The wife of Gilgo Beach killer Rex Heuermann has revealed that she has returned to the Long Island, NY, home she shared with him—and is now sleeping in the basement where he told her he had “dismembered” several of his victims.
Asa Ellerup, who filed for divorce from Heuermann in 2023, soon after he was arrested in connection with the Gilgo Beach killings, shared the revelation in a new episode of the Peacock documentary series, “The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets.”
While the first installments of the show were released in 2025, a new episode is being debuted on April 23, two weeks after Heuermann, 62, pled guilty to the murders of Melissa Barthelemy, 24, Megan Waterman, 22, Amber Costello, 27, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, Jessica Taylor, 20, Sandra Costilla, 28, and Valerie Mack, 24, and Karen Vergata.
Speaking to the camera, Ellerup said that her husband told her in a private confession that he had murdered seven of his eight victims—who were killed between 1993 and 2010—inside the basement of their home.
However, she said that she still feels a “spiritual” connection to the basement space at the Massapequa Park, NY, home, although she admitted that she has been “haunted by dreams” since moving into it.
“The brutal truth is that Rex Heuermann said he dismembered the bodies in this room. That is the brutal truth, OK?” she said. “Now there’s me; I’m in this room, and I’m here because I do feel spiritual. I am trying to say spiritually, in my own way, that I am really sorry for what these victims went through.”
Heuermann’s ex-wife, whose divorce was finalized in March 2025, said that she does not believe she will ever be able to escape her former spouse’s crimes, admitting that she fears it will “follow” her forever.
“I am haunted by dreams every night,” she said. “It will never go away. It will follow me for the rest of my life. There will never be any justice for anyone, and there will never be any way to forget about this.”
Ellerup revealed she moved into the space about a month before her husband entered his guilty plea on April 8, noting that she carried out an extensive gut renovation of the basement before she began using it as her bedroom.
“This whole basement looks very different; it’s been completely gutted and redone, new floor, new walls, new moldings, new doors,” she explained.
As part of Heuermann’s plea bargain, he was given the chance to meet with his former spouse and their daughter, Victoria Heuermann, in private so that he could confess his crimes to them in person, before appearing in court.
Both women appear in the documentary, in which Victoria revealed that her father told her during that meeting that “his demons got to him.”
However, Ellerup said that Heuermann’s confession has left her with many more questions—namely, how he managed to lead a double life for nearly 20 years, acting as the ideal family man, while carrying out such horrifying crimes. She also hints that her desire to better understand the secret parts of his life prompted her to move into the basement.
“I want to get to know the other side of Rex. I want to know why Rex killed these women, what his triggers were,” she said. “I am processing the information in a very different way because now I see evil in him.”
The release of the latest episode in the documentary comes just weeks after Heuermann suddely changed his plea from not guilty to guilty, having struck a deal with prosecutors—which will see him sentenced in June to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Heuermann agreed as part of the deal to also confess to the murder of Vergata—whose death he had not previously been charged with.
Appearing in a packed Suffolk County courtroom, Heuermann pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder and four counts of intentional murder.
When questioned by Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney, he confessed to having strangled all eight of his victims and dismembering some, before dumping their bodies in various locations across Long Island, where they were later discovered.
Heuermann was arrested in Manhattan in July 2023, after the police built up a trove of evidence—which was later added to after they raided the family’s Massapequa Park home, where prosecutors say they found a basement vault that contained 279 guns. Authorities later deduced that Heuermann had tortured several of his victims on the lower level of the dwelling.
Authorities ultimately spent 12 days searching the property, including the yard, where Tierney said in 2023 they found “a tremendous amount of information” to link Heuermann to the crimes.
At a press conference following the hearing, Tierney issued an apology to the families of the victims, many of whom worked as escorts, while praising those involved in finally bringing Heuermann to justice.
Tierney further described how the murderer had painted himself as “the harmless father next door” in a bid to hide his horrifying crimes, telling reporters: “He thought that by killing them he could silence them forever and get away with murder. But he was wrong.”
Heuermann’s defense attorney, Michael Brown, revealed that his client does not plan to reveal details about how his crimes were committed during his sentencing hearing, but said that he chose to plead guilty because he wanted to spare the victims’ families the ordeal of going through a lengthy trial.
“He certainly wanted to save the families of the victims the ordeal of going to trial, coupled with saving his family from that,” Brown explained.
The attorney noted that Heuermann, who shares daughter Victoria and stepson Christopher Sheridan with his ex-wife, had spoken to his family about his desire to avoid a trial.
Ellerup appeared in the courtroom to watch her former spouse enter his guilty plea, before sharing a very brief statement in which she expressed her sympathy for the families of his victims.
“My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families,” she said. “Their loss is immeasurable, and the focus should be on them at this time in the moment.”
Ellerup was joined in court by her daughter, who was seen breaking down in tears as her father entered his guilty plea.
Victoria has previously spoken out about her father’s case in the original episodes of “The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets,” in which she described Heuermann as “an open book.”
Victoria further described her life at home with her father, whom she admitted would sometimes come home from work “frustrated,” but insisted he was never violent in their house.
Before Ellerup revealed that she had moved back into the home, it was understood to have remained vacant for several months. In November 2024, the mother of two had revealed that the family were all planning to move out of the property and relocate to South Carolina, where they already owned property that had been purchased as a retirement house.
According to The New York Times, a large shipping container was seen outside the single-story property soon after Ellerup shared her plans, leading many to believe she had vacated the home for good.
Ellerup’s lawyer, Robert Macedonio, stated in November 2024 that his client was planning to list the property as soon as her divorce from Heuermann was finalized, revealing that she no longer felt any “emotional attachment” to the house.
“People constantly stop in front of the house to gawk and point and take pictures,” he said. “She’s lost any emotional attachment she had to the premises because of everything that’s gone on, and the only way she can start recovering is to move.”
However, it appears that Heuermann’s confession to the crimes may have changed Ellerup’s mind about leaving the house behind for good and property records show that the dwelling is now registered solely in her name.
Several of Heuermann’s neighbors have expressed their desire that the property be demolished so that those who remain in the community can start to move past the horrors that are said to have taken place inside it.
“The best thing that could happen is they knock that house down and build a brand-new one so that the memory of all this is obliterated,” local resident Albert Cella told The New York Times in 2024.
Like many properties involved in horrifying crimes of this nature, Heuermann’s dwelling has also become something of a “dark tourism” hot spot, drawing significant attention from true crime obsessives who have visited the site in droves in the years since his arrest.
Vess Mitev, a lawyer for Heuermann and Ellerup’s children, told the Times that neither Christopher nor Victoria felt comfortable walking around the local neighborhood after their father’s arrest, claiming that they routinely found themselves being “photographed” and “catcalled” in the street.
While the family did move back into the home in the aftermath of the police raid, Mitev hinted that they had grown tired of being the constant focus of so much negative attention.
It is unclear exactly what state the property is in; however, Macedonio previously claimed to the outlet that the dwelling sustained significant damage when it was being searched by the authorities, who he alleges tore up floorboards, removed pipes, and even destroyed a bathtub that was left held together by duct tape.
At the time, he stated that Ellerup did not have enough money to pay for the necessary repairs to the dwelling.