A decades-long nightmare on Long Island has reached a grim turning point.
Rex Heuermann pleaded guilty Wednesday to murdering eight women, admitting in court that he strangled and dismembered his victims before dumping their bodies along desolate stretches near Gilgo Beach.
The chilling confession brings partial closure to a case that has haunted the New York metro area for more than 30 years.
Inside a Suffolk County courtroom, relatives of the victims listened as Heuermann repeatedly answered with a single word when asked how he carried out the killings.
“Strangulation.”
Prosecutors said the 62-year-old also admitted to dismembering the victims and binding them in burlap before disposing of their remains.
The plea covers the murders of seven women he had already been charged with — plus an eighth victim newly linked to him.
Among them were the so-called “Gilgo Four”: Amber Lynn Costello, Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy, and Maureen Brainard-Barnes — whose disappearances and deaths first drew national attention to the case.
Heuermann also confessed to killing Valerie Mack, Jessica Taylor, and Sandra Costilla, whose murder dates back to 1993, as well as another victim identified as Vergata.
“He will serve three consecutive life sentences with no chance of parole,” prosecutors said.
Heuermann, a Manhattan architect and married father of two from Massapequa Park, had lived for years as what neighbors described as an ordinary suburban figure.
“You know, the regular guy who goes to work, has kids in the local school and in a good neighborhood, but he’s killing people on the side,” one neighbor said after his 2023 arrest.
That arrest — driven by advances in DNA analysis and painstaking investigative work — marked a breakthrough in one of the nation’s most notorious unsolved serial killer cases.
Heuermann is scheduled to be sentenced on June 17.
[h/t The New York Post]
