Gilgo Beach serial killer pleads guilty to killing 8 women

Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann pleaded guilty Wednesday to killing eight sex workers and dumping their bodies around Long Island, N.Y., since 1993.

In Suffolk County court, Heuermann, 62, repeatedly answered, “Strangulation,” when asked how he murdered each of the women, the New York Post reported.

He also confessed to dismembering the women and tying them up in burlap.

“He will serve three consecutive life sentences with no chance of parole,” prosecutors said.

Heuermann murdered Amber Lynn Costello, Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy, and Maureen Brainard-Barnes – who were known as the “Gilgo Four” – in addition to Valerie Mack, Jessica Taylor, Sandra Costilla, and Karen Vergata, with the first victim killed in 1993.

Heuermann, a married father of two, was arrested in 2023, and will be sentenced on June 17.

New DNA evidence helped Suffolk investigators crack the cold case.

Prosecutors said Heuermann killed all the women in the basement of his home in a Nassau neighborhood.

Heuermann's family has claimed they were unaware of what he was allegedly doing in his spare time.

He also had a Tinder account and contacted prostitutes on burner phones more than 500 times, prosecutors said last month. Heuermann made “significant searches for pornography related to bindings, torture, rape, snuff videos, crying, bruised and impaled women and/or girls,” according to prosecutors.

He had long maintained his innocence while his legal defense team tried to contest DNA evidence and point to other potential suspects.