Gilgo Beach murders - update: Police identify victim Karen Vergata but won’t comment on Rex Heuermann link

The wife of Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect Rex Heuermann broke her silence in her first interview this week where she revealed that she has been left filled with “anxiety” and their two children “cry themselves to sleep” over the horror.

“I woke up in the middle of the night, shivering... anxiety,” Asa Ellerup told The New York Post.

“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.”

Their daughter Victoria has been left feeling “not human”, with Ms Ellerup’s lawyer Bob Macedonio explaining that the family had been treated “like animals”.

Ms Ellerup spoke out as she said that the family’s home in Massapequa Park had been left in tatters by investigators who spent almost two weeks combing through the property for evidence connected to the murders or for trophies the accused killer took from his victims.

Images show the bathtub with holes cut out and possessions strewn everywhere.

Mr Macedonio told the Post that he is making an itemised list of the damage to send to the DA’s office.

Attorneys for accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann have received a massive amount of evidence to review from the prosecution.

Mr Heuermann, the Manhattan architect accused of murdering at least three women and dumping their bodies along a remote stretch of shore in the Long Island community of Gilgo Beach, appeared in court on Tuesday for the first time since his arraignment.

Mr Heuermann is charged with killing Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Lynn Costello, who disappeared in 2009 and 2010. Prosecutors say he’s also the main suspect in the death of a fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, who vanished in 2007.

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Rex Heuermann appeared in court in Suffolk County on Tuesday for a brief preliminary hearing.

His next court date was set for 27 September when he will appear for a pre-trial conference hearing.

Back in 2010, very few people knew the name Gilgo Beach.

The small beach in Long Island didn’t have the same draw for New York day-trippers or staycationers as the shores along other oceanfront towns like Montauk or East Hampton.

And for anyone outside of New York state, they’d likely never even heard of it.

That all changed one night in May when a terrified woman called 911 begging for help to save her from someone she believed was trying to kill her.

A search of the area for the missing woman followed – and what it uncovered was something that placed Gilgo Beach on the map forever.

The Independent’s Rachel Sharp reports:

“While news of the arrest of Long Island resident Rex Heuermann on multiple counts of murder may have sent ripples of shock through his community, the revelation that a “normal” man was capable of such heinous acts of violence was hardly surprising for sex workers and their advocates. Violence – including infrequent but horrendous instances of serial predators and killers – is too often a reality for those engaged in sexual labour.

“Media coverage has typically focused on dissecting the police investigation, and now the killer’s biography. Of course, the media has long been interested in stories of serial killers preying on sex workers, and there has been no shortage of such cases. From the sensationalist reporting of Jack the Ripper in Victorian-era London to the Yorkshire Ripper case in 1970s England, from Robert Pickton’s terrorising of Indigenous women in Vancouver (1990s) to Seattle’s “Green River Killer” (1980s-90s), serial predators have long targeted people in the sex trades. The Dallas police have just arrested a man on suspicion of the murders of three sex workers.”

Dr Jayne Swift writes:

In a statement released through her lawyers Macedonio & Duncan, Rex Heuermann’s wife has pleaded to be left alone.

“On behalf of my family and especially my elderly neighbors, who have also had their lives turned upside down by the enormous police presence, in addition to the spectators, and news crews,” Ms Ellerup’s statement read.

“They deserve to live peacefully; they should be able to walk their dogs and go to the grocery stores without cameras shoved in their faces.

“I am pleading with you all to give us space so that we may regain some normalcy in our neighborhood.”

His Manhattan business describes him as a registered architect with over 30 years’ experience.

His neighbours describe him as a “family man” living with his wife and two children in a tight-knit community in Suffolk County.

But now authorities are describing him as the suspected Gilgo Beach serial killer who unleashed terror along the shores of Long Island more than a decade ago.

So who is Rex Heuermann?

It’s taken 13 years but Suffolk County Police finally say they’ve caught the serial killer who dumped his victims along the shores of Gilgo Beach – thanks to a pimp’s tip about his pickup truck, a stash of burner phones, his wife’s hair and a pizza crust.

Rachel Sharp reports:

A New Jersey prosecutor said Tuesday that the murders of several sex workers on Long Island do not appear to be related to the unsolved killings of four sex workers near Atlantic City in 2006.

Atlantic County Prosecutor William Reynolds said detectives from his office met recently with detectives from Suffolk County, New York and compared information on the two sets of homicides.

Officers from both agencies compared “timelines, dates, methodologies, etc. of both cases,” the prosecutor said.

“There does not seem to be a connection between the suspect in the Gilgo Beach case and the Atlantic County homicides from 2006,” he said.

Representatives of the Suffolk County Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

Ever since the bodies were found on Long Island, speculation quickly arose as to whether the killings might have been carried out by the same person or persons that killed four women whose bodies were found in a drainage ditch behind a string of seedy motels just outside Atlantic City in 2006.

The two sets of homicides involved sex workers whose bodies were dumped in remote, overgrown areas not far from the ocean.

No one has been charged in the New Jersey cases, which happened in Egg Harbor Township, near Atlantic City.

Reynolds said those cases remain open and active.

“Authorities will continue to follow all leads until the perpetrator of those crimes is brought to justice,” he said.

A joint investigation is being carried out by Atlantic City and Egg Harbor Township police, as well as state and federal law enforcement officers.

AP contributed to this report