RIVERHEAD, N.Y. — A former architect admitted Wednesday to killing 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.
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Rex Heuermann, 62, changed his plea at an appearance in Suffolk County Court on Wednesday in connection with seven murders that occurred over a 17-year period. 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.
Rex Heuermann in court Wednesday.James Carbone / Pool / Newsday
Heuermann is expected to receive a sentence of 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 convicted.
In a press conference after the hearing, Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney apologized to the families of the victims in this case 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 press conference was held in the gymnasium at 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.”
“I think that was a huge sense of relief for him,” Brown said of Heuermann. “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 Heuermann, who maintained his innocence since his 2023 arrest, will not provide details of how he committed the crimes at the sentencing hearing. When asked whether his client has expressed remorse, the lawyer said Heuermann will likely 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 families of the victims 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.”
Also after the hearing on Wednesday, family members of the victims spoke to reporters.
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 continued.
Brainard-Barnes was “carried in every breath, every journey, every fight for answers,” Cann 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, a total of 11 sets of human remains, most of which belonged to 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 went missing in May 2010, and her disappearance sparked the search that led to the recovery of those human remains — but Heuermann is not charged with her killing.
Before she went missing, the 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 running away and down the street.
Coletti’s daughter, Eileen Coletti Edwards, was outside the courtroom Wednesday morning, where she said it was “quite the feeling,” and has been following the case since it began.
“I wanted to support the families of the victims, for one thing,” Edwards, 64, said.
Crime lab officers remove boxes as law enforcement searches the home of Rex Heuermann in Massapequa Park, N.Y., on July 15, 2023.Jeenah Moom / AP file
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,” or 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,” 25-year-old Brainard-Barnes. 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 to strangling all seven women to death, dumping their bodies along Gilgo Beach and having used burner phones to contact the women.
As for Barthelemy, Waterman and Costello, Heuermann said he bound them all the same way — by wrapping them in burlap — and that he agreed to offer them money before meeting 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 is struck, much will depend on the information presented during a potential allocution.
“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 following the discovery of the remains nearly two decades ago, authorities came up empty-handed for suspects.
Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney reopened the cases in 2022, breathing new life into the investigation. That same year, authorities zeroed in on a Chevrolet Avalanche registered to Heuermann, which was flagged in an old witness’s tip about Costello’s disappearance.
Clockwise from top left, Shannan Gilbert, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Melissa Barthelemy, Valerie Mack, Amber Lynn Costello and Megan Waterman. Suffolk County Police
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 burner phones that Heurmann used to contact victims pinged at cellphone towers in both locations. Heuermann discarded the burner phones after killing 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 then arrested in July 2023. Surveillance footage 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 at the time of his arrest.
Authorities say his then-wife, Ellerup, was always out of town on the nights of the killings. The pair divorced after his arrest.
CORRECTION (April 8, 2026, 1:00 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misspelled the last name of Heuermann’s eighth victim. She was Karen Vergata, not Bragata.