NEED TO KNOW
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Gilgo Beach killer Rex Heuermann, 62, was sentenced on June 17
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Heuermann admitted to killing eight women: Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Costello, Jessica Taylor, Valerie Mack, Sandra Costilla and Karen Vergata
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The series of long-unsolved crimes became known as the Gilgo Beach killings and terrorized Long Island for decades
Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann was sentenced Wednesday, June 17, to three consecutive life prison terms without the possibility of parole and 100 years to life for the murders of seven women between 1993 and 2010.
Judge Timothy Mazzei asked Heuermann whether he was sorry for what he had done to his eight victims.
“You’re a disgusting, small man,” Mazzei told Heuermann. “If you’re a man at all.”
“And you’re a coward,” the judge shouted. The judge then ordered court officers to remove Heuermann from the courtroom. As he was led away, some of the victims’ families erupted in applause and chanted “ogre.”
Before the judge issued the sentence inside a packed Riverhead courtroom, Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said there is nothing Heuermann could say or do that could mitigate what he has taken from his victims and their families.
“I have no doubt this defendant is sorry,” Tierney said. “He is sorry he got caught.” He went on to describe Heuermann as a remorseless and sadistic serial killer who only cares about himself.
Heuermann, 62, pleaded guilty to killing seven women during a hearing in April. He said he had strangled the women and dismembered some of them before dumping their bodies, most of them near Gilgo Beach on Long Island’s south shore.
Heuermann was charged with first-degree murder in the killings of Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello, who were killed within two years of one another. He received a sentence of life without parole for each of those killings.
He also received consecutive sentences of 25 years to life imprisonment for second-degree murder in the killings of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Jessica Taylor, Sandra Costilla and Valerie Mack.
As part of his plea agreement, Heuermann also admitted to 1996 killing of Karen Vergata, whose death he was never charged for.
Most of the women’s remains were found at or near Gilgo Beach on the South Shore of Long Island.
Credit: findagrave.com; Barthelemy family; Suffolk County Police Department/Handout
Credit: Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office; Netflix; Suffolk County Police Department
Before he was sentenced Wednesday, more than a dozen of his victims’ loved ones delivered victim impact statements.
Heuermann’s ex-wife, Asa Ellerup, who filed for divorce after his July 2023 arrest, and their daughter, Victoria, did not attend the hearing. Ellerup said last week through her attorney that she believed the sentencing “should be centered on the victims, their families, and the profound impact these crimes have had on their lives.”
The remains of Barthelemy, Waterman, Brainard-Barnes and Costello — who became known as the Gilgo Four — were discovered at Gilgo Beach in 2010 during a search for a missing sex worker, Shannan Gilbert. The Gilgo Four had worked as escorts before disappearing between 2007 and 2010. The bodies of Taylor, Vergata and Mack were discovered nearby in 2011.
Costilla’s remains had been discovered in 1993 by hunters in Southampton, more than 60 miles away.
The case went cold before a new task force was formed in 2022. An investigator on the task force identified Heuermann as a suspect by connecting a distinct green Chevrolet Avalanche pickup truck registered to him with a vehicle a witness reported seeing parked in one of the murdered women’s driveways. Investigators built a massive case against him that included forensic evidence, cell phone records and burner phones and his internet activity, which prosecutors said showed he monitored the investigation and the Gilgo Beach victims.
Heuermann, a former architect and father of two from Massapequa Park, was later linked to the killings through DNA evidence, including material recovered from a pizza crust he threw away in Manhattan, as well as hairs found on some of the victims. He was arrested in Manhattan in July 2023 and has remained in custody since.
