Rex Heuermann Pleads Guilty to Seven Gilgo Beach Murders and Admits an Eighth
In a packed Riverhead courtroom, the Massapequa Park architect admitted strangling seven women and confessed to the 1996 killing of Karen Vergata, which he was never charged with.
Published
For nearly three years Rex Heuermann had insisted he was innocent. On April 8, 2026, in a packed courtroom in Riverhead, the 62-year-old architect from Massapequa Park stood before Justice Timothy P. Mazzei and answered "Yes, your honor" as the killings were read to him one at a time.
He pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder, for Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello, and four counts of second-degree murder, for Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Jessica Taylor, Sandra Costilla and Valerie Mack: the seven women whose deaths he had been charged with since his arrest outside his Manhattan office in July 2023. Then, in his allocution, he admitted an eighth killing he had never been charged with, the murder of Karen Vergata in April 1996.
Vergata, 34, the mother of two sons, had been known for decades only as "Fire Island Jane Doe." Her legs washed up on Blue Point Beach in 1996; her skull was found near Gilgo Beach fifteen years later, and genetic genealogy finally gave her name back in 2023. Under the agreement, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office said, her murder is covered by his plea to the other seven.
In his own words
Heuermann told the court that he strangled Barthelemy in July 2009, Waterman in June 2010 and Costello in September 2010, that he lured them with promises of money, and that he wrapped them in burlap before leaving their bodies near Gilgo Beach. Those three killings, he said, fell within a span of roughly two years. He admitted strangling Brainard-Barnes in 2007, Taylor in 2003, Mack in 2000 and Costilla in 1993 as well, and in several cases, Taylor's and Mack's among them, to dismembering their bodies and scattering the remains between Manorville and Gilgo Beach.
The plea ended the case without a trial. "When Rex decided he wanted to accept responsibility and not proceed to trial, we pivoted," said his lawyer, Michael Brown. Prosecutors said the investigation had generated more than 120 terabytes of data and some 715,000 pages of discovery.
Outside the courthouse, a lawyer for his ex-wife, Asa Ellerup, said the hearing had made one thing plain: that Heuermann alone was responsible. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims," Ellerup said. "Their loss is immeasurable, and the focus should be on them at this moment."
Under the agreement, prosecutors said, Heuermann would receive three consecutive terms of life without parole for the first-degree murders and consecutive terms of 25 years to life for the others. Sentencing was set for June 17.
The admissions described here were made by Heuermann under oath in his plea allocution, as reported from the courtroom by the Riverhead News-Review; the counts and the treatment of the Vergata killing are as the Suffolk County District Attorney's office has stated them.
Sources
- Gilgo Serial Killer Sentenced to Three Consecutive Life Sentences Plus 100 Years for Murdering Eight Women, Suffolk County District Attorney's Office
- Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann pleads guilty to seven murders, reveals eighth victim, Riverhead News-Review