The wife of Rex Heuermann, the suspected Gilgo Beach serial killer, said Wednesday that she doesn’t believe that he is “capable” of having committed the violent crimes.
“I will listen to all of the evidence and withhold judgment until the end of trial. I have given him the benefit of the doubt, as we all deserve,” Asa Ellerup said in a statement issued through her attorney, Robert Macedonio.
On July 14, the authorities announced a long-awaited break in several cold cases, arresting Heuermann in connection with the deaths of Melissa Barthelemy, 24; Amber Lynn Costello, 27; and Megan Waterman, 22, who were last seen in 2009 and 2010. In January, Heuermann was charged in the death of a fourth woman: Maureen Brainard-Barnes, a 25-year-old mother of two from Connecticut who went missing in 2007. At the time of their disappearances, all four women had been working as escorts. Their remains were discovered in 2010 near Gilgo Beach on Long Island, wrapped in burlap sacks.
In her statement, Ellerup expressed her “heartfelt sympathies” toward the victims and their families. “Nobody deserves to die in that manner,” she said. Though Ellerup filed for divorce shortly after Heuermann was arrested, she visits him weekly in prison and “still maintains that Rex is not capable of the crimes he is accused of,” per her attorney.
Heuermann, an architect from Massapequa Park, was connected to the murders using cell-tower data as well as DNA from a pizza crust he threw away in midtown Manhattan, where he previously worked. Investigators linked the DNA found on the discarded scraps to a male hair discovered on Waterman’s body. Heuermann is currently facing numerous charges of murder in the first and second degree to which he had pleaded not guilty. He’s been held in prison without bail since his arrest.
