to reconcile two versions of the same person in real time.
Prosecutors have said that Heuermann used the absence of his family as cover for the killings, with Ellerup and their children often out of town at the time.
Authorities have also said that they had absolutely no knowledge of what was happening, a point that has been repeated throughout the case. Her account fully supports that version of events.
Heuermann pleaded guilty earlier this month to killing seven women between 1993 and 2010. They were Sandra Costilla, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, Amber Costello, Valerie Mack, and Jessica Taylor.
He also admitted to killing Karen Vergata, despite not facing charges over her death.
In court, he said he strangled his victims, many of whom were later found along stretches of coastline near Gilgo Beach. The case had remained unsolved for years before his arrest back in 2023.
That arrest followed a long investigation that eventually focused on him through cellphone data, witness accounts and DNA evidence.
One particular key moment came when investigators recovered genetic material from a pizza crust he discarded outside his Manhattan office, which they linked to evidence found on victims. Prosecutors later said they worked carefully to avoid alerting him.
‘We wanted the one person who mattered, the murderer, to think it’s business as usual,’ Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said after the plea. The approach allowed them to build the case quietly over time.
For the families of those who were killed, the guilty plea brought some sense of closure after years of uncertainty.
‘This has been a long journey of hope – hope that one day we would stand here and say her name with justice beside it,’ said Melissa Cann, sister of Maureen Brainard-Barnes.
Elizabeth Baczkiel, the mother of Jessica Taylor, also spoke after the hearing, describing the impact of the plea on her family.
‘I am glad that this is over as far as him pleading guilty,’ she said. ‘It took a big chunk of stress off of me and my family.’
In court, Ellerup sat quietly as Heuermann described his atrocious crimes, at times gripping her seat and at others holding hands with her daughter.
Afterwards, she issued a short statement expressing sympathy for the victims’ families and asking for privacy. The focus, she suggested, should remain on those affected by what happened.