Rex Heuermann admits to killing 8 women in New York state

A Manhattan-based designer who led a arcanum lifetime as a series slayer pleaded guilty on Wednesday to murdering seven women and admitted to killing 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 and victims' relatives, some of whom wept as he detailed his crimes for the court.

His guilty pleas bring finality to a case that bedevilled investigators and agonized victims' relatives and was tracked online for years by ardent true-crime readers.

Heuermann, who lived in Long Island, 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.

He faces life in prison and will be sentenced at a later date.

The Gilgo Beach investigation began in earnest in late 2010, after police found numerous sets of human remains along a remote beach highway on Long Island's South Shore. Those remains were sparked by a search for Shannan Gilbert, a sex worker whose death at Gilgo Beach was ultimately ruled by Suffolk County officials to be an accidental drowning.

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.

Heuermann pleaded guilty to those killings as well as admitting to transporting the body of Karen Vergata. Vergata's remains were discovered in two different locations, several kilometres and 15 years apart.

The disappearances have been the subject of numerous true crime shows and documentaries. Robert Kolker's 2013 book about several of the missing women, Lost Girls, served as the basis for a Netflix movie seven years later starring Amy Ryan, Gabriel Byrne and Lola Kirke.

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.

After the truck discovery, a grand jury authorized more than 300 subpoenas and search warrants, allowing the task force to dig into 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 he had viewed violent torture pornography and exhibited an intense interest in the Gilgo Beach killings and the renewed investigation. Cellphone 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 to near his architectural consulting firm in Manhattan, where he worked, and watched as he threw partially eaten pizza crusts into a sidewalk garbage can.

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. Heuermann was arrested in July 2023.

After his 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, making his defence more challenging.

Media and members of the public packed the courtroom on Wednesday morning. 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."

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