New Details: As Rex Heuermann is moved from Long Island, attention is turning to the chilling 9-word message from his ex-wife before their split
Good riddance.
The ex-wife of Long Island serial killer Rex Heuermann said Thursday that he got what he had coming — even as the hulking brute was shipped upstate to start serving a life sentence for butchering eight sex workers.
“She believes Rex got what he deserves,” Bob Macedonio, the lawyer for the killer’s former spouse, Asa Ellerup, told The Post. “She believes the sentence was 100% appropriate and her thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families.”
Asa Ellerup, serial killer Rex Heuermann’s ex-wife, said he deserved his life sentence for killing eight sex workers.James Keivom for NY Post
Rex Heuermann admitted he killed wight sex workers between 1993 and 2010 and dumped their bodies.Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office
Heuermann, 62, was sentenced to three life terms in Suffolk County court Wednesday after pleading guilty to strangling his victims to death between 1993 and 2010, torturing and dumping the bodies.
The confessed killer was taken from the Suffolk County jail on Thursday morning transferred to the Green Haven Correctional Facility in Dutchess County, the county sheriff’s office and state officials said.
“Rex Heuermann is currently undergoing admission processing at Green Haven Correctional Facility, one of the department’s designated intake facilities,” a rep for the state Department of Correction and Community Supervision said in an email.
Authorities have not revealed which prison will ultimately be Heuermann’s forever home.
The 6-foot-4 Massapequa Park architect confessed to killing eight women and dumping their bodies along desolate stretches of Long Island, where they were found starting in December 2010.
How The Post covered Rex Heuermann’s sentencing for killing eight Long Island women.
The cases remained unsolved until the investigation was reopened in 2022 and led to Heuermann’s arrest the next year — partly thanks to DNA from a pizza box he tossed in the trash.
In April, Heuermann confessed to killing Amber Lynn Costello, 27; Megan Waterman, 22; Melissa Barthelemy, 24; and Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, who were famously known as the “Gilgo Four” — as well as Valerie Mack, 24; Jessica Taylor, 20; and Sandra Costilla, 28, the first victim killed in 1993.
He also copped to killing Karen Vergata, 34, whose 1996 murder had not been linked to him.
Rex Heuermann’s victims, all young and petite sex workers strangled to death between 1993 and 2010.NY Post Design
Amanda Funderburg, the sister of Gilgo Beach victim Melissa Barthelemy, told her killer in court, “Look at me.”Newsday
All but one of his victims were mercilessly bound and tortured to death in a “kill room” in the family’s basement while Ellerup and the couple’s two children were out of town.
At an emotional sentencing hearing in Riverhead on Wednesday, 13 relatives of the slain women faced the killer for the first time, delivering heart-wrenching victim impact statements.
“Look at me while I’m talking,” Barthelemy’s sister, Amanda Funderburg, told Heuermann.
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She was just 15 when her older sister was murdered in 2009, and forced to endure cruel, threatening and mocking phone calls from Heuerrmann describing the slaying.
“I was forced to live with crippling anxiety, depression, PTSD, and destroyed nervous system constantly staring at my phone,” Funderberg told the killer. “Because of the several times you had called me from my sister’s phone telling me she was a whore.”
Judge Timothy Mazzei teared up during victim impact statements, then hit Rex Heuermann with three life sentences.James Carbone/Pool Newsday via AP
Judge Timothy Mazzei, who wiped tears from his eyes during the victims’ statements, then asked Heuermann if he had anything to say, snapping at him, “Stand up!”
“There are no words I can say, but I am responsible for what was said in this room today,” Heuermann said. “The words I would say have no meaning and I’m going to leave it there at this time.”
Then it was the judge’s turn.
“I know that you’re sorry you got caught. I assume that you’re sorry for what you did to your wife and children,” Mazzei said. “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 and you’re a coward.”
The judge then turned to court officers — “Get him out of here.”
