Every chilling moment inside the Gilgo Beach serial killer hearing: With justice finally served, our front-row account of his cold courtroom confession… the families’ raw emotion… and the word that stunned the room

Thirty-three years, eight murdered young women and a decades-long fight for justice had all led up to this. 

And every moment of the day when Rex Heuermann finally confessed to being the Gilgo Beach serial killer who had haunted Long Island for decades was monumental, heartbreaking and yet full of relief that the nightmare is finally over.

Children who were left to grow up motherless because of the actions of a monster who masqueraded as a family man walked into the courtroom as young adults. 

Megan Waterman’s daughter Lily and Maureen Brainard-Barnes’s daughter Nicolette were just three and seven when they last saw their moms’ alive. 

Now 19 and 27, their ages were a marker of how long justice was overdue.

Dozens upon dozens of law enforcement officials – some current, some long retired – stood in their finest suits around every edge of the New York courtroom to face down the serial killer that they had spent their careers chasing.

Outside the courthouse, Heuermann’s daughter Victoria Heuermann and ex-wife Asa Ellerup were rushed by crowds of reporters, microphones and cameras thrust in their faces in the hopes of unpacking the remaining mysteries about life inside the murderer’s home.

Even a local Long Island resident, who was around the age of the victims when their bodies were found, told the Daily Mail that she could now sleep easy knowing that the ‘diabolical’ perpetrator who left her and so many other young women afraid to go out at night is behind bars where he belongs.

As two reporters who have worked on this case for years, to us the magnitude of the day was palpable.

It was a day that many thought might never come. After all, this was a case that had left a painful scar on Long Island for the past three decades.

Now, finally, on April 8, 2026, the Gilgo Beach serial killer was no longer a phantom preying on young, vulnerable women. 

Killing his first known victim in 1993, Heuermann hid his crimes for years before anyone even knew there was a serial killer at large. 

When his graveyard was found in 2010, he continued to hide in plain sight for another 13 years. Then, when he was arrested in 2023, he stretched the case out, claiming that he was innocent. 

With his guilty plea, the world has finally seen the unremarkable 62-year-old husband, father and architect for what he truly is: a soulless murderer who will now spend the remainder of his life in prison. 

As we watched the hulking killer lumber into court, an intense silence hung in the air.

One by one, Heuermann was asked about the murders of his eight victims – Melissa Barthelemy, 24, Megan Waterman, 22, Amber Costello, 27, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, Jessica Taylor, 20, Sandra Costilla, 28, Valerie Mack, 24 and Karen Vergata, 34 – all slight, petite, vulnerable women who didn’t stand a chance against the 6ft 4in Heuermann.

In the three years since his arrest, Heuermann has been largely silent – speaking only once in his court hearings to insist on his innocence.

Like Judge Timothy Mazzei joked, the change in plea was the ‘worst-kept secret’ with word spreading like wildfire two weeks earlier. Yet we couldn’t quite believe it was happening – and that the horrifying case was finally almost over.

As he was asked a series of questions about his crimes, we heard his distinctive, nasal, high-pitched voice – a sound that was likely the last thing his victims heard and that had tormented their families when he placed sickening phone calls gloating about their loved ones’ murders.

At one point, the corners of his mouth curled up in what appeared to be a faint flicker of a smirk as he uttered the words ‘guilty.’ Even after working on countless shocking criminal cases, nothing could prepare us for how disturbing that expression felt. 

Then came a moment that sent chills through the room as we learned for the very first time how each of the women died.

One by one, Heuermann answered in a calm, matter-of-fact tone.

Strangulation. Strangulation. Strangulation. Strangulation. Strangulation. Strangulation. Strangulation. Strangulation.

Ringing heavy in the room, he reduced the lives of these young women, mothers, sisters, daughters to one callous word.

Inside the courtroom, what struck us was that there was no glimmer of remorse – the answers uttered with no more emotion than if he was ordering a coffee.

It was sickening to see – though perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised.  

The cutting words later used by law enforcement members to describe him – ‘monster’, ‘soulless,’ ‘callous’ and ‘sadistic’ – didn’t seem powerful enough.

All around the room, the victims’ loved ones silently sobbed, dabbed tissues to their eyes and clutched each other for comfort – while others, so overcome with pain and grief, were unable to even look at the man and murderer in front of them.

At the very back of the courtroom, Heuermann’s own family looked destroyed.

Victoria’s fair skin grew more flushed as she learned the horrific truth of what her father had done to women the same age as her now – and inside the very home he had raised her.

Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney asked: ‘Did you dismember her and dump her body? Did you bound her head, midsection and legs?’

The emotionless answers ‘yes’ came thick and fast.

Ellerup, Heuermann’s ex-wife of nearly 30 years, sat on the edge of her seat – leaning forward to stare at the man she loved, gripping the chair in front of her as though she would crumple to the floor without it.

She had divorced her husband quickly after his arrest, but her attorney insisted it was only to protect their assets. 

Up until his change of plea, Ellerup continued to stand by him, attending nearly every court hearing, visiting him behind bars and insisting police had the wrong man.

In less than an hour, Heuermann had confessed to the murders and she could no longer hide from the reality that the life they once shared was a lie.

After the hearing ended and the victims’ families were ushered out with their attorney Gloria Allred, Ellerup and Victoria sat motionless. The tears then flowed.

Victoria held out her hand to Ellerup, who clutched it – a tender moment between a mother and a daughter.

Outside the courthouse, Ellerup then finally broke her silence.

In the early days after his arrest, the 63-year-old had let loose at the media, telling them to ‘leave her alone’ as a circus formed outside their family home in Massapequa Park.

But after snagging a $1 million deal with Peacock to share her story, Ellerup has otherwise gone quiet.

Finally, speaking to a throng of journalists, videographers and podcasters, she asked for privacy for her family – something that jarred with the sight of the Peacock crew filming that very moment for the series’ next installment.

Ellerup also extended her ‘thoughts and prayers’ to the victims and their families: ‘Their loss is immeasurable. And the focus should be on them at this time and moment.’

And finally, that day felt like it was.

Inside the huge gymnasium at the Suffolk County Police Training Academy that afternoon, around 50 people gathered around a podium.

On one side were family members of all eight victims – from elderly parents whose children were snatched from them too soon to the kids who grew up without their mothers, sisters, cousins and aunts.

On the other side, there were countless police officers and task force members who had played a part in tracing the killer’s cell phones, identifying his DNA and locating the cars he used in his crimes.

It was a moment that felt far more powerful than anything Heuermann could possibly have said or done inside the courtroom.

As some of the victims’ loved ones teared up, the DA spoke about each young woman and the role that their families had played in fighting for justice.

‘If it weren’t for the victims and the families, he would still be walking among us,’ he said.

Turning to each family one by one, Tierney told them: ‘Thank you and we’re sorry.’

‘This defendant walked among us like a suburban man… and he thought that by killing them he could silence them forever. But he was wrong.’

At one point, the room was stunned when one family member shouted at a reporter not to call their loved ones ‘sex workers.’

As Allred said to the Daily Mail afterwards, sex work was ‘what they did, it wasn’t who they were.’

And that day, the families reclaimed the women’s memories as mothers, daughters and sisters loved and missed by many. Heuermann had murdered and discarded them like trash, but, that day, they got their voices back.

When Melissa Cann – the sister of victim Maureen Brainard-Barnes – approached the podium, even hardened police officers and veteran journalists struggled to maintain their composure.

Breaking down in tears, Cann spoke directly to her sister, a mother-of-two who was murdered in 2007 and who she had fought for years to get justice for.

‘The promise I made to you so long ago, I would never stop searching for you,’ she said, before sending a message of hope that justice and love will always prevail: ‘To every family out there, still searching, still believing, still holding on – please do not give up hope.’

Victim Jessica Taylor’s mother left her walker to walk gingerly to the podium, saying ‘I’m glad that this is over,’ after waiting 23 years for the man who murdered, decapitated and dismembered her 20-year-old daughter to face justice.

One by one, Allred invited the families to come to the microphone and share their support for the guilty plea – a decision that Heuermann’s attorney claimed the killer had reached in order to spare his own family and the victims from the pain of a trial.

It was a reason few believed.

‘If he wanted to do it for the murder victims’ families he should have never tortured and murdered their loved ones,’ Allred later told the Daily Mail.

‘I don’t buy it that he is doing it for anybody else – he is a person who thinks of nobody but himself.’

After the intense day of courtroom confessions and tearful statements wound to an end, we took a drive through Massapequa Park and passed the house of horrors where the depraved serial killer is believed to have taken at least some of the young women’s lives.

The red-painted, run-down ranch-style home sits dilapidated along a street of well-kept picket fences and suburban landscape. A car was parked in the driveway but there was no sign of Heuermann’s family members who often sat out on the front porch when he was arrested in July 2023 and their world was turned upside down.

Inside, his former wife, daughter and son were likely hunkering down, wondering how to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives.

For years, Heuermann tortured young women and their families but now he leaves his own family to suffer as they are forever tainted by their father and husband’s crimes.

That became clear when Ellerup delivered her statement outside the court before quickly walking away in the shadow of suspicion, as a reporter shouted: ‘How did you not see what he was?’

It was a burning question that many wanted to know.

But it is not by far the only question that we both still have about the case that we have followed for years.

What was his motive? What about the three still-unsolved cases along Gilgo Beach? And are there more victims still out there – possibly in other states altogether?

When asked by reporters if Heuermann is being eyed as a suspect in the death of the Gilgo Beach victim known as Asian Doe, Tierney kept his cards close to his chest. When pressed if he believes there are more victims, he would only say that ‘it’s what I can prove, not what I believe.’ And when asked if he is working with other jurisdictions on other possible unsolved cases, he cryptically said that his office always cooperates with other agencies.

What he would say was that though ‘this case closes, other ones open.’

‘There are still bodies on this beach. There are still bodies in Suffolk County. We are going to work with our partners to get closure for as many families as we can.’

We now know that between 1993 and 2010, Heuermann murdered eight women. To many people who have followed the case for years – including ourselves – the likelihood that other women were lured, tortured, murdered and discarded by the ‘ogre-like monster’ seems high.

So, while in every sense today brought a collective sense of relief and closure that the Gilgo Beach serial killer case has finally come to an end, this might not be the final time we hear about the murders committed by Rex Heuermann.