Asa Ellerup, the ex-wife of confessed Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann, told a Peacock docuseries that she moved into the gutted basement room where her former husband admitted killing and dismembering seven of his eight known victims. The revelation, which aired in the latest episode of "The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets," adds a grim new chapter to a case that has haunted Long Island for more than three decades.
Ellerup described the room in their Massapequa Park home in stark terms, as Fox News Digital reported:
"The brutal truth is that Rex Heuermann said he dismembered the bodies in this room. That is the brutal truth. OK. Now. There's me. I'm in this room. And I'm here because I do feel spiritual. I am trying to say spiritually, in my own way, that I am really sorry for what these victims went through."
That a woman would choose to sleep in the very space where her ex-husband confessed to dismembering murder victims raises questions that no docuseries can fully answer. But the facts of the case, and the timeline of what Ellerup says she knew, and when, deserve a clear accounting.
On April 8, Heuermann, a 62-year-old former New York City architect, pleaded guilty in Suffolk County Court in Riverhead, N.Y., to the murders of seven women: Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, Amber Costello, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Jessica Taylor, Sandra Costilla, and Valerie Mack. He also confessed to an eighth, uncharged murder, that of Karen Vergata.
All eight killings took place between 1993 and 2010. Each victim had been strangled. Some were tortured. Three were dismembered. Their remains were found scattered throughout Long Island, most along Ocean Parkway east of Gilgo Beach, roughly 45 miles outside New York City.
Heuermann had maintained his innocence for nearly three years after his arrest outside his midtown Manhattan office in July 2023. A trial had been set for September. Then came the guilty plea that ended decades of evasion.
Sandra Costilla was the first known victim, found in the Hamptons less than 48 hours after her disappearance in late November 1993. She was also the only one Heuermann did not kill inside the Massapequa Park home. A source close to the family told Fox News Digital that Costilla was killed in a vehicle, which police recovered in Pennsylvania decades later.
Ellerup said in the docuseries that Heuermann confessed his crimes to her privately ahead of his change-of-plea hearing. She described visiting him 12 times after that confession, a striking detail that suggests she sought something beyond closure.
Her attorney, Bob Macedonio, told Fox News Digital that Ellerup is still struggling to reconcile the man she married with the man who strangled, tortured, and dismembered women in their shared home over three decades:
"Not so much in the sense that she wants to know Rex the serial killer, she wants to know that side of Rex and also get to know herself and how she missed all this in 30 years. She wants to know herself, not so much who Rex is."
Ellerup herself put it more directly. She said she wants to understand "why Rex killed these women, what his triggers were," adding: "I'm processing the information in a very different way. Because now I see the evil in him."
That processing apparently includes sleeping in the room where the worst of it happened. The New York Post reported that Ellerup moved into the now-gutted basement room roughly a month before her ex-husband entered his guilty plea. She told the docuseries that the nightmares have not stopped.
"Every night that I go to bed and go to sleep, I am haunted by dreams. It will never go away. It will follow me for the rest of my life. It will never be any justice for anyone, and there will never be any way to forget about this."
The Gilgo Beach investigation traces back to 2010, when Shannan Gilbert, a 23-year-old woman, vanished after leaving a home in Oak Beach. Gilbert had placed numerous 911 calls, sounding heavily inebriated and begging for help. Suffolk County police have publicly described her death as an accidental drowning.
But the search for Gilbert turned up something far worse: the remains of 10 other people. Seven of those victims are now among the eight Heuermann has admitted to killing. The discovery transformed a missing-person case into one of the most significant serial-murder investigations in modern American history.
As previously reported, Heuermann told Ellerup that all but one of the victims were killed inside their Long Island home, a home where the couple raised a family, where neighbors saw nothing, and where law enforcement apparently found no cause for suspicion until DNA and digital evidence cracked the case open decades later.
The forensic work that eventually identified Heuermann has drawn attention well beyond Long Island. The same investigative techniques have been eyed in other cold-case investigations, underscoring how far behind law enforcement fell in this case before technology caught up.
Macedonio issued a formal statement on behalf of Ellerup and the family, asking that the public keep its focus where it belongs:
"This has been an extremely emotional and painful process for the family to endure and come to terms with the allegations that Rex Heuermann was the Gilgo Beach serial killer. Ms. Ellerup would like the focus to remain where it belongs, on the victims and their families, who have suffered immeasurable and lasting losses."
That is a reasonable request. But it sits uneasily next to the decision to participate in a streaming docuseries that places Ellerup, not the victims, at the center of the narrative. Telling a national audience that you sleep in the room where your ex-husband dismembered women is not an act of quiet grief. It is a public performance, whatever the motive.
The victims themselves have no platform. Barthelemy, Waterman, Costello, Brainard-Barnes, Taylor, Costilla, Mack, and Vergata cannot describe what happened to them in that basement. Their families have waited years, in some cases, decades, for answers that came only when Heuermann finally stopped lying.
The broader investigation has also touched other deaths discovered during the original search. The deaths of 26-year-old Tanya Jackson and her 2-year-old daughter, Tatiana Dykes, have been blamed on a Florida man, Andrew Dykes, who was arrested last year. Dykes has pleaded not guilty and is due back in court in Nassau County.
Those cases are a reminder that the Gilgo Beach investigation uncovered not just one predator but a landscape of violence against vulnerable people on Long Island, violence that went undetected or uninvestigated for far too long. Similar patterns of long-delayed justice have surfaced in other serial-murder cases across the country.
Several questions hang over this case even after the guilty plea. Heuermann had been charged with seven murders but admitted to eight. Why was the Karen Vergata killing never formally charged? What specific evidence led investigators to connect him to Costilla, whose murder predated the others by years and occurred in a different location? And what, exactly, did Ellerup see or not see across 30 years of marriage to a man who was strangling, torturing, and dismembering women in their home?
Macedonio's framing, that Ellerup wants to understand herself and how she missed it all, is one answer. Whether it is a sufficient one is a question the families of eight dead women might answer differently.
The criminal justice system took more than 30 years to hold Rex Heuermann accountable. The victims' families lived with that failure every day. Ellerup says she is haunted, too. But she chose to move into that basement. They never had a choice at all.
