The terrifying case of the architect who drew up a manual on how to hunt and kill and then murdered eight women

By TOM LEONARD, US CORRESPONDENT Published: 01:20, 19 April 2026 | Updated: 01:20, 19 April 2026 Just before sunrise on May 1, 2010, a young woman on Long Island, New York, made a frantic call to the emergency services. ‘Someone is after me, they’re going to kill me,’ Shannan Gilbert, a 23-year-old prostitute, told the operator. Crying and panting in fear, she explained how she’d travelled from New Jersey to see a man in a house on the island’s South Shore. It was in a gated community called Oak Beach and it was only when – apparently drunk or high on drugs – she started running from house to house, pounding on doors, that neighbours called 911 with an accurate account of her location and police arrived on the scene. By then she had disappeared, never to be seen alive again. Police were still looking for her seven months later when they made an extraordinary discovery: the grisly remains of four other women, who had been bound with tape or belts and wrapped in camouflaged burlap sacking. A police sniffer dog found them hidden in dense undergrowth off a road running alongside a stretch of sand known as Gilgo Beach. All four were petite sex workers in their 20s – none of them over 5ft – who had gone missing after going to meet a client who contacted each of them using a different, unregistered mobile phone. They proved to be the first known victims of the monster who’d be dubbed the Long Island Serial Killer. As the search expanded, the remains of seven more people, including a toddler and an Asian man, were discovered, usually spaced at roughly 500ft intervals along the road known as Ocean Parkway. The long hunt for the man who was responsible for some of the most brutal serial killings in recent US history ended a week ago when architect Rex Heuermann, in the face of the overwhelming DNA evidence ranged against him, bowed to the inevitable after nearly three years strenuously insisting his innocence and pleaded guilty. Rex Heuermann, pictured alongside his ex-wife Asa Ellerup, has admitted to killing eight women by strangulation The murders for which Heuermann was charged spanned the years from 1993 to 2010 He’d been in tears when he first denied being a murderer on being charged in 2023, but during last Wednesday’s hearing at Suffolk County Court he seemed to be enjoying the attention, as the glimmer of a smile occasionally crept on to his face. The bearish 62-year-old, the son of an aerospace engineer, admitted to killing eight women by strangulation, seven for which he’d been charged and another for which he hadn’t. It seems that after picking them up in his car and driving to his house, he killed them and then dumped their bodies, some of which he first dismembered, at various sites across Long Island. Six of them worked as escorts through classified advertising websites such as Craigslist and Backpage, often travelling to meet clients like Heuermann in cars in remote locations where they would be in deep trouble if things went wrong. The murders for which he was charged – of Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Costello, Megan Waterman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Valerie Mack, Jessica Taylor and Sandra Costilla, aged between 20 and 28 – and the one for which he wasn’t, 34-year-old Karen Vergata, spanned the years from 1993 to 2010. Ironically, the victims didn’t include Shannan Gilbert, the woman whose phone call led to Heuermann’s eventual downfall. When her body was found in December 2011, investigators concluded her death was ‘accidental’. Her fate remains one of the great mysteries about the case – along with the killer’s motives and the likely existence of other victims – that may never be solved after Heuermann avoided a trial by pleading guilty. He now faces life imprisonment without parole when sentenced and, if he wants, can take his secrets with him as he rots in a high-security prison. Heuermann’s lawyer, Michael Brown, said that his client had changed his plea because he had wanted to spare his family and those of his victims a deeply upsetting trial. However, close observers of the relentlessly harrowing case are sceptical of the idea that the sadistic and narcissistic Heuermann – who in 2000 compiled a detailed manual on how to hunt, torture and kill his victims – could ever be moved by pity. He pleaded guilty for entirely selfish reasons, they say. For he spared himself a trial, set for September, that would likely have revealed far worse facts about his crimes that would not only have embarrassed the hugely egotistical killer but made his life in prison more difficult. Given the peculiarly vicious nature of his crimes and the taciturn Heuermann’s refusal to explain himself, prosecutors insisted, unusually, that he agree to be questioned by the FBI’s Behavioural Analysis Unit for the purposes of ‘academic training’. But FBI psychologists, whose work was famously portrayed in the thriller The Silence Of The Lambs, may have their work cut out in prising the truth from him. The sheriff who oversaw his pre-trial custody described Heuermann as ‘strictly emotionless’, adding that he never showed any sign of being downcast about his situation and instead seeming almost ‘smug’. And yet he promises to go down in criminal history as a fascinating, if grisly, case study of a serial killer who managed for decades to maintain a double life. A well-known architectural consultant with an office in Midtown Manhattan, he returned each evening to suburban respectability in the town of Massapequa Park, on the South Shore of Long Island. The next-door town of Amityville famously spawned the classic horror film The Amityville Horror, based on the paranormal experiences of the family that moved into a house in the town in which a 23-year-old man had murdered six members of his family. Valerie Mack was murdered by Heuermann – and her son is suing not only the killer but also his ex-wife and daughter over the loss There are still questions over whether Heuermann was responsible for other bodies that were found near Gilgo Beach The Massapequa Horror, however, was more discreet. Heuermann and his second wife, Iceland-born Asa Ellerup, lived quietly in a small and rundown red bungalow – his lifelong home – with their two adult children, Victoria and Christopher. Neighbours told The Daily Mail when he was arrested in 2023 that they’d rarely exchanged more than a few words with Heuermann. Some said they found him ‘creepy’, with his next-door neighbour claiming that he’d once had to tell Heuermann to stop bothering his wife when she was sunbathing. Heuermann’s wife, they said, was barely more friendly. Was the killer deliberately keeping his distance for his own protection, or just a naturally anti-social man? We may never know for certain but his behaviour had the effect of ensuring that few knew much about him at the time he was arrested. A long-time associate described him as a ‘big goofy guy, a little bit on the nerdy side’ who was devoted to his wife and elderly mother. Meanwhile, an acquaintance recalled that when they first shook hands, the strangler was so strong his hands felt like thick pieces of marble. Asa Ellerup, who divorced Heuermann after his arrest, has always insisted that she and her children – one of whom, Christopher, had special needs – had lived in complete ignorance of the crimes her husband committed. Prosecutors said they accepted that she and the children were always away on holiday when the murders occurred. While investigators reportedly discovered evidence that Heuermann converted their basement – where he stored hundreds of firearms in a concrete-lined vault – into a torture chamber, his family never appeared to notice it. For more than a decade, the investigation into the murdered women made little headway, with allegations of incompetence, corruption and egotism as the local police chief refused to bring in the far-better resourced FBI. That approach changed abruptly in late 2021 when a new and more dynamic police chief took over in Suffolk County, where the officers’ main job, it’s said, is handing out speeding tickets to billionaires in the string of expensive seaside towns known as The Hamptons. Rodney Harrison, who had been the NYPD’s first black chief detective in 175 years, insisted the cold case was ‘solvable’ and set up a new taskforce as well as belatedly calling in the FBI. Heuermann had used his victims’ phones to make ‘taunting’ calls to their loved ones – ‘Do you think you’ll ever speak to her again?’ he asked the teenage sister of Melissa Barthelemy – but the new police chief focused his investigation on the supposedly untraceable ‘burner’ (disposable) phones he usually used. Using ‘geolocation’ technology that traced the burners’ interaction with mobile phone towers, the investigators were able to conclude that the killer worked in a certain part of Midtown Manhattan and lived in Massapequa Park. They made an even more crucial breakthrough when they discovered a long-overlooked piece of evidence: a housemate of victim Amber Costello had told police he’d once confronted an ‘ogre-like’ man – at least 6ft 4in – who he believed was threatening her. He even remembered the distinctive car he’d driven, a green Chevrolet Avalanche. Investigators were soon able to whittle down the suspects to Heuermann, who had helpfully left DNA evidence on all his victims. After obtaining a sample of his DNA to match against that of his victims by collecting uneaten pizza crusts he’d thrown in a bin near his office, the FBI knew they had their man and arrested him on a Manhattan street. However, his guilty plea leaves key questions unanswered – in some cases very possibly for ever. For a start, there is the matter of whether he was responsible for other bodies that were found near Gilgo Beach – and whether, as some believe, they help explain why he executed a volte face after years of denials and pleaded guilty. One set of remains were those of an unidentified Asian ‘biological male’ who was wearing women’s clothes. Prosecutors revealed that Heuermann’s extensive sex-related internet searches included pornography involving tied-up ‘Asian twinks’ – slang for young-looking and slender gay men. Some have speculated that Heuermann was mortified at the idea that his macho heterosexuality might be questioned – especially in front of his family – at the trial. Another of the bodies discovered near Gilgo Beach was that of a two-year-old girl, who was the daughter of one of the women buried there. By pleading guilty, Heuermann avoided being questioned about her death. Child killers are loathed by fellow prison inmates – another good reason, some believe, why Heuermann wouldn’t want to risk being labelled one in a trial. And then there is the question of whether he killed other women. It’s widely believed he murdered at least as many again as the eight victims to which he’s admitted. The Suffolk County prosecutor has said he believes there are other bodies hidden off Ocean Parkway, the road running along Gilgo Beach, and that he hopes he might still find them. Understanding why Heuermann killed, and kept killing, could have been one of the main dividends of a trial. There are clues in the prosecution evidence that leave no doubt that he was a sexual sadist. A trawl of his internet activity by investigators revealed ‘thousands’ of searches ‘related to sex workers, sadistic, torture-related pornography and child pornography’. According to prosecutors, Heuermann was ‘meticulous’ in his efforts to plan the ‘perfect kill’, which he liked to call a ‘hunt’. He kept a list of supplies, locations of ‘dump sites’ and reminders for future murders, such as ‘consider a hit to the neck next time’. A prosecutor has said he believes there are other bodies hidden off Ocean Parkway, the road running along Gilgo Beach Asa Ellerup, who divorced Heuermann after his arrest, has always insisted that she and her children had lived in complete ignorance of the crimes Although he taunted some of his victims’ families about their loved one being a prostitute, it is believed he targeted them not so much because he despised them but because he thought their disappearances were less likely to be noticed. The fate of Shannan Gilbert, whose disappearance set Heuermann’s eventual arrest in motion, remains another unsolved riddle. Her body was discovered, seven months after she disappeared, in a marsh near the gated community from where she’d fled. Her clothes and possessions were found some way away at the edge of the marsh. Police believe she died accidentally, slipping over in a drainage ditch and drowning after having a drugs or alcohol-induced panic attack. A panic attack also explains, they say, why she ran straight past a friend who had driven her to the assignation and was waiting outside in his car. Other details about her case – for instance, that she didn’t travel there alone and she visited a house – also mark it out as different to the established Heuermann killings. However, her family and some experts believe she was also killed, a contention supported by an independent coroner’s report which found that her hyoid bone was missing from her remains. The hyoid bone, which is found in the neck, is often damaged during strangulation and so could have provided evidence that she was murdered. Sceptics of the official view also questioned why Gilbert had taken off her clothes, including her jeans, before stumbling into the marsh. As for Heuermann’s family, were they entirely in the dark about his crimes? That assumption may soon be challenged in court because Benjamin Torres, who was six when his mother, Valerie Mack, was murdered by Heuermann, is suing not only the killer but his ex-wife, Asa Ellerup, and daughter over the loss of his mother. Prosecutors said they were able to link Mack with Heuermann through DNA analysis of a hair found on her body that was found to belong to Ellerup. The lawsuit is seeking some of Ellerup’s earnings from a reported $1million (£740,000) deal to appear in a documentary. Heuermann ‘walked among us, play-acting as a normal, suburban dad, when in reality, all along, he was obsessively targeting innocent women for death,’ said his chief prosecutor last week. The killer who has been so inscrutable will have an opportunity to have his say when he is sentenced in June. His lawyer thinks that he will take up the opportunity, but whether Rex Heuermann answers any of the lingering questions about his appalling crimes is another matter. No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual We will automatically post your comment and a link to the news story to your Facebook timeline at the same time it is posted on MailOnline. To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. 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