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Asa Ellerup, the now ex-wife of Rex Heuermann, the 61-year-old architect police accuse of being the Gilgo Beach serial killer, is at the center of the gripping three-part documentary The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets, streaming now in full on Peacock.
She has not been charged with any crime. But the question many want answered is whether she knew about the crimes authorities accuse Heuermann of committing. Heuermann has been charged with killing seven women.
Ellerup, who denies all knowledge, is blunt on this subject.
“I don’t believe my husband did this,” she said in the documentary.
Find out more about Ellerup, who’s now speaking out for herself as opposed to through lawyers’ statements for the first time in the three-hour special.
How did Rex Heuermann and Asa Ellerup meet?
Seated inside her Massapequa Park, New York, home, which investigators suspect may have been the site where the gruesome crimes took place, Ellerup recalled how her relationship with Heuermann began.
“I met Rex when I was 18 years old,” Ellerup said. “He was going to college. I was working at 7-Eleven… I was madly in love with the man. There’s no doubt about that. But then I met my first husband and got married.”
When that union soured, Heuermann helped her as she got divorced. In November of 1995, he invited her to move in with him at his Long Island home, and she accepted. “I found out I was pregnant with Rex’s baby,” she said.
They wed in 1996, TODAY.com reported.
“There’s a picture of me, and I’m looking up, going, ‘I finally got it. He’s mine,’” Ellerup said in The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets.
And she was his.
In The Gilgo Beach Killer, various sources including Ellerup’s attorney suggest that Heuermann may have hand-picked her as his spouse. According to authorities, his alleged murder spree had already begun by the time they traded vows.
“I think Rex saw Asa as a weak, emotionally, person that fit the profile he needed to continue this course of conduct,” Robert Macedonio, an attorney for Ellerup, said on The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets. “Somebody that was emotionally stable would have maybe caught on to some of the allegations a lot sooner.”
When was Rex Heuermann arrested?
Since Heuermann was arrested in July of 2023, Ellerup has been closely scrutinized. Four months after he was charged, the then-59-year-old Ellerup attended a court appearance, her first since his arrest and arraignment.
“I really liked seeing him,” she told Macedonio. When her lawyer referred to Heuermann as a “serial murderer” — one who allegedly killed victims when she and their now-adult children, Victoria and Christopher, were away from home — she rejected that notion.
Asa Ellerup doubts charges against Rex Heuermann
“I just don’t see him that way,” Ellerup said. “No, that’s not the Rex I know. So, if they’re going to sit there and tell me that he only did this during these particular time periods that I was away on vacation, I have to question that.”
“I’m sorry. It’s bulls–t,” she later added. “Sorry for my language.”
When the subject of violent torture pornography allegedly being found on Heuermann’s computer hard drive arose, she dismissed it, saying she’s not sure it belonged to him. She referred to the fact that her hair and Victoria’s were tied to a victim as “circumstantial.” Law enforcement does not consider Ellerup or Victoria to be suspects in any of the killings.
Is Rex Heuermann in jail?
Heuermann is currently in custody at the Riverhead Correctional Facility in Suffolk County, New York. His trial date hasn’t been set because lawyers are still arguing about DNA evidence and whether there should be one trial or multiple proceedings. He has pleaded not guilty.
Despite compelling evidence against Heuermann, from torture porn found on his devices to DNA evidence, Ellerup says she remains unswayed in her feelings about him until he has his day in court.
“I’m not gonna believe any of that information until I see it,” she said. “We all have to wait for the court case to play out. Period.”
Moreover, Ellerup insisted that she is not questioning herself about what she could have or should have known about her husband.
“No, I’m not asking myself that question, because I believe that I would know,” she said. “And until I see definite, definitive proof, there’s no way I’m going to know for sure whether or not I saw the signs.”
Asa Ellerup’s lawyer says she doesn’t want “to know the answers”
Macedonio has a theory about Ellerup. “I don’t think she wants to know the answers,” he said, adding that, “She looked at Rex as her savior, her hero from her first marriage, who rescued her and [her son] Christopher.”
Macedonio added that his client may be a victim of Stockholm syndrome, a psychological condition in which hostages develop emotional bonds or sympathy toward their captors.
Is Rex Heuermann’s family moving out of Long Island?
In the documentary, Ellerup is seen packing in preparation to sell her home and move south. “This life in this house is coming to an end,” she said. “It makes me feel like there’s a new beginning. What that life is going to be like, I do not know.”
In her final words in the documentary, Ellerup addressed how she’s lived the past three decades. “I did what I had to do to protect myself and my children,” she said.
