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

The daughter of the notorious Happy Face Killer has launched a GoFundMe campaign to help the wife of Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect Rex Heuermann “start her new life”.

Melissa Moore announced her decision to try to help Asa Ellerup as she compared their experiences discovering that a close family member had spent years leading a “double life” as an alleged serial killer.

“Today, I have an opportunity to use my voice to help Asa, who isn’t in a place to speak about the terror and horror she and her family are experiencing at this moment,” she said.

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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.

The wife of Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect Rex Heuermann has stayed in contact with him since his bombshell arrest for the murders of at least three women, it has been revealed.

Asa Ellerup – who has been married to the accused serial killer for more than 20 years and shares two adult children with him – has spoken to her husband in “personal” jailhouse phone calls while he remains behind bars in Suffolk County jail, her attorney Robert Macedonio told CNN on Tuesday.

“I believe there has [been contact] but you have to realise any phone calls are recorded out of the facility,” he said, declining to detail the contents of those conversations.

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The Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect had a somewhat blase reaction when a group of plain-clothes police officers swooped on him in the heart of a busy Manhattan street and arrested him in connection to a chilling series of cold case murders, according to authorities.

Rex Heuermann was taken into custody on 13 July as he left the office of his architecture business in midtown Manhattan.

Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison has now revealed the accused serial killer’s first words when officers descended on him more than 13 years after the victims’ bodies were found discarded along Gilgo Beach, Long Island.

Mr Harrison told NBC News that the 59-year-old married father-of-two was dismissive of the allegations – but then quickly lawyered up.

“He very much said, ‘What am I here for? I don’t know nothing of what you’re talking about,’” he said.

“He asked for a lawyer – and that was the end of the conversation,” he added.

As the 59-year-old was processed into Suffolk County Jail on a string of murder charges, sources told CNN he did have another chilling question – this time about his newfound notoriety.

“Is it in the news?” he asked.

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’s attorney has said that the suspected Gilgo Beach serial killer is “traumatised” by his sudden arrest – as he claims that the 59-year-old married father-of-two has already been “convicted by the media”.

Attorney Michael Brown told ABC News that he met the accused serial killer for the first time on Friday when he was arraigned on charges for murdering three women and dumping their bodies along the shores of Long Island.

He said that Mr Heuermann seemed normal in the meeting but was “traumatised” by the fact he had been taken into custody over the unsolved killings.

“Nothing struck me as unusual about him. He was articulate, he was intelligent, he was soft-spoken,” he said.

Multiple sex workers have revealed that they held onto recordings of phone calls with the Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect after he contacted them – but they refused to meet with him.

Suffolk County Sheriff Errol Toulon told The Independent in a statement on Monday that officials have been interviewing sex workers as they are booked into local jails about any past encounters they had with Rex Heuermann.

So far, two women have revealed that they not only were in contact with the accused killer but also had made recordings of conversations with him.

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