Accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann is set to appear in a Long Island courtroom Wednesday morning for a hearing in the bombshell case.
Heuermann, 59, is charged with murder in the deaths of three women who were found dumped along Gilgo Beach in December 2010 — Melissa Barthelemy, 24, Megan Waterman, 22, and Amber Lynn Costello, 27.
He is also the prime suspect in the death of a fourth woman, 25-year-old Maureen Brainard-Barnes — with the victims, all former sex workers, known collectively as the “Gilgo Four.”
Heuermann’s is set to face Justice Timothy Mazzei at 9:30 a.m. for the hearing in Suffolk County Court in Riverside.
More than 10 sets of human remains were found along Ocean Parkway on Long Island’s South Shore in 2010 and 2011, with their deaths a mystery for 13 years.
In January 2022, newly appointed Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison, a decorated former NYPD chief, vowed to reopen the Gilgo investigation — and identified Heuermann as a suspect within three months.
Police used cell phone records, former witness accounts and a DNA link between a slice of pizza from Heuehermann’s Manhattan office and hair found on two of the Gilgo Beach victims to help make their case.
One witness, David Schaller, who described himself as Costello’s roommate, gave police a description fitting Heuermann and even described the architect’s distinctive Chevy Avalanche shortly after she went missing on Sept. 2, 2010, but police did not follow up on the tip for more than a decade.
The hulking architect was taken into custody outside his office on July 13, with investigators then turning their attention to the Massapequa Park home where he grew up and still lived with his family.
Heuermann bought the home from his mother, Dolores, in 1994 before her death, and was living there with his wife, Asa Ellerup, her developmentally disabled son, Christopher Sheridan, and the couple’s daughter, Veronica Heuermann, who worked as a receptionist in her dad’s office.
Ellerup and her kids were kicked out of the home while investigators combed through the house looking for body parts or other evidence for 12 days, even digging up the backyard.
In her first interview since her husband’s arrest, Ellerup told The Post on July 31 that cops left the house in complete shambles — and the family so traumatized that they had trouble sleeping when they returned.
“I woke up in the middle of the night, shivering,” she said. “My children cry themselves to sleep. I mean, they’re not children. They’re grown adults but they’re my children, and my son has developmental disabilities and he cried himself to sleep.”
Ellerup, who married Heuermann in 1996, filed for divorce after his arrest.
According to authorities, Heuermann would frequently solicit escorts on Craigslist and other online sites, while cops found videos with pornographic and violent sex content on his computer.
He pleaded not guilty at his arraignment on the murder charges.
The discovery of the Gilgo Beach bodies stemmed from the search for 23-year-old Shannan Gilbert, a New Jersey escort who vanished on Long Island on May 1, 2010.
Investigators searching for Gilbert stumbled upon the first of the Gilgo Beach bodies in December 2010, and over the following year would uncover the other bodies — including Gilbert’s, which was found on Dec. 13, 2011, in a marshy area in Oak Beach, about 7 miles from the Gilgo Four.
Gilbert’s death and that of the other victims found along Ocean Parkway remain unsolved.
