Rex Heuermann, the New York architect accused of being the Gilgo Beach serial killer, has been linked to two more women whose bodies were found on the Long Island coast, a lawyer for the victims said on Wednesday.
In a press conference with Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison, attorney John Ray unveiled new evidence that he claims connects Heuermann to the deaths of Shannan Gilbert and Karen Vergata.
Gilbert, who lived in Jersey City and worked as an escort, vanished in May 2010 while on her way to meet a client. She was discovered in a marsh near Oak Beach, about half a mile from where she was last seen, in December 2011. The legs and feet of Vergata, who also worked as an escort, were discovered in 1996 on Fire Island, and her skull was found near Gilgo Beach in April 2011.
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Ray said that four witnesses came forward with information about Heuermann, including two who signed affidavits.
The first witness, Ray said, went to Heuermann’s house for a sex party in February 1996 with her boyfriend, who was a cop, and Vergata. Heuermann’s wife, Asa Ellerup, was at the house when they arrived, the witness said in an affidavit. The witness said that Vergata went downstairs and that Heuermann and her boyfriend vanished for a while. During that time, she spoke with Ellerup, who said that Heuermann had “brought her from her country and that everything she had, he has given her,” the affidavit states. Ellerup also allegedly told the witness that she was “afraid of Rex.”
At some point, the witness decided to leave with her boyfriend, who told her Vergata was staying to play a “game” with Heuermann, she said. Before they left, Vergata “suddenly ran outside, naked, and ran about by the garage,” according to the affidavit. The witness said she never heard about Heuermann or Vergata again until the architect was arrested in June.
Ray said the second witness, a banker who moonlights as a taxi driver, once saw Gilbert and Heuerman together when she picked her up in the fall of 2009.
In the affidavit, the witness says that she was dispatched to Sayville Motor Lodge to pick up a female passenger who had “locked herself in a bathroom.” When she arrived, she said she waited several minutes before a “very large man” ran out of the room and a woman entered her car “crying and shaking.”
In the car, the woman told her she’d been lured there by a man for a job. But when she got to the motel, he handed her an envelope of paper scraps instead of money. Later, the affidavit states, the witness realized that the woman she had picked up was Gilbert and the man was Heuermann.
The witness said she had another incident with Heuermann in October 2009, when she picked him up at a bar off Exit 59. When he got into the car, the witness said in the affidavit, he told her they were going for a “long ride in the woods” and said they needed to pick up a girl “who lived in a car across the street.”
When the witness questioned Heuermann, he got angry with her and said he “wanted to kill” her if she gave him a “reason to do so.” “He insisted he wanted to kill me,” the witness said in the affidavit. “I heard him click a gun.” During the incident—which ended with Heuermann getting out of the car—he claimed that he was a Brooklyn cop, the witness said.
Another witness described Heuermann as a “serial user” of sex workers who would sometimes invite two at a time to his house. During several of those encounters, Ray said, the witness told him Heuermann’s wife was upstairs.
Harrison, the police chief, said that he was present for one of the affidavits and that he continues to work with Ray to ensure that “every single stone” is turned over. Ray added that officers accompanied him to interview another witness.
Heuermann’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Robert Macedonio, an attorney representing Ellerup, called Ray’s press conference and his allegations a “desperate attempt to keep himself relevant in a case that has nothing to do with his clients.”
“He has spent the last 12 years chasing his tail in a desperate attempt to find a person to sue civilly,” Macedonio told The Daily Beast. “He has no basis, in fact. Even his claims today don't match the profile of a serial killer. Serial killers don’t hang out with other people. It doesn’t fit the profile. It’s completely outlandish.”
Heuermann, 60, has pleaded not guilty to charges tied to the 2009 and 2010 murders of Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy, and Amber Costello. Prosecutors also say that he is the prime suspect in the murder of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, who went missing in July 2007.
Waterman, Barthekemy, Costello, and Brainard-Barners, all of whom worked as escorts, were dubbed the “Gilgo Four” by the media after their remains were discovered along the Gilgo Beach shore between 2010 and 2011, along with seven other bodies.
Gilbert’s remains were found about a year later, and her family has long been convinced the Suffolk Police Department botched the investigation, which deemed her death accidental.
“Something happened to her that night. She ran for her life,” Gilbert’s sister, Sherre, previously told CBS. “She was in fear.”
In a 911 call released in 2022, a disoriented Gilbert can be heard running away from her client she met on Craigslist and telling the operator that her life is in danger, someone is after her, and that she does not know where she is. While the medical examiner listed her cause of death as undertermined, the Gilberts hired a private pathologist, who said she died of strangulation.
Vergata, a 34-year-old from Manhattan, vanished around February 1996, and her dismembered remains were found on Fire Island shortly after. Her skull and several of her teeth were found in April 2011 on Tobay Beach. She was identified as “Jane Doe 7” until she was identified through genetic genealogy in 2022.
Harrison also told Newsday this week that he assigned two additional investigators to his expansive Gilgo Beach task force to focus on Vergata and Valerie Mack, who vanished in 2000 and were discovered along the Long Island coastline. Other investigators, he said, are focused on identifying the remains of the other three bodies that were found near Gilgo Beach.
The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement Wednesday that prosecutors and the Gilgo Beach Homicide Task Force had no prior knowledge of Ray’s press conference and watched it not knowing “what was going to be reported.” “We will continue to investigate this case through the Grand Jury process and not through press conferences,” the office said in a statement to The Daily Beast.
“No private attorneys are or have ever been members or agents of the Task Force.” The office added that attorneys representing victims or their families “by definition have a conflict of interest and should not be a part of the investigation. Accordingly, private attorneys are not part of the Task Force and potential witnesses should not be reaching out to a private attorney with an interest in the outcome of the case.”
