RIVERHEAD, N.Y. — A former architect admitted Wednesday to having killed eight women and dumping their bodies in Long Island's Gilgo Beach, more than a decade after the discovery of human remains sent shock waves through the New York City suburb and captivated the nation.
Rex Heuermann, 62, changed his plea at an appearance in Suffolk County Court on Wednesday in connection with seven murders over 17 years. He also admitted that he intentionally caused the death of an eighth woman, Karen Vergata, who disappeared in 1996.
As part of the plea deal, Heuermann will not be charged with Vergata's currently uncharged murder. In court, he admitted to meeting all eight women, strangling them and dumping their bodies where they were found across Gilgo Beach, Manorville and Southampton.
Heuermann also agreed to cooperate with the FBI as a part of the plea agreement.
Heuermann is expected to be sentenced to life in prison without parole, three consecutive life sentences, followed by four sentences of 25 years to life. His sentencing is set for June 17.
Heuermann’s former wife, Asa Ellerup, and their daughter were seated in the last row of the packed courtroom during the roughly 30-minute hearing. It came just five months before Heuermann was set to stand trial, where he was facing a sentence of life in prison without parole if he were convicted.
At a news conference after the hearing, Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney apologized to the families of the victims and commended the authorities who ultimately caught Heuermann.
"He thought that by killing them he could silence them forever and get away with murder," Tierney said of Heuermann, who he said tried to present himself as the "harmless father next door." "But he was wrong."
For Subscribers: Inside the Gilgo Beach killer's guilty plea
The news conference was held in the gymnasium at the Suffolk County Police Academy, a space large enough to hold several hundred people in attendance: dozens of the victims’ family members, law enforcement officers and officials, journalists.
Heuermann's defense attorney, Michael Brown, told reporters outside court that his client's decision to plead guilty was a "sense of relief for him."
"When you have that type of — in your head, and on your body — I think by admitting it, it's cathartic to some extent," Brown said
Brown said Heuermann, who maintained his innocence since he was arrested in 2023, will not provide details of how he committed the crimes at the sentencing hearing. Asked whether his client has expressed remorse, Brown said Heuermann is likely to have something to say in court June 17.
"He certainly wanted to save the families of the victims the ordeal of going to trial, coupled with saving his family from that," Brown said, noting that there were ongoing conversations between Heuermann and his family about avoiding a trial.
Ellerup and her attorney briefly addressed reporters outside the courthouse, offering condolences for the victims' families and asking for privacy.
"My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families," Ellerup said. "Their loss is immeasurable, and the focus should be on them at this time in the moment."
Family members of the victims also spoke to reporters after the hearing.
Melissa Cann, the sister of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, said there is "finally a sense of relief."
"Today is not about the person responsible. Today is about the women’s lives who were stolen, about their voices, their future, their families. They are the reason we are here," Cann said.
Brainard-Barnes was “carried in every breath, every journey, every fight for answers,” she said.
Cann also spoke directly to other family members going through something similar: “Keep going. Your loved ones matter. They are not forgotten, and one day answers can come.”
Authorities say that between 2010 and 2011, 11 sets of human remains, most of which were those of sex workers, were found along a beachside parkway in Gilgo Beach, a small oceanfront neighborhood on Long Island’s southern shore. They do not believe all the killings are connected to one person.
Shannan Gilbert disappeared in May 2010, sparking the search that led to the recovery of those human remains — but Heuermann is not charged with her killing.
Before she vanished, Gilbert, a 24-year-old sex worker, placed a 911 call from the Oak Beach home of one of her clients and then knocked on the door of a neighbor — Gus Coletti — before she ran away and down the street.
Coletti's daughter, Eileen Coletti Edwards, who was outside the courtroom Wednesday morning, said that it was "quite the feeling" and that she has been following the case since it began.
“I wanted to support the families of the victims, for one thing," said Edwards, 64.
Heuermann — who lived in Massapequa Park, a middle-class suburb roughly an hour east of Manhattan — was initially charged in 2023 in the deaths of Melissa Barthelemy, 24, Megan Waterman, 22, and Amber Costello, 27. The women disappeared in 2009 and 2010.
All three women were among the "Gilgo Four," a group of sex workers whose bodies were found in Gilgo Beach in 2010. Their bodies were bound at the head, midsection and legs by burlap.
In 2024, Heuermann was charged with killing the fourth woman of the "Gilgo Four," Brainard-Barnes, 25. He was later charged with killing three more women whose remains were found on the beach parkway: Jessica Taylor, 20, who disappeared in July 2003; Sandra Costilla, 28, whose remains were found in Southampton in 1993; and Valerie Mack, 24, who disappeared in 2000.
In court Wednesday, Heuermann admitted strangling all seven women to death and dumping their bodies along Gilgo Beach and having used burner phones to contact them.
As for Barthelemy, Waterman and Costello, Heuermann said that he bound them all the same way — by wrapping them in burlap — and that he agreed to offer them money before they met up.
John Ray, an attorney for Valerie Mack's son, previously told NBC News that his client was "cautiously awaiting the facts" about the plea deal. He added that if a deal were struck, much would depend on the information presented during a potential allocution, a pre-sentencing statement by a defendant who has been found guilty.
"If the full facts do not come out, make no mistake, we are going to pursue this," he said. "It’s not over."
Gloria Allred, who is representing most of the families, previously declined to comment on Heuermann’s plea change.
The serial killings have long rocked Long Island, an expansive and densely populated suburb that stretches roughly 100 miles east of New York City from Queens to the Hamptons.
In the years immediately after the remains were discovered nearly two decades ago, authorities came up empty-handed for suspects.
Tierney, the district attorney, reopened the cases in 2022, breathing new life into the investigation. The same year, authorities zeroed in on a Chevrolet Avalanche registered to Heuermann, which was flagged in an old witness' tip about Costello's disappearance.
Authorities also used a trove of cellphone evidence to pinpoint the crimes to a suspect who lives in the neighborhood, where Heuermann lived with his wife and two adult children, and commutes to Manhattan. They said they discovered that burner phones that Heuermann used to contact victims pinged at cellphone towers in both locations. Heuermann discarded the burner phones after he killed the women, authorities said.
Officials also used DNA evidence from a discarded pizza crust found in a midtown Manhattan garbage can to build their case against Heuermann.
Heuermann was arrested in July 2023. Surveillance video showed Heuermann being surrounded by several law enforcement officials in dark suits on the streets of midtown Manhattan, where he worked, during evening rush hour.
"Rex Heuermann is a demon that walks amongst us, a predator that ruined families," Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison said when he was arrested.
Authorities say his then-wife, Ellerup, was always out of town on the nights of the killings. The pair divorced after he was arrested.
CORRECTION (April 8, 2026, 1 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misspelled the last name of Heuermann’s eighth victim. She was Karen Vergata, not Bragata.
