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Topics: Crime, True Crime, US News, News, Documentaries
Rhianna Benson
Topics: Crime, True Crime, US News, News, Documentaries
Asa Ellerup, the ex-wife of the Gilgo Beach serial killer, has claimed Rex Heuermann confessed to murdering eight women inside their Long Island property.
The gut-wrenching revelation is set to feature in the final episode of the true-crime documentary, The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets, which will air on Peacock in the coming days.
In a preview for the instalment (obtained by The Post), Ellerup recalls sitting down with 62-year-old Heuermann days before he was due to appear in Suffolk County Court over the gruesome murders of eight local women.
During the conversation, the mass murderer allegedly admitted to the string of killings, telling Ellerup that the majority of his crimes were committed inside the walls of their Massapequa Park family home.
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In the clip, Ellerup, who divorced her ex last year, asks: "So Mr Heuermann, I understand that you are confessing to me on these murders – can you please tell me how many of these women did you kill?"
She later tells her lawyer, Bob Macedonio: "He said he killed eight women."
On 8 April, days after his conversation with Ellerup supposedly took place, however, Heurmann appeared before a jury, where he pleaded guilty to strangling seven women between 1993 and 2010, before abandoning their dismembered remains across the region.
Melissa Barthelemy's body was discovered along Ocean Parkway, followed by that of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Lynn Costello, Valerie Mack, Jessica Taylor and Megan Waterman. The remains of Sandra Costillo were found more than 60 miles away, in the Hamptons.
He pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder and four counts of intentional murder.
In the docuseries preview, Macedonio asks Ellerup: "Eight? Who was the eighth? Because he’s charged with seven." She replies: "I didn’t ask."
Ellerup goes on to claim that, prior to his plea, Heuermann, a New York architect, had insisted she hadn't been home at the time of the killings.
"They were killed in his room downstairs," she recalls. "All except one."
Appearing in court earlier this month, Heuermann also confessed to the murder of Karen Vergeta, but wasn't charged for her death.
The father-of-two was caught in 2023 following a police investigation that spanned over 30 years.
It was initially opened in 2011 following the disappearance of Shannen Gilbert in the Oak Beach area. Despite police later ruling that she'd drowned in the nearby marshland, the search for her body led to the discovery of several other victims.
In the eight that followed, Suffolk County Police Department officials had their lines of questioning ceaselessly stunted by misdemeanours, corruption and tensions within the force.
The appointment of a new police commissioner in 2022, however, prompted the formation of the Gilgo Beach task force, which liaised with the FBI to review the horde of evidence that had been gathered.
It didn't take long for Heuermann to emerge as a suspect.
Police linked the registration of his vehicle to a description previously given by a friend of Costella. They claimed she'd been harassed by an 'ogre-like' man who drove a Chevrolet Avalanche car in the weeks prior to her murder.
A similar vehicle was also reported to be loitering in the area by other Ocean Parkway locals at the time.
After searching Heuermann's home, detectives discovered billing records for burner phones he'd used to contact his victims, and a computer search history littered with violent torture pornography and an interest in the case.
Believing they had their man, police lifted DNA from a pizza crust that Heuermann had discarded, linking it to a male hair that had become laced within the burlap he'd used to restrain one of his victims.
Following her ex's guilty plea, Ellerup told the press outside of the courtroom: "My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families. Their loss is immeasurable, and the focus should be on them at this time and moment.
"I ask that you give some privacy to my family as they navigate through this very difficult time."