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RIVERHEAD, N.Y. — Asa Ellerup, the ex-wife of convicted Long Island serial killer Rex Heuermann, said through her attorney Friday that the 62-year-old architect “got what he deserved” when a New York judge hit him with the maximum possible sentence this week for a string of murders between 1993 and 2010.
“She believes the sentence is appropriate for his crimes, and obviously he got what he deserved,” said Ellerup’s attorney, Bob Macedonio. “You can’t kill eight people. She’d never condone any of that.”
Heuermann has not yet been in contact with his ex-wife or children since being transferred out of the Suffolk County Jail Thursday, Macedonio said. He was being processed at Green Haven Correctional Facility in Stormville, New York, but it was not immediately clear where he will serve his sentence.
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Gilgo serial killer Rex Heuermann appears inside a courtroom for sentencing at Suffolk County Court in Riverhead, N.Y., on June 16, 2026. (James Carbone/Newsday)
Ellerup infamously revealed that she now sleeps in the room where her ex tortured and killed seven of the eight victims in the latest episode of “The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets” docuseries on Peacock.
“The brutal truth is that Rex Heuermann said he dismembered the bodies in this room,” she says in the episode. “That is the brutal truth. OK. 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.”
Judge Timothy Mazzei ripped into the hulking Heuermann at sentencing Wednesday, calling him a “coward” and “small man” for the “despicable” murders of eight women, all around 100 pounds and 5 feet tall.
“Mr. Heuermann, as Mr. Tierney said, I know that you’re sorry you got caught. I assume that you’re sorry for what you’ve done to your wife and children. Are you a little bit sorry for what you did to these poor, innocent women?” Mazzei asked. “Eight women that you strangled to death — at least eight, that we know of. Are you at least a little bit sorry for that? Yes?”
Rex Heuermann’s victims: Sandra Costilla, Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, Amber Costello, Valerie Mack, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Jessica Taylor and Karen Vergata. (Insets: Suffolk County Police Department, Background: Michael Ruiz/Fox News Digital)
“Yes, I am,” Heuermann responded.
“You know what, you’ve been described as a very big man, but you’re a disgusting and despicable small man, if you’re a man at all,” an audibly emotional Mazzei replied. “And you’re a coward.”
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Asa Ellerup attends a press conference at the Suffolk County Courthouse in Riverhead, N.Y., on Jan. 16, 2024. (Robert Miller/Fox News Digital)
He sentenced Heuermann to three consecutive terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole, to be followed by four consecutive terms of 25 years to life.
After dismissing three lesser charges, Mazzei ordered the bailiffs to “Get him out of here.”
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Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said afterward that local authorities expected to be rid of Heuermann before the end of the week. He was gone the following morning.
Attorney Bob Macedonio speaks to the media during a press conference at the Suffolk County Courthouse in Riverhead, N.Y., on Jan. 16, 2024. Macedonio represents Asa Ellerup, the ex-wife of convicted serial killer Rex Heuermann. (Robert Miller for Fox News Digital)
Ellerup filed for divorce shortly after Heuermann’s arrest outside his Manhattan office on July 13, 2023. Police soon descended on the family’s Massapequa Park home, the only ramshackle house in an otherwise upscale suburban neighborhood about 35 miles east of New York City.
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A general view of Gilgo Beach, New York, on July 19, 2023. The beach is on a barrier island, with the Atlantic Ocean to the south and a marsh where the Gilgo Beach serial killer hid most of his victims’ remains to the north. (Mega for Fox News Digital)
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Since his 2023 arrest, Heuermann was charged with the murders of seven women, and he confessed to killing an eighth during a change-of-plea hearing on April 8.
Tierney has declined to speculate about whether there are more victims, saying what he thinks “doesn’t matter” — and that if investigators obtain more evidence, it would be presented to a grand jury in pursuit of a new indictment.