Rex Heuermann’s ex-wife says she now sleeps in the same basement “kill room” where he told her he dismembered most of his victims. In a new episode of the Peacock docuseries The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets, Asa Ellerup says she moved into the space about a month before the New York architect pleaded guilty to seven murders and admitted an eighth killing, during a timeline that spanned from 1993 to 2010, per Fox News. “Now … there’s me. I’m in this room,” she says, adding that she views staying there as a way to express remorse “for what these victims went through.”
Ellerup—who says the basement has been “completely gutted and redone, new floor, new walls, new moldings, new doors,” per NBC News—notes that Heuermann, arrested in 2023, privately confessed to her before changing his plea on April 8, adding that she has since visited him in jail a dozen times, per Fox. Ellerup says that her spouse seemed “very nervous” before admitting his crimes to her, and that he said she “wasn’t home through all of them,” per People. She describes being “haunted” by recurring dreams and says she’s trying to understand both Heuermann’s psychology and how she failed to see his double life over three decades, per Fox.
Victoria Heuermann, the couple’s daughter, said in the documentary that her father simply said “his demons got to him” as an explanation for why he did what he did, per NBC. “I’m like, well, did you see them as somebody’s daughter?” the younger Heuermann said she asked her father regarding the victims. “He told me he didn’t even see them as human.” Ellerup’s attorney says she wants the attention on the victims’ families, whom he notes have endured “immeasurable and lasting losses,” per Fox. Prosecutors say all but one of Rex Heuermann’s eight victims were murdered in the couple’s Massapequa Park home on Long Island.
