NEW YORK (AP) — The man who recently pleaded guilty to a string of murders in Gilgo Beach, New York, told his ex-wife in jail that he killed most of his female victims in the basement of their dilapidated home, the latest episode in a docuseries shows.
His ex-wife, Asa Ellerup, said in a trailer for the episode airing Thursday on NBC streaming service Peacock that Rex Scheuermann also told her that the eight women he admitted to killing were his only victims.
Ellerup later said in the trailer that he told her he killed seven of them in the basement of their home in Massapequa Park, Long Island, while she was away.
“I said to him, ‘Mr. Heuermann, I know you admitted these murders to me. Can you tell me how many women you killed?'” she said in the 90-second clip. “He said, ‘eight.'”
Ellerup said she purposely did not use her ex-husband’s name as a way to “build a wall” between the two.
“When he started talking, I started feeling like this was the Rex I knew,” she said. “But I don’t want to see that person. I want to see the person I need to see.”
The latest and final episode of Gilgo Beach: House of Secrets follows the release of the first three episodes of the series last June. Another documentary, “Killing Fields: The Gilgo Beach Murders,” will also be released on Amazon’s streaming service Prime Video on Wednesday.
Ellerup’s attorney, Robert Macedonio, declined to discuss other new details revealed in the new episode of the Peacock documentary.
“For the family of Rex Scheuermann, enduring and coming to terms with the accusations that Rex Scheuermann was the Gilgo Beach serial killer has been an extremely emotional and painful process,” he said in an email. “Ms. Ellerup hopes the focus remains where it belongs – on the victims and their families, who have suffered an immeasurable and lasting loss.”
Vess Mitev, a lawyer for the couple’s two adult children, Victoria and Chris, said the pair “echoed their mother’s feelings and just want to do their best to move on given this very dark chapter in their lives.”
Scheuermann’s attorney did not respond to an email seeking comment.
The early episodes of the documentary show the family struggling to connect their memories of the architect, who had an office in Manhattan, with the portrait of the killer painted by authorities.
Ellerup, who divorced Scheuermann after his arrest in 2023, staunchly defended her ex-husband’s innocence during earlier incidents. But her daughter eventually admitted that her father “probably” committed the brutal slaying, which troubled investigators and sparked intense interest among true crime watchers for years.
The saga ended earlier this month when Heuermann, 62, of Massapequa Park, admitted in a Riverhead courtroom to the murders of seven women and an eighth woman in 17 years for whom he has yet to be charged.
Scheuermann told the court that he strangled the women, many of them sex workers, and dismembered some of their bodies before dumping them on a deserted boulevard not far from Gilgo Beach on Long Island, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Manhattan.
He will be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in June.
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Follow Philip Marcelo on X: @philmarcelo.
