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Rex Heuermann, the alleged Gilgo Beach serial killer, is anticipated to admit guilt in the murders of seven women, potentially bringing closure to a chilling saga that has spanned years.
Victims’ families have reportedly been informed of this unexpected development, according to statements made to Newsday by their relatives.
The 62-year-old, who works as an architect, is slated to revise his plea during his upcoming court session set for April 8.
While specifics of the plea deal remain under wraps, there is still a possibility it could unravel if Heuermann reconsiders or if the prosecutor or judge ultimately rejects the agreement, as reported by Newsday.
Following the news on Thursday, Robert A Macedonio, the lawyer representing Heuermann’s estranged wife Asa Ellerup, told the Daily Mail, “I have no comment on behalf of the family.”
Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney and defense attorney Michael J. Brown have been contacted.
Accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann, 62, is expected to plead guilty
Suffolk County Police conduct a search on December 14, 2010 along Gilgo Beach where four bodies were found
Heuermann was currently charged with seven murders over a two-decade reign of horror running from 1993 to 2011.
The case had haunted the Long Island community for more than a decade, ever since the first of multiple bodies were discovered along Ocean Parkway in December 2010.
No arrests were made for more than a decade.
Then, in July 2023, the Massapequa Park local was dramatically arrested as he left his office in midtown Manhattan.
He was initially charged with the murders of three women: Amber Costello, Melissa Barthelemy and Megan Waterman and then with four more victims: Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Sandra Costilla, Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack.
All the victims were working as sex workers when they vanished after going to meet a client.
Their bodies were found dumped along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach and other remote spots on Long Island.
Some of the victims had been bound, others had been dismembered and their remains discarded in multiple locations.
He had pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him.
The alleged victims clockwise from left: Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Costello, Valerie Mack, Jessica Taylor and Sandra Costilla
Heuermannn poses for one of his Tinder profile pictures
The pizza box that Heuermann discarded and was recovered by investigators, which eventually matched his DNA
Heuermann was first linked to the murders following a tip about a pickup truck.
According to a witness, Costello had disappeared after going to see a client who drove a green Chevy Avalanche in September 2010.
Following the launch of a new taskforce, investigators learned that Heuermann drove that same type of vehicle at the time of the murders, prosecutors say.
He also matched the description of the client seen by the witness.
As well as the DNA evidence, prosecutors said investigators also found a chilling ‘planning document’ on a hard drive in the basement of Heuermann’s family home in Massapequa Park.
In the chilling document, he allegedly had a section detailed ‘PREP’ and noted that ‘small’ women were preferred.
Heuermann has lived his entire life in Massapequa Park and would commute to his architecture job in Midtown Manhattan, where some of the victims worked and were last seen alive.
He was especially familiar with Ocean Parkway, where the victims’ bodies were dumped, thanks to a job he had at Jones Beach in his 20s, according to prosecutors.
Fears that a serial killer or killers were at large on Long Island began back in May 2010, when Shannan Gilbert vanished in bizarre circumstances one night.
The 24-year-old, who was working as an escort, had gone to see a client in the Oak Beach Association community when she made a terrifying 911 call, saying that someone was trying to kill her.
During a search for Gilbert in December 2010, officers came across the body of Barthelemy in the marshes by Gilgo Beach.
Within days, three more bodies – Costello, Brainard-Barnes and Waterman – had been found.
The four victims, who became known as the Gilgo Four, had been dumped within a quarter mile of each other, some of them bound and wrapped in burlap.
Heuermann was arrested in July 2023 by police investigators near his Midtown Manhattan office
The backyard of Rex Heuermann’s home in Massapequa Park during a search in June 2024
Over the following months, the remains of seven other victims were found.
Gilbert’s body was found last. Investigators maintain that she was not a victim, but died by accidental drowning after she fled into the dense thicket that night.
Heuermann has not been charged in connection to the deaths of the other four victims found along Ocean Parkway: Karen Vergata, Tanya Jackson and her two-year-old daughter Tatiana Dykes, and an unidentified victim, known only as ‘Asian Doe.’
Jackson – a US Army veteran – and her infant daughter were finally identified in April 2025 having for years been known only as ‘Peaches’ and ‘Baby Doe.’
Costilla, meanwhile, had never been linked to the Gilgo Beach serial killer case until Heuermann was hit with charges for her murder in 2024.
Her murder expands the timeline that the accused serial killer is alleged to have been actively preying on victims.