He strangled the women, many of them sex workers, over a 17-year span and buried their remains in remote locations
4-MIN READ4-MIN ListenAssociated PressPublished: 12:03am, 9 Apr 2026A Long Island architect who led a secret life as a serial killer pleaded guilty on Wednesday to murdering seven women and admitted he killed an eighth in a string of long-unsolved crimes known as the Gilgo Beach killings.
Rex Heuermann, 62, entered the pleas in a courtroom packed with reporters, police and victims’ relatives, some of whom wept as he detailed his crimes for the court. He will be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole at a later date.
Heuermann’s guilty pleas – to three counts of first-degree murder and four of intentional murder – bring finality to a case that bedevilled investigators, agonised victims’ relatives and tantalised a true-crime obsessed public for years. Although he was not charged in her death, he also admitted that he killed Karen Vergata in 1996.
Heuermann strangled the women, many of them sex workers, over a 17-year span and buried their remains in remote locations, including along an isolated beach highway across the bay from where he lived, authorities said.
Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney has scheduled a news conference for later Wednesday. He will be joined by victims’ family members and members of the Gilgo Beach Homicide Investigation task force, which cracked the case with the help of clues that included DNA lifted from a discarded pizza crust.
The investigation began in earnest in 2010 after police found numerous sets of human remains while searching for a missing woman along Long Island’s South Shore, setting off a search for a potential serial killer that attracted global interest and spawned a Hollywood movie.
