AN attorney for a woman found dead near Gilgo Beach has said he fears there are far more victims of accused Long Island Serial Killer Rex Heuermann that have yet to be discovered – both dead and alive.

John Ray, a lawyer who represents the family of Shannan Gilbert, held a press conference with Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney K. Harrison last week, in which he claimed to have unearthed evidence linking Heuermann to Gilbert and another sex worker, Karen Vergata, who was murdered and dismembered in 1996.

It was the disappearance of Shannan Gilbert in May 2010 that commenced the Gilgo Beach murder investigation. She vanished after making a frantic 911 call in which she claimed someone was trying to kill her.

During a search for the 23-year-old along a desolate stretch of beachfront parkway in late 2010, investigators would discover the concealed and bound remains of four other missing women: Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Lynn Costello, and Megan Waterman.

Six other sets of remains would be found by the end of 2011, including Gilbert, who was found in a marsh in another beach community a short drive from Gilgo.

Unlike the Gilgo Four, police ruled Gilbert’s death was not a homicide and was in fact accidental; the result of a drowning caused by excessive drug consumption.

But her family and Ray have long rejected that notion, pointing to her 911 call as evidence her life was in danger moments before she disappeared.

For the better part of a decade, Ray has been campaigning for police to reopen the investigation into her death, insisting an independent autopsy showed signs of possible strangulation and alleging a cover-up within the Suffolk County ranks.

Heuermann was arrested in July and has been charged with the murders of Barthelemy, Costello, and Waterman. He is also the prime suspect in the murder of Brainard-Barnes, and investigators say that charges will be forthcoming soon.

The U.S. Sun was first to reveal last month that, additionally, Rex is being investigated in connection with the murder of Carmen Vargas, another sex worker strangled and discarded at the side of a road in Freeport, New York, in 1989.

Suffolk County cops are now looking into possible links between Heuermann and Vergata and Gilbert, following new tips yielded independently by Ray.

One of the tips came from a self-identified swinger who apparently attended a sex party at Heuermann’s home with her NYPD cop lover and a sex worker named Karen – believed to be Vergata – in February 1996, around the time she’s believed to have been killed.

The second concerns a cab driver who believes she had two run-ins with Heuermann, including one incident in 2009, where she claims to have picked up a crying Gilbert from a motel that she had been “lured to,” allegedly by Heuermann.

Commissioner Harrison promised to leave no stone unturned as they continue their investigation into Heuermann’s alleged sordid past, but Ray believes investigators are only currently at the tip of the iceberg.

“There are probably other murders, and victims in other places for which he is responsible that we just haven’t found yet,” said Ray to The U.S. Sun.

“How many? I don’t know. There’s no real way to know, and there’s probably a very high possibility that there were others who were abused but weren’t killed, who were terrorized by him or people he was connected to.

“They may be sex workers or former swingers who are in a much better position now than they were before, so if they came forward now they’d be ashamed and humiliated.

“And that’s a problem when you go to the police,” added Ray. “So even now, if you’re a former sex worker and have children but don’t want them to know what you did for a living, the police may still expose you, in records or whatever.

“I never reveal names without the person’s permission, but with the police, it’s a different game […] and I bet there’s a lot of people out there who did interact with him but are scared to be identified.”

‘INVESTIGATE HIS WIFE’

None of the four witnesses cited by Ray during his press conference have been named.

Two provided sworn affidavits and two did not.

Of the latter, one ex-sex worker claims that she “serviced” Heuermann upwards of 20 times and called him a serial user of prostitutes.

“He would sometimes have them come two at a time to his house and his wife was home, upstairs,” Ray says the witness told him.

A fourth witness, from Oklahoma, claims she was picked up by Heuermann in Queens, New York City. 

He allegedly took her into a park in Flushing and kept her head down in the car to perform oral sex on him, before telling her “get out the car or I’m going to kill you,” while pointing a pistol in her direction.

Ray said last week that this was evidence that Heuermann was someone who “haunts and hunts” sex workers.   

He believes Gilbert and Vergata could be among his additional victims, and has urged police to take a closer look – a request they’re obliging.

One of two of Ray’s witnesses who provided sworn statements claimed to have shared two disturbing encounters with Heuermann while she was working as a taxi driver in 2010.

In one of the encounters, she was called to a local motel to pick up a woman who had locked herself in the bathroom.

She told Ray she saw Heuermann in the parking lot, and moments later, a woman came out of a room crying.

The cab driver identified the woman as Gilbert, who she then drove to a local train station.

The second witness told him that she had previously encountered Heuermann at a sex club called La Trapeze in Midtown Manhattan, not far from where he worked, in February 1996.

In the witness’ sworn statement, she said Heuermann had posted a flyer on the wall of the club, advertising sexual encounters at his Massapequa Park home.

She and her boyfriend, an NYPD detective, went out to the home with a woman she believes to be Vergata, and inside she allegedly met Heuermann’s wife, Asa Ellerup.

“Karen went downstairs,” the witness wrote. “I stayed upstairs. My partner, who I believe was bisexual, kept disappearing. I believed he was elsewhere in the house, having sex with Rex. I believe I had sex with Rex as well. I never went downstairs.”

The witness claimed to have offered to perform a sex act on Ellerup, but she apparently declined.

The witness said when she and her cop boyfriend – named only as “RW” – left the Heuermann’s home, “The woman I believe to be Karen suddenly ran outside, naked, and ran about by the garage. RW had gone to the back of the house to look for his belt, but he was then back in the car,” she wrote.

“RW told me not to worry about her, that she was OK, they were only playing a game. We left without her. I felt uneasy that we left without the woman.”

Asa Ellerup has not been accused of any wrongdoing by police, but Ray says his witness testimony claiming she was aware of – and possibly complicit in – his sordid sexual exploits warrants police taking a second look at her.

In a press conference shortly after Heuermann’s arrest, investigators said they believe she was out of town when the murders of the Gilgo Four were committed.

Hairs belonging to Ellerup were found on at least three of the women, helping to lead detectives to Heuermann.

But speaking with The U.S. Sun, Ray said he doesn’t see how it’s possible to “ignore or refuse to investigate” Ellerup in light of the purported evidence he’s uncovered.

“She’s certainly in the mix from the evidence we have, certainly as to allowing sex workers serve her husband in her house while she’s there. And this goes on as a serial event over the course of years,” he claimed.

“Then, in that tiny little house, how can sex workers make their way into the basement to be with Rex and the wife not noticing them?

“There’s no way you can go that you wouldn’t notice it. If they walked in around the side of the house to the back, or if they walked into the front door to get downstairs – either way, she would have to have noticed it.

“And it’s not like one person showed up once and this was an isolated event. [Rex] had a serial 27 years of spending a fortune on prostitution in his home.

“And so then, if you take this swinger aspect of it, who’s the wife with Rex? According to what we know, it’s her,” Ray further alleged.

“And so, of course, she’s got to be in the mix. She’s got to be suspect – if she’s not, something’s wrong with the investigation. 

“I don’t know what they’re really doing in the investigation. That’s not necessarily my duty to know. But maybe they are looking into her, but if they aren’t they certainly should be. They can’t avoid that.”

Bob Macedonio, an attorney for Ellerup, has been contacted for comment about Ray’s latest claims.

When The U.S. Sun spoke with Ellerup outside of her home in September, she said she was so disorientated and shocked by her husband’s arrest she didn’t know where she was for days on end.

In a statement after his press conference last week, Macedonio called Ray’s allegations a “desperate attempt to keep himself relevant in a case that has nothing to do with his clients.”

But Ray further alleged that, in his mind, it’s a near impossibility that she didn’t suspect something, at the very least.

“It’s rather like this,” he explained. “You come upon a crash of a car that’s smashed into a pole and bashed in and nobody’s in the car.

“You don’t say: ‘Ah, that means that there was no driver.’

“What you conclude is there was a driver and if you recognize the car you likely know who that driver was.

“That’s what we have here, in my opinion.”

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Ray shared the two sworn witness statements with the media following his press conference on Wednesday, which was also attended by Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney K. Harrison.

Harrison confirmed police are now interviewing Ray’s sources and two other potential witnesses who have come forward with information they believed to be valuable to the case.

“We have a job here as law enforcement, as Suffolk County Police Department, to make sure we investigate every single complaint or interest in this case, make sure we look under every single stone to see if there is any connection Rex Heuermann or if there is a connection to somebody else that may be involved with the bodies that were discovered on Ocean Parkway,” Harrison said.

“When it comes to Miss Vergata and when it comes to Miss Gilbert are the ones that we are going to take a closer look at and see if they are connected to our defendant.”

MORE VICTIMS?

Karen Vergata, a sex worker, vanished in early 1996, shortly after being released from jail.

Her dismembered remains were found on Fire Island in April of the same year, however, she would not be identified until August 2023.

If accurate, Ray’s witness statement would provide the last-known sighting of her, the attorney said.

“Nobody saw her alive after she left jail in February of 1996, except now the people we’ve mentioned,” Ray said.

“Their recollection is that it occurred around Valentine’s Day, this tryst, and Karen was in jail up until approximately that time.

“We’re not sure if it was exactly Valentine’s Day or just around that time, but she was never seen by anybody after that.”

According to that witness, Asa Ellerup was at the couple’s home when they arrived to partake in Heuermann’s advertised sex party.

On their way to the Massapequa Park property, they picked up a sex worker by the name of “Karen” who was “hungry and homeless,” according to the affidavit.

The witness said that Vergata went downstairs and that Heuermann and her boyfriend vanished for a while.

During that time, she spoke with Ellerup, who said that Heuermann had “brought her from her country and that everything she had, he has given her,” the affidavit states.

Ellerup also allegedly told the woman that she was “afraid of Rex,” though offered no further reasoning as to why.

After some time, the witness and her boyfriend decided to leave.

The witness says her boyfriend told her Vergata was staying behind to play a “game” with Heuermann.

Suddenly, Vergata was seen looking “scared” and running out of the house naked as the witness was seen leaving with her partner.

The witness claims she saw Heuermann start a fire in what appeared to be a large barrel.

She claims she told her cop lover that she felt uneasy about leaving Vergata behind, but he assured her it was “OK, they were only playing a game,” the statement details.

“We left without her. I felt uneasy that we left without the woman,” stated the witness.

“I saw Rex on TV recently, and a picture of Karen Vergata. I recognized her as the woman who [the police officer] and I brought to Heuermann’s home. 

“I was shocked and deeply sorrowful for having left her behind at Heuermann’s house.”

Ray called the woman’s testimony compelling and shared that he interviewed the 54-year-old three times across a period of nine hours.

She apparently broke down when she saw an image of Vergata when her remains were identified in August, compelling her to come forward about her interactions with the woman and Heuermann.

Vergata’s legs were found in a plastic bag at Davis Park on Fire Island’s Blue Point Beach on April 20, 1996.

Her skull was later found off Ocean Parkway, near Tobay Beach, but her torso and hands have never been recovered.

‘WILLFUL IGNORANCE’

Ray’s second witness identified herself as a single mother and female banker who moonlighted as a taxi driver to support her family.

In the fall of 2009, the witness says she was dispatched to the Sayville Motor Loge – a motel that was a known sex-worker hotspot – to pick up a female passenger who had “locked herself in the bathroom.”

When the witness arrived, she said she waited several minutes before a “very large man” ran out of the motel room wearing a camouflage jacket, and tried to cover his face with his arms.

She now recognizes that man to be Heuermann, the affidavit states.

A woman, who she believes to be Shannan Gilbert, then entered her car, “crying and shaking.”

“She entered my taxi, she said that we had to get away from there. I noticed that one of her eyes had something defective about it, that it appeared to droop,” wrote the witness, describing a known characteristic of Gilbert’s.

“Her hair was pulled back neatly like a ballerina would have done. She wore jeans and a shirt. She was not dressed provocatively. She said that she was glad that she had gotten me as a driver.”

During the journey, the passenger told the witness she’d been lured to the motel by a man for a job.

When she arrived, the man had apparently handed her an envelope with scraps of paper inside instead of money.

She said she realized the woman was Gilbert after seeing her on the news years later.

The witness claimed to have shared a second encounter with Heuermann later that October after she picked him up from a bar off Exit 59 along the Long Island Expressway.

When he got in the taxi, he told her they were going for a “long ride in the woods” and said they needed to pick up a girl “who lived in a car across the street.”

After the witness told Heuermann she wouldn’t take his journey, he allegedly became incensed with her, telling her he “wanted to kill” her – all she needed to do was to give him “a reason to do so.”

“I heard him click a gun,” claims the woman.

Her dispatcher then yelled the words: “You got a gun on my driver, I see you, I got a call in,” and he later left her vehicle, telling her he was a cop in Brooklyn.

The man apparently got out of the car, walked into a nearby wooded area, and shot his gun off two times, per the affidavit.

The witness claimed she reported both of the incidents to police at the time but no further action was taken.

The Gilgo Beach investigation began with the search for Gilbert, who disappeared in 2010 after making a frantic phone call to police in which she claimed someone was trying to kill her.

When her body was found in a marsh that December, Gilbert’s death was ruled an accident.

Police concluded that the 23-year-old had died in a drug-induced drowning.

But Ray believes, unquestionably, that she was the victim of murder.

Referencing Suffolk County PD’s seeming unwillingness to reopen the investigation into Gilbert’s death, Ray accused the department of being wilfully ignorant.

“There’s so much existing evidence that has existed for years that’s been ignored by police – willfully ignored,” he said.

“There’s no reason to continue that willful behavior, so if it does continue, that if this part of the investigation continues to be ignored, then I know problems still exist in the police.

“The police detective mantra is all about evidence, evidence, evidence.

“When it comes to Shannan, the evidence is there, an overwhelming amount of evidence that she died unnaturally compared to the zero evidence suggesting she died from natural causes.”

He continued: “Why would the police conclude that she died of natural causes? It’s absurd that they have not cited a scintilla of evidence to back up their claim.

“I know that there’s a willful ignorance of the evidence and it’s intentional.”

Heuermann has so far been charged with the murders of Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello.

Other police departments around the country – namely in Las Vegas and South Carolina, where he had ties to property – are currently combing back through cold cases in search of a link to Heuermann.

The 60-year-old architect has pleaded not guilty to all charges.