Rex Heuermann, a New York architect who murdered women for at least 17 years until police realized their deaths were the work of a serial killer, was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison without parole.
The sentencing caps an extraordinary investigation that solved one of New York’s most perplexing mysteries — one that began as a series of seemingly unconnected and largely unmarked disappearances of young sex workers. Over time, it became the focus of true-crime documentaries, books and podcasts after police began discovering the victims’ skeletal remains along a coastal parkway near Long Island’s Gilgo Beach.
“Are you at least a little sorry?” Judge Timothy Mazzei asked him Wednesday in a loud, indignant voice.
Heuermann nodded and appeared to mouth: “Yes.”
“You are disgusting — a despicable man, if you are a man at all,” the judge said, his voice rising. “And you are a coward.”
As Heuermann was led away in handcuffs, spectators in the packed courtroom seemed to jeer.
Children of victims express sorrow
Heuermann has remained largely silent through multiple court appearances since his 2023 arrest. His ex-wife and two grown children weren’t at the sentencing, having said through their lawyers that they’d stay away out of respect for the victims’ families.
Heuermann, 62, pleaded guilty in April to charges that he murdered seven women: Barthelemy, Taylor, Valerie Mack, Megan Waterman, Amber Lynn Costello, Maureen Brainard-Barnes and Sandra Costilla.
Judge Tim Mazzei reacts to a victim impact statement from Jasmine Robinson, cousin of victim Jessica Taylor, on Wednesday during the sentencing of Rex Heuermann at Suffolk County Court. (James Carbone/Getty Images)
Heuermann also admitted in court to killing an eighth victim, Karen Vergata, although he was never charged in her death. He said he strangled his victims and dismembered some of their bodies.
After decades waiting for justice, relatives of the slain women laid into him Wednesday.
“You fill me with so much repugnance, I can’t stand it,” Jasmine Robinson, a cousin of victim Jessica Taylor said.
Brainard-Barnes’s two children, who were seven and one when she disappeared, talked Wednesday on how she never got to see them grow into young adults. Her sister, Melissa Cann, said she lived with “survivor’s guilt” for decades, wondering whether she could have done something more to protect Brainard-Barnes.
“It was a weight I carried everywhere,” Cann said, sobbing deeply. But, she said, that guilt is “not mine to carry. It is for Rex and Rex alone.”
Liliana Waterman was three when her mother Megan vanished. The daughter said she didn’t fully understand what had happened until she was about nine.
“In an instant, my world was shattered,” she said. “Was she in pain? Was she scared?”
LISTEN | Author Robert Kolker, on Shannan Gilbert sparking the serial killer revelation:
Crime Story30:47Lost Girls: One woman’s disappearance reveals a pattern of forgotten murders
The Gilgo Beach investigation began in earnest in late 2010, after police found numerous sets of human remains along a remote beach highway on Long Island’s South Shore. Those remains were sparked by a search for Shannan Gilbert, a sex worker whose death at Gilgo Beach was ultimately ruled by Suffolk County officials to be an accidental drowning.
Investigators used DNA analysis and other evidence to identify victims. In some cases, they were able to connect them to remains found elsewhere on Long Island years earlier.
Most of the women disappeared between 2000 and 2010, and most of their remains were found on a parkway not far from Long Island’s Gilgo Beach, some 80 kilometres from Manhattan, where Heuermann worked. But other remains were found in the Hamptons and on Fire Island, dozens of kilometres away from Gilgo Beach.
“I hope you suffer,” said Amanda Funderburg, victim Melissa Barthelemy’s sister. Funderburg recounted at 15 years old getting a taunting phone call from him days after Barthelemy disappeared.
Pizza box yielded matching DNA
The case went cold until 2022, when detectives linked Heuermann to a pickup truck that a witness reported seeing when one of the victims disappeared in 2010.
Eventually, they matched DNA from a pizza crust Heuermann discarded in a Manhattan trash can to genetic material extracted from highly degraded hair fragments found on the women’s remains.
Rex Heuermann is shown in court in Riverhead, N.Y., on April 8, when he entered a guilty plea in connection with the killings of eight women. (James Carbone/Reuters)
Investigators amassed other evidence, including cellphone and tracking data showing Heuermann arranged meetings with some victims shortly before their disappearances. After Heuermann’s arrest, prosecutors recovered what they described as a “blueprint” for the killings from his computer files.
The disappearances have been the subject of numerous true crime shows and documentaries. Robert Kolker’s 2013 book about several of the missing women, Lost Girls, served as the basis for a Netflix movie seven years later starring Amy Ryan, Gabriel Byrne and Lola Kirke.
As part of his guilty plea, Heuermann agreed to co-operate with the FBI’s behavioural analysis unit to help catch other serial killers.
He has spent the past three years alone in a segregated cell at the Suffolk County jail.
