The search for missing Shannan Gilbert in 2010 led to the discovery of four women who formed the basis of the Gilgo Beach murders investigation
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A KEY witness who believes they saw a woman found dead on Long Island with accused Gilgo Beach Killer Rex Heuermann before her death is “credible” and provides the first known link to the accused serial murderer, a lawyer working the case says.

Heuermann, 60, was arrested in July and charged with the murders of three slain women who were bound, wrapped in burlap, and discarded along a desolate beachfront parkway in 2010.

The search for missing Shannan Gilbert in 2010 led to the discovery of four women who formed the basis of the Gilgo Beach murders investigation

The search for missing Shannan Gilbert in 2010 led to the discovery of four women who formed the basis of the Gilgo Beach murders investigationCredit: Facebook
Rex Heuermann has been charged in three murders along Gilgo Beach and remains the prime suspect in a fourth

Rex Heuermann has been charged in three murders along Gilgo Beach and remains the prime suspect in a fourthCredit: Reuters
John Ray believes he's uncovered information to link Heuermann to two other slain women, including Shannan Gilbert

John Ray believes he’s uncovered information to link Heuermann to two other slain women, including Shannan GilbertCredit: Pix11

He remains the prime suspect in the death of a fourth woman found in the same area.

Known collectively as the Gilgo Four, each of the women were petite sex workers who advertised their services on Craigslist.

Their remains were discovered within days of each other in late 2010 during the search for another sex worker, Shannan Gilbert, who had vanished in May 2010 after making a frantic 911 call, warning a dispatcher, “they’re trying to kill me.”

Another six bodies would be found in the area by the close of 2011, including Gilbert’s, whose remains were found in December 2011.

Who Shannan was referring to in the call has never been determined. Her death was quickly ruled an accident by investigators in Suffolk County, the result of an apparent drug-induced drowning.

But members of Gilbert’s family and their attorney, John Ray, have long since contested that ruling, believing beyond any doubt the 23-year-old aspiring actress was a victim of murder.

They even funded their own independent autopsy, the results of which apparently showed that Gilbert may have been strangled. However, the findings were ultimately inconclusive.

Repeated public calls from Ray for Suffolk County cops to reopen Shannan’s case have been routinely denied over the last decade.

Then, last week, Ray held an impromptu press conference announcing he had unearthed new information, potentially linking Gilbert to Heuermann for the first time.

The attorney also shared witness testimony appearing to link Heuermann to another slain sex worker, Karen Vergata, whose severed legs were first found on Fire Island in 1996, and her skull and teeth later unearthed near Gilgo Beach in 2011.

Where Shannan is concerned, Ray called the witness linking her to Heuermann as viable and “impressive.”

“She is certainly credible and has no ulterior motive in deciding to have come forward,” said Ray.

“She doesn’t want to be named, she isn’t looking for book deals or movie deals; she’s trying to do what she thinks is the right thing.”

In praising his source, Ray made a slight toward Heuermann’s wife, Asa Ellerup, who was the recent recipient of a $50,000 GoFundMe drive set up by Melissa Moore, the daughter of the infamous Happy Face Killer.

“And she isn’t looking for money, like some others – like Asa Ellerup – are doing,” he continued.

“She didn’t come forward for any of those reasons. And she’s not involved in drugs, she’s not involved in sex work, so she’s a neutral witness and a very, very bright person, so her memory is quite acute.

“And when you take all those factors, and the evidence she’s shared, it’s quite compelling and establishes a potential link between Shannan and an accused serial killer.

“That doesn’t dismiss anything else we’ve discovered about other potential suspects, but it just means that perhaps Heuermann had knowledge of who Shannan Gilbert was.

“And it goes back to Shannan’s phone call, when she said ‘They are trying to kill me.’

“Was more than one person involved in Shannan’s death? There seems to be a good argument for that, yeah.”

THE SHANNAN GILBERT MYSTERY

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

After his press conference last month, he shared two sworn witness statements with the media, detailing Heuermann’s potential ties to the two women in full.

Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison K. pledged to leave no stone unturned in their investigation into Heuermann and confirmed Ray’s sources are now been interviewed by police.

“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.”

The witness in the Gilbert incident identified herself as a single mother and female banker who was moonlighting as a taxi driver in the fall of 2009 to support her family.

It was during that period of time that 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.”

Shannan Gilbert was found dead in December 2011. Her death was ruled accidental

Shannan Gilbert was found dead in December 2011. Her death was ruled accidentalCredit: Suffolk County Police Department
Asa Ellerup told The U.S. Sun in September that she was completely blindsided by her husband's arrest

Asa Ellerup told The U.S. Sun in September that she was completely blindsided by her husband’s arrestCredit: The US SUN
Karen Vergata was named as the seventh LISK victim in August 2023, decades after her remains were found on Fire Island, in 1996

Karen Vergata was named as the seventh LISK victim in August 2023, decades after her remains were found on Fire Island, in 1996Credit: AP

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 by 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.

In light of the new potential lead, Ray said Suffolk County would have to be willfully ignorant not to reopen Shannan’s death investigation.

“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.”

KAREN VERGATA’S ‘LAST SIGHTING’

Karen Vergata, meanwhile, was a sex worker who 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.

Ray’s second witness claimed to have encountered Heuermann at a sex club called La Trapeze in Midtown Manhattan, not far from where he worked, in February 1996.

In the witness’s 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.

Instead, they talked, claims the witness, with Ellerup sharing 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.

11 sets of remains were found along Gilgo between 2010 and 2011

11 sets of remains were found along Gilgo between 2010 and 2011Credit: Reuters
Police are still working to determine whether all the deaths are related

Police are still working to determine whether all the deaths are relatedCredit: AP
John Ray has been urging investigators to investigate Shannan Gilbert's death for more than a decade

John Ray has been urging investigators to investigate Shannan Gilbert’s death for more than a decadeCredit: Getty

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

The witness said as 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.”

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

She recognized Heuermann from the encounter after seeing him and his home plastered all over the news in the wake of his arrest four months ago.

“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.

If accurate, Ray’s witness statement regarding the 1996 encounter 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.”

A different witness, who did not provide an affidavit, claimed that she “serviced” Heuermann more than 20 times and that he was a serial user of sex workers.

“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.

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.”

He added: “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.”

LISK CAUGHT?

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

He is also the prime suspect in the murder of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, and charges in that case are expected to 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.

Other police departments around the country 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.

Heuermann has pleaded not guilty to all charges

Heuermann has pleaded not guilty to all chargesCredit: The Mega Agency
Police are seen outside of his home in July

Police are seen outside of his home in JulyCredit: AP
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