LI architect Rex Heuermann admits to being the serial killer who strangled 8 women and dumped their bodies near Gilgo Beach

Rex A. Heuermann confessed to killing eight women on Wednesday, strangling and dumping their mutilated bodies as the elusive Gilgo Beach serial killer, bringing resolution to a case that has generated worldwide attention since the first victim's remains were found off the Ocean Parkway in 2010.

Heuermann, who had lived a normal-appearing life as an architect and married father in Massapequa Park while clandestinely killing women in his basement when his family was on vacation, pleaded guilty to the murders of seven women and admitted killing an eighth woman — a vicious crime spree that began in 1993 and confounded Long Island for years.

Standing in a suit and navy tie, Heuermann detailed his crimes one-by-one in response to a series of questions from Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney during a riveting and rapidly paced court hearing that lasted 27 minutes.

"Strangulation," he repeated in a matter-of-fact tone, eight times, when asked how he ended the lives of his victims in a courtroom packed with the tearful families of the victims, the authorities that had finally nabbed him after years of hunting, the journalists that had long chronicled the case, as well as a host of curious onlookers.

Heuermann followed with the word "guilty," for each of the charged victims, a simple but powerful end to the case.

He shed no tears and there were no signs of hesitation from Heuermann as he  frankly admitted contacting the women with burner phones, luring them with the promise of money and then squeezing the life from their bodies in Nassau County and tossing their remains in unforgiving landscapes in Suffolk. 

Heuermann, 62, who had an architectural consulting firm in midtown Manhattan before his July 13, 2023 arrest, pleaded guilty to the murders of Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Lynn Costello, Jessica Taylor, Valerie Mack, Sandra Costilla and admitted the uncharged killing of Karen Vergata.

Heuermann will spend the rest of his life in state prison without the possibility of parole.

When State Supreme Court Justice Timothy Mazzei sentences Heuermann on June 17, he is expected to receive three consecutive sentences of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for the killings of Barthelemy, Waterman and Costello, for whom he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder because they were killed within two years of one another. Heuermann is also expected to be sentenced to a consecutive sentence of 100 years to life imprisonment for second-degree murder in the killings of Brainard-Barnes, Taylor, Costilla and Mack.

As part of the plea agreement, Heuermann must agree to interviews with the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, which studies the minds of serial killers.

"I will accept your pleas of guilty," Mazzei, who has presided over the complex case since shortly after Heuermann’s arrest and issued a series of earlier pivotal rulings in the prosecution’s favor, told Heuermann.

Asa Ellerup, Heuermann's ex-wife, was among those witnessing the court proceeding. She declined to talk about the plea agreement.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims," Ellerup said at a news conference after the hearing. "Their loss is immeasurable, and the focus should be on them at this moment."

Tierney, speaking at a news conference at the county's police academy in Brentwood after the court proceeding, commended the families of Heuermann's victims for their advocacy on behalf of their loved ones.

"We are grateful to them and their families, because without them, this defendant would have never been brought to justice and he would still be walking among us," Tierney said. "He would still be portraying himself as some harmless father next door, instead of what he is — a convicted murderer."

Tierney, who was flanked by several relatives of Heuermann's victims, individually thanked the family members for coming in to the district attorney's office and giving interviews and providing information he said played a crucial role in solving the case.

"They inspired us. They're the reason we do what we do," he said. "We told you we're going to do everything we can to bring closure to you. That's why we work in law enforcement."

Tierney, the two-term Suffolk district attorney and former federal prosecutor, thanked members of the Gilgo Beach Homicide Task Force, which finally solved the case after the investigation long grew cold.

Tierney praised the investigators for the collection and retention of evidence over the decadeslong investigation, especially hair samples that became important after DNA technology advanced.

He also gave a nod to New York State Trooper Tifini Atai, who connected Heuermann's Chevrolet Avalanche to the crimes — a crucial break in the case. Atai did not speak publicly.

Tierney said Heuermann’s guilty plea came about "organically."

"There was no negotiation with regard to numbers," he said. "The reason why this case pled guilty was because it was the defendant’s decision to plead guilty."

The sister of Brainard-Barnes, Melissa Cann, spoke through tears to her dead sister.

"The promise I made to you so long ago was simple, I would have never stopped searching for justice for you through every year, every setback, every unanswered question," she said. "For every unanswered question I carried you and I kept that promise, and today, it has been done. Justice has finally found its way to you. Your voice was never silenced, your story never forgotten, and your life will always be more than the tragedy that took you. This moment is not the end, but a reminder that loving does prevail and hope never fades, because even in the darkest moments, justice will find a way."

Los Angeles-based victims’ rights advocate and attorney Gloria Allred said the victims, all of whom authorities have said worked as sex workers, "were young mothers just trying to earn a little extra money to support their children, because many did not have the funds to go to college or get a decent job.

"They turned to sex work in order to help their families. It wasn't what they wanted to do, but it was what they felt forced to do because they had no meaningful alternatives," Allred said. "Some wanted to help their parents, their grandparents and their loved ones. Some just wanted to survive in this difficult and challenging world, little did they know that the defendant, Rex Heuermann, did not care about their hopes and dreams, or that they had families and friends who loved them. He appeared to care only for himself and executing what he though was his birthright for murder."

Heuermann’s defense attorney Michael J. Brown said a series of legal setbacks for the defense — including the judge’s ruling allowing advanced DNA analysis to be submitted as evidence against Heuermann and another ruling that denied the defense’s request to hold separate trials — impacted the calculus of going to trial. 

"The judge’s ruling on the Frye hearing was monumental," said Brown, who spoke alongside his co-counsel Danielle Coysh and Chase Brown, who is his son, after Heuermann’s plea. "That’s a big deal."

But, he said, it was Heuermann who led the charge on pleading guilty, saying he had "many concerns" about going to trial.  

"He certainly wanted to save the families of the victims the ordeal of going to trial and coupled with saving his family that ordeal," Brown said. 

Heuermann felt "relief" about making the admissions of his guilt publicly in court Wednesday, said Brown, an event he had prepped his client for.

"I think it was a huge sense of relief for him … I think by admitting it, it’s cathartic in some sense, for sure," Brown said. 

Vergata’s partial remains were found in April 2011 but she was often referred to as "Fire Island Jane Doe" due to the discovery of additional remains there 15 years earlier. She was killed in 1996. 

The Gilgo Beach Homicide Task Force, whose investigation led to four indictments charging Heuermann in the first seven deaths, publicly identified Vergata in August 2023, less than a month after his arrest.

Her identification was made using investigative DNA techniques that did not exist at the time of her death.

Born on Nov. 4, 1961, Vergata was the second child of Dominic and Ann Vergata. The couple also had a son, Victor, who was four years older than his sister. The family lived in Glen Head.

Vergata had two sons of her own, Gary Doherty, 37, and Eric Doherty, 35, who were adopted two years before her death as Vergata struggled with addiction, the family previously told Newsday.

Vergata, who like the other victims was a known sex worker, last had contact with her father on Valentine’s Day 1996. Her legs were discovered in a plastic garbage bag by two brothers taking a walk near the Davis Park community two months later.

Of the Gilgo Beach victims, three other cases have not been connected to Heuermann.

Andrew Dykes, a Florida man, pleaded not guilty in Nassau County Court to killing Tanya Jackson, who had been known only as "Peaches" to investigators because of a tattoo of the fruit on her torso until she was finally identified using familial DNA, and her toddler daughter Tatiana Dykes. Investigators say Andrew Dykes was Tatiana’s father and DNA evidence linked him to the crime.

Authorities are still working to identify the remains of an Asian man that were discovered in 2011 near Ocean Parkway.

The case began in May 2010, when Shannan Gilbert, a sex worker from Jersey City, went missing in the barrier island community of Oak Beach, after fleeing the house of a client. In a panicked 911 call, she said people were after her.

While searching for Gilbert that December, Suffolk police found the first remains in what would lead them to the discovery of four women — dubbed the "Gilgo Four." Gilbert’s remains were eventually found in December 2011 in a marsh. Police said she died from drowning in an accidental death. 

For years, the killings remained unsolved. The district attorney’s office and police department, under earlier leadership, were publicly at odds over the investigation with dueling theories of how many killers had committed the crimes. 

Tierney addressed that painful past, including allegations the police investigation was not a priority because the victims were sex workers, on Wednesday. 

"I think there was a stain on Suffolk County and the families," Tierney said. "I think that has been eliminated, well lessened. It’s still there, but it’s lessened."

The district attorney continued: "Anytime you have eight young ladies get murdered and it goes unsolved … Suffolk County residents felt it. Suffolk County government felt it, law enforcement, the families felt it. We were able to at least bring closure. The pain, that injury is till there, but at least we’ve been able to assuage it a little bit."

The investigation into the Gilgo killings took a decisive turn in March 2022, when Heuermann emerged as a suspect.

The state police investigator assigned to the Gilgo Beach Homicide Task Force, reexamining the case file, discovered that victim Costello had been picked up by a man driving a green Chevrolet Avalanche on the night she disappeared.

From there, the investigation began to close in on Heuermann, who had driven such a vehicle and lived and worked in the areas where phone calls had been placed to victims.

A multiagency task force — drawing from the Suffolk County Police Department, New York State Police, FBI, Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office and Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office — deployed a sweeping array of forensic and surveillance tools. Investigators traced burner phones, mapped movements through cell site data, and conducted advanced DNA testing on hair recovered from the victims’ remains. They also placed Heuermann under surveillance, eventually collecting his DNA from a discarded pizza crust he threw away in Manhattan, according to court filings.

At the same time, prosecutors say, a portrait of his private behavior emerged. His internet search history revealed he viewed torture pornography and followed developments in the investigation closely.

By the summer of 2023, authorities believed they had enough to act — and reason to move quickly.

Heuermann was arrested on July 13, 2023, as he walked away from his Manhattan office, and he was arraigned the next day on an initial indictment. The investigation, however, was far from over. Prosecutors have said the timing of the arrest was driven in part by concern he was still soliciting sex workers and might attack again.

The initial charges accused Heuermann of first- and second-degree murder in the deaths of Costello, Barthelemy and Waterman. Months later, in January 2024, a special grand jury added a fourth victim: Brainard-Barnes.

That indictment, prosecutors said, answered the long-standing question of who killed the "Gilgo Four," the women whose remains were discovered in December 2010 along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach. The women had been bound, their skeletal remains found without clothing, and were believed to have been killed between 2007 and 2010 — during times when Heuermann’s then-wife Ellerup and children were away on vacation, leaving him alone at home.

As Heuermann remained in custody at the Suffolk County jail in Riverhead, the case against him continued to expand.

Over the next two years prosecutors brought additional indictments,  with three more charges of second-degree murder. These accusations pushed the timeline of the alleged killings back more than a decade and widened their geographic scope, while also pointing to what investigators described as an evolution in method.

Two of those victims, Mack in 2000 and Taylor in 2003, were found dismembered, their remains left both along Ocean Parkway and in the wooded expanse of Manorville, roughly 40 miles away.

A third, Costilla, had been discovered even earlier — in 1993 — in the Southampton hamlet of North Sea, her body bearing sharp-force injuries. Prosecutors have said all three women were killed while Heuermann was alone in the Massapequa Park home he shared with his family, and that the killings likely took place in the basement.

On Wednesday, Tierney vowed his office would continue to find answers to unsolved homicides.

"There are still bodies on that beach," Tierney said. "There are still bodies in Suffolk County. There's no rest for the weary. We are going to continue to work with our partners and try to obtain hope for as many families as we can."