Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann admitted Wednesday that he strangled and dismembered eight sex workers then dumped their remains along desolate stretches of Long Island.
The Manhattan architect and Massapequa Park schlub’s chilling guilty plea includes the slayings of seven women he had been charged with killing since 1993 — and an eighth victim newly linked to him.
The victims’ relatives gasped in Suffolk County Court as the notorious killer repeatedly answered, “Strangulation,” when asked how he murdered each of the women.
He displayed no emotion as prosecutors went down the list. Heuermann also confessed that he dismembered the women and tied them up in burlap, bringing his daughter, Victoria, to tears inside the Riverhead courtroom.
“He will serve three consecutive life sentences with no chance of parole,” prosecutors said. The gruesome confession brings an end to a heartbreaking saga that has haunted Long Island for three decades.
Heuermann, 62, admitted he murdered Amber Lynn Costello, Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy, and Maureen Brainard-Barnes, who were famously known as the “Gilgo Four” — as well as Valerie Mack, Jessica Taylor, and Sandra Costilla, the first victim killed in 1993.
The married father of two also copped to killing Karen Vergata, whose 1996 murder had not previously been linked to him.
Heuermann, who was arrested in 2023, will be sentenced on June 17.
“You know, the regular guy who goes to work, has kids in the local school and in a good neighbourhood, but he’s
killing people on the side,” a neighbour told NBC News about Heuermann in 2023.
Suffolk County prosecutors on Wednesday released stomach-turning details of each of the killings, which show the Massapequa Park monster struck every few years.
The first murder was in November 1993, when Heuermann picked up Costilla, strangled her and dumped her body near Fish Cove Road in Southampton, where she was discovered by hunters just days later.
He struck again in April 1996, when he arranged to meet Vergata, strangled her, then cut up and scattered her remains.
Vergata’s legs were found on Blue Point Beach later that month, but her skull wasn’t discovered until April 12, 2011, on Ocean Parkway, not far from the Gilgo Beach victims.
The 34-year-old mum was only identified as Jane Doe No. 7 until a DNA test revealed her true name in 2023.
Heuermann’s next victim was Mack, who disappeared between September and November 2000. Prosecutors said the killer dismembered her body and dumped the remains on Gilgo Beach and in a wooded area in Manorville.
Her body was found during a police search of Gilgo in 2011.
In July 2003, the architect strangled Taylor, again dismembering the body and using the same two dump sites on Gilgo Beach and in Manorville, where she was found in 2011.
Heuermann used a burner phone to arrange a rendezvous with the next victim, Brianard-Barnes, in July 2007. Prosecutors said the body was “secured” with three belts and left on Gilgo Beach, where she was found in December 2010.
In July 2009, he used another burner phone to arrange a date with Barthelemy, strangling her to death, wrapping her body with tape and burlap, and dumping her on Gilgo Beach.
Her remains were found during the 2010 search of the beach.
Waterman became the seventh victim in June 2010, when Heuermann picked her up at a Hauppauge Holiday Inn, killed her, and left her on Gilgo Beach taped up in burlap.
Waterman’s body was found six months later.
Costello was the serial killer’s last victim. He picked her up in West Babylon in September 2010, later leaving the body also wrapped and tape and burlap on Gilgo Beach, where she was found on the north side of Ocean Parkway that December, prosecutors said.
The slayings remained a chilling mystery until 2022, when Suffolk County cops reopened the case and busted Heuermann outside his Manhattan office the following year.
Clever police work and cutting-edge DNA evidence helped take down the ogre-like, alleged serial killer, whose arrest has spawned real-crime documentaries and led to unprecedented media attention.
Suffolk investigators even scraped DNA from a used pizza box Heuermann tossed into a Big Apple trash can to help crack the cold case.
Since his arrest, sickening details have emerged.
Prosecutors said he killed all of the women in the basement of his home, which appears to be in squalid conditions compared to other houses in the pristine Nassau neighbourhood.
His family — including his longtime wife — has claimed they had no idea what Heuermann was allegedly doing in his spare time.
He also kept a Tinder account and buzzed prostitutes on burner phones more than 500 times, prosecutors revealed in March. Heuermann made “significant searches for pornography related to bindings, torture, rape, snuff videos, crying, bruised and impaled women and/or girls,” according to prosecutors.
Heuermann had long maintained his innocence as his defence team tried to contest DNA evidence and point to other potential suspects.
Now it appears his fight for freedom will end on Wednesday.
Though a source pointed out to The Post, “The end to this is he dies in prison.”
This article originally appeared in The NY Post and was reproduced with permission.
