The former wife of Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann says she is now sleeping in the “kill room” where he murdered seven of his victims – revelations that come as she also disclosed that he confessed the killings to her eight months before he publicly changed his plea to guilty.
In the final episode of Peacock’s The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets, released Thursday, Asa Ellerup is filmed walking down the stairs into the renovated room in the basement of the Massapequa Park, Long Island home they once shared.
“The brutal truth is that Rex Heuermann said he dismembered the bodies in this room,” she tells the film crew in the episode. “That is the brutal truth, OK?”
“Now there’s me, I’m in this room and I’m here because I do feel spiritual,” she continues. “I am trying to say spiritually, in my own way, that I am really sorry for what these victims went through.”
Ellerup was in court in Riverhead on April 8 when Heuermann pleaded guilty to the murders of seven women and admitted to the murder of an eighth victim as part of his plea deal. But the former Manhattan architect and family man had confessed directly to Ellerup in August 2025 – months before that plea deal ever became public.
“I said to him, ‘So Mr. Heuermann, I understand that you are confessing to me on those murders,” she recounts to her attorney Bob Macedonio. “Can you tell me how many of these women did you kill?’”
“He said, ‘eight.’”
Macedonio questions her about the number, asking “Who was the eighth? Because he’s charged with seven.”
“I didn’t ask,” she replied.
Ellerup, who filed for divorce from Huermann after his 2023 arrest, described him as being “very nervous – very, very nervous” as he prepared to speak with her. She says he insisted the eight women he confessed to killing were his only victims.
In order to have the conversation she “put a wall up” — by using formalities and calling him “Mr. Huermann,” as if he wasn’t her husband of 27 years.
“When he started talking, it started feeling like ‘that’s the Rex I know,’” Ellerup says. “But I didn’t want to see that one, I wanted to see the one I needed to see.”
Ellerup says in the documentary that she now believes her former husband is the Gilgo Beach serial killer – and says the trauma remains constant.
“I am haunted by dreams every night,” she said. “It will never go away. It will follow me for the rest of my life.”
Heuermann, 62, an architectural consultant, was arrested in July 2023. Investigators linked him to the killings through DNA evidence recovered from a discarded pizza crust outside his Manhattan office.
Earlier this month, he pleaded guilty to murdering seven women – Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, Amber Lynn Costello, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Jessica Taylor, Sandra Costilla and Valerie Mack – ending a case that had baffled investigators for more than a decade.
Heuermann also admitted in court that he “caused the death” of Karen Vergata, a Manhattan mother of two, who disappeared in 1996. Her skull was found on Ocean Parkway in 2011 but her name was not released until 2023.
Heuermann was never charged in Vergata’s death. He admitted to her murder as part of his plea deal. Heuermann admitted to strangling all of the women and dismembering some of them.
According to Ellerup, Heuermann told her that most of the killings happened inside their Massapequa Park home while she and their children were away.
“He said yes, they were killed in his room downstairs, all except one,” she says. “He said I wasn’t home during all of them.”
Most of the victims’ remains were later discovered along the desolate area of Gilgo Beach.
According to the documentary, Heuermann also revealed to a therapist he followed a chilling, methodical pattern: grooming victims, killing them in the basement, spending a day with their bodies, then timing disposal runs to a beach roughly 20 miles away.
“He would hit the timer, dump the body, get back in the truck and hit the timer again,” therapist Alison Winter said. “Clearly, he enjoyed killing and it became a sickness for him. It became an outlet. It became an obsession.”
The killings, which spanned from 1993 to 2010, were largely carried out inside the family’s Long Island home, with at least one victim killed in the marital bed and others dismembered in the basement, according to the documentary.
Heuermann’s confession to his family was a condition of his plea agreement, which had been negotiated for about a year.
Asked whether hearing his admission brought clarity, Ellerup said: “Yes and no. Clarity comes from much more than just him saying something. But now that I know, it’s easier for me to move forward.”
Heuermann, speaking in the series over the phone, described the confession as necessary.
“It was something I needed to do face-to-face, and to be honest with each other,” he said. “It needed to be done. Person-to-person, heart-to-heart. I went in, just as an open book.”
The Peacock documentary has drawn criticism after reports that the family was paid more than $1 million for their participation.
Prior to the release of the final episode this week, Ellerup’s attorney said in a statement: “This has been an extremely emotional and painful process for the family to endure and come to terms with the allegations that Rex Heuermann was the Gilgo Beach serial killer. Ms. Ellerup would like the focus to remain where it belongs – on the victims and their families, who have suffered immeasurable and lasting losses.”
Heuermann, who admitted in court to strangling the victims and disposing of their remains across Suffolk County, is expected to receive multiple life sentences at his upcoming sentencing on June 17.
