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Gilgo Beach killer Rex Heuermann's guilty plea answered crucial questions while raising new ones...

Rex A. Heuermann, the Massapequa Park architect accused in the Gilgo Beach killings, admitted in court on Wednesday that he murdered eight women, transforming one of Long Island’s most grisly unsolved cases into a rare, sweeping confession.

The guilty plea, covering a nearly two-decade span of killings and including a 1996 slaying for which he was never charged, not only spared victims’ families a trial but answered central questions that lingered for more than 10 years: how he lured the women, where he killed them and how he left their bodies along Ocean Parkway. It also closed one chapter of the investigation while leaving others unresolved, including whether Heuermann is tied to additional deaths.

Heuermann’s admissions filled in crucial gaps in the case, while raising new questions.

Here are eight things we learned this week:

Agreement was months in the making
While news of Heuermann’s willingness to plead guilty broke in late March, his desire to admit to the killings developed much closer to September, officials said in the aftermath of Wednesday’s hearing.

Suffolk District Attorney Ray Tierney said the defense first approached prosecutors about a potential guilty plea shortly after State Supreme Court Justice Timothy P. Mazzei issued his Sept. 3 decision allowing nuclear DNA evidence to be presented at trial.

"It all came together rather quickly," the district attorney told Newsday in an interview hours after the plea was accepted.

Defense attorney Michael J. Brown, of Central Islip, declined to give a time frame for the plea but acknowledged the judge’s decision regarding DNA was "monumental" and helped lead his client to change his mind.

"We then pivoted and did our best to protect his interest," Brown said.

Decision was all his
Co-counsel Danielle Coysh told Newsday the Heuermann defense team remained prepared to go to trial, but as his attorneys were "bound to honor his decision" to change his plea.

That meant dropping a pretrial motion seeking to suppress certain evidence, including a challenge of investigators’ use of discarded personal items, like an uneaten pizza crust, to obtain DNA evidence.

"We believe there are significant issues, some limited to this case and some with broader impact, that would be properly addressed at trial," Coysh said.

Once Heuermann made up his mind, that was no longer a possibility. "He controls his case and that’s his prerogative," Brown said.

"King for a Day" deal
When Heuermann stood across from Tierney and admitted killing Karen Vergata, whose death was never charged, that wasn’t the first time he was acknowledging that to prosecutors.

Tierney said Heuermann previously entered into a proffer agreement with the government. Sometimes referred to as a "King for a Day" deal, proffers in a criminal case allow a suspect to provide investigators information about a crime with limited, temporary immunity.

"Once that happened we began to think that certainly a plea might occur, but you never know," Tierney said at a news conference Wednesday.

He met Vergata the month she died
Because Heuermann was never charged in Vergata’s death, the evidence connecting him to that crime are less known and we will never know if a grand jury would have charged him with the murder.

"We had evidence linking him to the commission of this case," Tierney said. "Whether we would have indicted it, I’m not sure. Once he accepted responsibility for it, that concluded our investigation. We took the win and went with it."

One detail that did come out in court is the month in which Vergata was killed.

She last had contact with family on Feb. 14, 1996, and her partial remains were first located April 20 of that year.

Heuermann said in court Wednesday that he both met and killed Vergata in April 1996. He will not be prosecuted for her murder.

Heuermann says he only killed 8
As part of Heuermann’s plea agreement, prosecutors have agreed to not charge him with additional crimes related to any of the eight victims. That does not mean he can’t be charged in other killings, Tierney said.

Brown told reporters that Heuermann says he’s not responsible for any other deaths.

"He’s maintaining he has no other victims other than the eight," the defense attorney said.

Tierney would not reveal if investigators are looking specifically at Heuermann for other unsolved cases. The evidence will dictate if Heuermann becomes a suspect in other cases and that information would only become public through an indictment, the district attorney said.

"There are still bodies on that beach," Tierney said. "There are still bodies in Suffolk County. There's no rest for the weary. We are going to continue to work with our partners and try to obtain hope for as many families as we can."

One obvious case Tierney was asked about is the still unsolved killing of a male victim at Gilgo Beach. Brown said Heuermann denies any involvement in that death, even though the man’s remains were located just .28 miles east of victim Megan Waterman and .62 miles west of victim Jessica Taylor on the north side of Ocean Parkway.

Tierney said the investigation into the unidentified male is ongoing using genetic genealogy.

"A huge step would be to finally identify that individual," the district attorney said.

FBI interview will be ‘clinical’
A significant factor in the plea negotiations, both sides agreed, was Heuermann’s willingness to meet with members of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit. He is bound by the agreement to cooperate fully and answer all the bureau’s questions.

Tierney, a former federal prosecutor, said it was his idea to offer Heuermann the opportunity to speak with the Behavioral Analysis Unit as part of the plea. He said his understanding of the agreement is those interviews will not be investigative in nature and limited to the eight killings Heuermann has already admitted.

The interview will be more of a "clinical analysis," the district attorney said, giving investigators a better understanding of the psychology behind the murders.

"They examine people to try and gain insight on them, sort of a scholarly pursuit to try to figure out the motivations, the origins or how to prevent it," Tierney said.

Brown would not say if Heuermann is being investigated by federal agents or if his willingness to speak with the FBI had anything to do with an agreement to avoid the death penalty in a potential federal case.

Killings occurred in Nassau
Wednesday’s admissions were limited to "yes or no" questions proving the elements of each crime and not detailed confessions of each killing, as is the standard in New York courts.

Heuermann’s responses still provided some answers.

He said he strangled all eight victims and that each of their deaths occurred in Nassau County. Prosecutors have long said they believed the killings occurred in the basement of Heuermann’s Massapequa Park home and the admissions nearly confirmed that.

Heuermann also had to admit to certain additional aspects in the deaths of Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy and Amber Lynn Costello to satisfy the specific elements under which he was charged with first-degree murder, the intentional killing of two or more people within 24 months as part of a common scheme or plan. Heuermann admitted luring all three women with money, killing them in the same manner, wrapping their remains in burlap and leaving their bodies bound around the head, midsection and legs on the same side of Ocean Parkway.

Heuermann also admitted dismembering the remains of Vergata, Taylor and Valerie Mack and disposing of them at multiple locations.

By admitting to killing Sandra Costilla in 1993, Heuermann officially expanded the timeline of his killings to a span of 17 years and the geography more than 40 miles to the hamlet of North Sea in Southampton Town.

Heuermann will likely speak at sentencing
Brown said Wednesday that he expects Heuermann will speak at his sentencing June 17, when Mazzei will also hear from Brown, prosecutors and the families of the victims.

"I suspect at sentencing he’ll have something to say and I’ll leave it at that," Brown told reporters.

When asked if he suspects Heuermann will provide additional details about the killings at that time, Brown gave a one-word response: "No."

This is the enduring love the Mack family have for Valerie.

Suspected Gilgo Beach killer Rex Heuermann to plead guilty to 8th homicide, source says..

Alleged Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex A. Heuermann — charged in the deaths of seven women during an 18-year killing spree — will also plead guilty to an 8th homicide when he returns to court Wednesday, a source familiar with the negotiations told Newsday.

Heuermann, 62, of Massapequa Park, is expected to admit to the 1996 killing of Karen Vergata, a Manhattan mother of two whose remains were found west of Gilgo Beach and on Fire Island more than a decade apart. The plea hearing is scheduled for 11 a.m. before State Supreme Court Justice Timothy Mazzei in Riverhead.

Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney and Heuermann defense attorney Michael J. Brown, of Central Islip, could not be immediately reached for comment Tuesday morning.end of new top more changes marked below

Tierney previously declined to comment on the negotiations.

"Nothing is done and so we wait," Tierney said during a public appearance the morning after news of the plea broke. "It’s not my decision and I’m not a party to that decision. There’s a presumption of innocence and a right to trial. And we respect those things and we're just going to have to wait and see."

The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office has scheduled a news conference for 2 p.m. Wednesday, following the court appearance.

Suffolk District Attorney Ray Tierney will address the media from the Suffolk County Police Academy in Brentwood after the former Manhattan architect’s scheduled appearance before State Supreme Court Justice Timothy Mazzei in Suffolk County Criminal Court in Riverhead, his office announced. The briefing was moved to the alternate site to accommodate an anticipated large presence of local and national media.

Tierney will be accompanied by Suffolk Sheriff Errol D. Toulon Jr., Suffolk County Police Commissioner Kevin Catalina, and representatives of the Gilgo Beach Homicide Investigation Task Force from the New York State Police and Federal Bureau of Investigation and by family members of the homicide victims.

Family members of alleged victims of Heuermann, who has denied any involvement in seven charged killings dating back to 1992, were told by Suffolk Police to expect Heuermann to change his plea to guilty during the appearance, family members exclusively told Newsday two weeks ago.

The plea agreement, the added full full details of which have not been publicly disclosed, marks a stunning turn in a case that has been covered in books, feature films and streaming documentaries in the more than 15 years since the skeletal remains of four women were found along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach in December 2010.

Wednesday’s appearance had been scheduled for Mazzei to rule on the final defense motion and a trial was planned for September.

new Vergata has long been connected to the Gilgo Beach killings because of the Ocean Parkway location where her partial remains were found in April 2011 but she was often referred to as Fire Island Jane Doe due to the discovery of additional remains there 15 years earlier.

The Gilgo Beach Homicide Task Force, whose investigation has already led to four indictments charing Heuermann in seven other killings, publicly identified Vergata in August 2022, less than a month after his arrest. Her identification was made using investigative DNA techniques that did not exist at the time of her death

Born on Nov. 4, 1961, Vergata was the second child of Dominic and Ann Vergata. The couple also had a son, Victor, who was four years older than his sister. The family lived in Glen Head.

Vergata had two sons of her own, Gary Doherty, 37, and Eric Doherty, 35, who were adopted two years before her death as Vergata struggled with addiction, the family previously told Newsday.

Vergata, a known sex worker, last had contact with her father on Valentine’s Day 1996. Her legs were discovered in a plastic garbage bag by two brothers taking a walk near the Davis Park community on April 20, 1996.

Vergata’s parents are deceased. end of new

Heuermann first became a suspect in the case, which involves at least changed to 1 one addtional uncharged killing, in March 2022 after a New York State Police investigator with the Gilgo Beach Homicide Task Force learned while reviewing the case file that alleged victim Amber Lynn Costello was picked up by a man driving a green Chevrolet Avalanche. Police had already determined that the likely killer lived in Massapequa Park and worked in New York City based on phone calls placed to the victims from those locations.

To build the case, the task force — which consists of members of the Suffolk police department, New York S state Police, FBI, Suffolk County sheriff's office and the Suffolk District Attorney's Office — tracked burner phones, triangulated cell site data, used advanced DNA testing on strands of hair found on the victims' bodies, surveilled Heuermann and picked up his DNA from a leftover pizza crust in a box he discarded in Manhattan, court papers show.

Investigators also learned through his internet search history that Heuermann viewed torture pornography and maintained an active interest in the investigation, prosecutors revealed.

Heuermann was arrested while walking away from his Manhattan office on July 13, 2023, and arraigned on an initial indictment the following day even as the investigation into additional killings continued.

Police seized the opportunity to make the arrest then because investigators were concerned that Heuermann continued to use the services of sex workers and might attack again, prosecutors have alleged.

Heuermann was initially charged with first- and second-degree murder in the killings of Costello, Melissa Barthelemy and Megan Waterman. In January 2024, a special grand jury also indicted him on a second-degree murder charge in the death of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, effectively answering the question of who prosecutors said killed the "Gilgo Four," the first set of remains found off Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach in December 2010. The women, whose skeletal remains were all discovered without clothes and bound, were killed between 2007 and 2009, each at times when Heuermann stayed behind as his wife, Asa Ellerup, and children left for vacations, prosecutors have said.

Heuermann was indicted twice more in the more than two years he has spent in isolation at the Suffolk County Jail in Riverhead on three additional second-degree murder charges that widened both the geography and timeline of the alleged killings and exhibited a perceived shift in the way the accused killer carried out the crimes.

Alleged victims Valerie Mack, in 2000, and Jessica Taylor, in 2003, were both mutilated, their severed bodies dumped near each other off Ocean Parkway and 40 miles east in the vast woodlands of Manorville. Sandra Costilla was also discovered with sharp-forced wounds to her body even farther east, in the Southampton Town hamlet of North Sea, in 1993, about 60 miles from Gilgo Beach. Their bodies were all found within days of their disappearances, which prosecutors have also said occurred while Heuermann was alone in the Massapequa Park home he lived in shared with his family. The killings likely happened in the basement of the home, prosecutors have said.

All eght women were said to have engaged in sex work, officials have said.

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Gilgo Beach victim's son files wrongful death suit against alleged serial killer Rex Heuermann and family..

The son of Valerie Mack, one of the seven known female victims prosecutors said were slain by Rex A. Heuermann, has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the accused Gilgo Beach serial killer, his ex-wife and daughter, records show.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in State Supreme Court in Suffolk County — the first by any of the Gilgo victims' family members — comes as Heuermann, 62, of Massapequa Park, is reportedly expected to pleaded guilty on Wednesday to the killings, which have haunted the region for more than a decade.

Profiting from documentary
The complaint, filed by Benjamin Torres, Mack's only child, names Heuermann, his now ex-wife, Asa Ellerup and their daughter, Victoria Heuermann and cites claims of wrongful death, assault, battery, false imprisonment, aiding and abetting, civil conspiracy, intentional infliction of extreme emotional distress, fraud and unjust enrichment.

The suit seeks unspecified money that Ellerup and Victoria Heuermann earned through their participation in a documentary on the Gilgo murders released in July on Peacock.

"Some of the statements they have made indicate that they have such callous disregard for the victims that they're making a profit," said Miller Place attorney John Ray, who is representing Torres. "They're earning money by that callousness and by that disregard of the victims sensibilities. They shouldn't be given money for that."

Ray has also represented the estate of Shannan Gilbert, the New Jersey woman whose disappearance set off a law enforcement search that led to the discovery of the bodies of several of the victims.

Robert Macedonio, an Islip Terrace attorney who has represented Ellerup and Victoria Heuermann since Rex Heuermann's July 2023 arrest, said his clients had no knowledge of the killings.

"This has been a decade of Johnny Ray trying to keep himself relevant in a case that his original client, Shannan Gilbert, had no involvement in," Macedonio said on Monday night. "I reiterate strenuously that my clients, Asa Ellerup and Victoria Heuermann, had no involvement whatsoever in any of the alleged crimes of Rex Heuermann."

Ellerup has not been accused of any involvement in her ex-husband's crimes and law enforcement officials contend the killings occurred when his family, including wife and daughter, were traveling out of town.

But the lawsuit nonetheless contends they were complicit in Heuermann's alleged crimes.

"Asa Ellerup and Victoria Heuermann at some point in time knew of, concealed, deliberately ignored, or consciously avoided learning of material facts concerning the assault, murder,
dismemberment, concealment, and disposal of Valerie Mack," the lawsuit states.
Michael J. Brown, Rex Heuermann's defense attorney, and the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office, each did not respond to requests for comment.

A mother's disappearance

Torres was only six-years-old when his mother went missing around 2020, records show.
Born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Mack's biological parents put her up for adoption as an infant, police said. Her first adoptive parents died by the time she was in middle school. She went into foster care and was eventually adopted, officials said.

Mack gave birth to Torres when she was a senior in high school, and shortly thereafter got she addicted to drugs, police said.

She had been working as an escort in Philadelphia under the name Melissa Taylor when she vanished at the age of 24.

Mack's dismembered remains were found near a Manorville sump discharge basin on Nov. 19, 2000, in a heavily wooded area about a half-mile west of Halsey Manor Road, police said.

But it wasn't until police found other parts of Mack's body, including her skull, off Ocean Parkway, east of Cedar Beach, on April 4, 2011, that the killing of the woman once known as "Jane Doe No. 6" was linked to the other Gilgo Beach victims.

"This action seeks recovery for the wrongful torture and murder of Valerie Mack, for the terror, restraint, pain, mutilation, and dismemberment inflicted upon her before and after
death, for the concealment and mutilation of her remains, and for the profound and prolonged harm thereby inflicted upon plaintiff," the lawsuit states.
Heuermann’s family were reportedly paid more than $1 million to allow the documentary crew for "The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets," a three-part series, access into their Massapequa Park home and lives.

In the series, Victoria Heuermann says her father "most likely" committed the killings.

"I love him as my dad," she tells the interviewer. "The hate is this other side of him that came out."

In New York, wrongful death lawsuits must be filed within two years of the date of the individual's death.

But the lawsuit argues that the deadline should be waived because of Torres' age at the time of his mother's disappearance. Ray additionally argues that Heuermann's alleged dismemberment of Mack's body, including a tattoo on her leg bearing his son's name, obscured her identification by law enforcement for many years.