The wife of an architect charged in a string of slayings known as the Gilgo Beach serial killings released a statement late Wednesday in her husband’s defense, saying she didn’t believe him capable of the brutality of which he is accused.
The statement, released on Asa Ellerup’s behalf by her lawyers, is her first in months since her husband’s arrest in the now-infamous case last July. She has not been charged with any crimes, and investigators say she and her daughter were away on each of the four occasions when Rex Heuermann allegedly killed a woman.
Ellerup filed for divorce from Heuermann days after his arrest, but still visits him weekly, according to her attorneys.
“Nobody deserves to die in that manner,” the statement on Ellerup’s behalf said, with her lawyers sharing her “heartfelt sympathies” for the victims and their families. “I will listen to all of the evidence and withhold judgment until the end of trial. I have given Rex the benefit of the doubt, as we all deserve.”
It wasn’t immediately clear what prompted the statement from Ellerup on Wednesday.
Heuermann was most recently charged in mid-January with a fourth slaying, that of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, a Connecticut mother of two who vanished in 2007 and whose remains were found more than three years later along a coastal highway on Long Island.
The charges came months after he was labeled the prime suspect in her death when he was arrested in July in the deaths of three other women. He pleaded not guilty in Brainard-Barnes’ death, as he had done in the other cases.
Heuermann is being held without bail. He faces several life sentences without parole if convicted.
Heuermann has maintained his innocence from “day one” and looks forward to defending himself in court, attorney Mike Brown has said. Brown said he is still reviewing new information presented by prosecutors in court documents.
“They had little bits of evidence and focused on Rex Heuermann and then they accumulated more evidence and tried to fit that evidence to complete their narrative,” said Brown.
Heuermann was arrested July 14, 2023, in connection with the deaths of Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Lynn Costello, three women who authorities say were sex workers like Brainard-Barnes. The latter was the first to disappear.
Their remains were found along the same quarter-mile stretch of parkway in the Gilgo Beach area of Jones Beach Island in 2010. Additional searching turned up the remains of six more adults and a toddler who was the child of one of the victims.
Investigators have said Heuermann, who lived in Massapequa Park across the bay from where the bodies were found, was probably not responsible for all the deaths. Some of the victims disappeared in the mid-1990s.