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Gilgo Beach Serial Killer Rex Heuermann Admits to Killing 8 Women
Content warning: This story contains details of murder.
Asa Ellerup is still processing the revelation that she was married to a serial killer for nearly three decades.
Weeks before her ex-husband Rex Heuermann confessed to brutally murdering eight women during an April 8 court appearance, the man known as the Gilgo Beach killer privately met with Ellerup and admitted to his crimes.
Ellerup shared that she's still trying to understand the two sides of the "family man" she knew, explaining on Peacock's documentary The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets that she’s since been sleeping in what producers called the vaulted "kill room" of their Long Island home—where Heuermann brought seven of his victims, three of whom he dismembered.
"The brutal truth is that Rex Heuermann said he dismembered the bodies in this room," she shared on the April 23 episode. "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."
She remodeled the space—which originally served as Heuermann's childhood bedroom—into a functional basement, decorating the space with a green Hello Kitty bedspread and shelves of plushies and Panda bear stuffed animals. As depicted in the docuseries, the walls are adorned with floral paintings and a cross.
"It's been completely gutted and redone," Ellerup said. "New floor, new walls, new moldings, new doors."
But she continues to be reminded of the horrors took place in the room from 1996 to 2010.
"Every night that I go to bed and go to sleep, I am haunted by dreams," she said. "Every night. It will never go away. It will follow me for the rest of my life. There will never be any justice for anyone, and there will never be any way to forget about this."
David Dee Delgado / AFP via Getty Images
And while Ellerup legally filed for divorce from Heuermann after his 2023 arrest—in order to keep their Long Island house, according to the family—she maintains a close relationship with the former architect, who she believed was innocent until his recent confession.
"I have seen Rex about 12 times since he confessed to me that he actually had dismembered these bodies down here," she explained. "I want to get to know this other side of Rex. I want to know why Rex killed these women, what his triggers were."
Ellerup—mom to daughter Victoria Heuermann, 29, with Heuermann and son Christopher Sheridan, 35, from her first marriage—added, "I'm processing the information in a very different way, because now I see the evil in him."
James Carbone - Pool/Getty Images
During Heuermann's April 8 court appearance in New York, he pled guilty to murdering seven women and confessed to killing an eighth.
His spree started with what he says was the unplanned slaying of 28-year-old Sandra Costilla in 1993, before targeting sex workers in pre-meditated murders using what police believe to be a "Hunt and Kill" planning document found on his computer.
He strangled all eight women—Costilla as well as Karen Vergata, Valerie Mack, Jessica Taylor, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello—before dumping their bodies around Long Island, many in the Gilgo Beach area, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney.
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