Asa Ellerup, the ex-wife of confessed Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann, is now living in the same Massapequa Park home where her former husband told her he murdered seven of his eight victims. She sleeps upstairs. The kill room sits below her in the basement.
That detail, first reported by the Daily Mail, lands at a moment when the full scope of what happened inside that Long Island residence is still sinking in for the public, for investigators, and apparently for Ellerup herself. Heuermann pleaded guilty on April 8 to killing eight women tied to the Gilgo Beach case, whose remains were found on Long Island between 2010 and 2011. Seven of those killings, he told Ellerup, took place in a downstairs room of the family home while she was away.
Ellerup's account of what Heuermann told her from jail is now central to a Peacock documentary. In a teaser clip, she described a direct exchange with the man she had been married to for decades.
"I said to him, 'So Mr. Heuermann, I understand that you are confessing to me on these murders. Can you please tell me how many of these women did you kill?' He said, 'Eight.'"
That quote, drawn from AP News reporting on the documentary, captures the clinical tone Ellerup says Heuermann used when he finally spoke plainly about his crimes. He told her the eight women were his only victims. He told her she was not home during any of the killings. And he told her all but one died in his room downstairs.
Ellerup had previously defended Heuermann's innocence publicly. The shift from loyal spouse to a woman recounting a serial killer's jailhouse confession marks one of the more striking reversals in a case already full of them.
Heuermann, a New York City architect, operated for years without detection. Investigators have described a methodical killer who planned carefully and exploited the routines of his own household. As CLN previously reported, the basement of the Massapequa Park home played a central role in how Heuermann lured and killed his victims.
All of the women, Ellerup said her ex-husband told her, were killed in his room downstairs "except one." Just The News reported that Ellerup recounted this detail in the Peacock documentary, adding that Heuermann specifically told her she had not been present for any of the murders.
That claim raises its own questions. Investigators have not publicly confirmed whether forensic evidence supports the timeline Heuermann described to his ex-wife, or whether his account of her absence during each killing can be independently verified. A confession to a spouse is not the same as a confession tested under cross-examination, and Heuermann's version of events, even where it overlaps with his guilty plea, carries the obvious self-interest of a man who may want to shield certain details or shape his own narrative.
Ellerup offered one other remark in the documentary teaser that stands out for its quiet weight.
"When he started talking, it started feeling like that's the Rex I know."
The line suggests that Heuermann's confession did not arrive as a shock in tone, even if the content was horrifying. Ellerup appeared to recognize something familiar in the way he spoke about the killings. Whether that familiarity points to a pattern she had long sensed but never confronted, or simply reflects the cadence of a man she lived with for years, is something only she can answer.
As CLN covered when the story first broke, Heuermann told his wife about the killings and life at home continued. The domestic normalcy that apparently persisted even after his arrest and initial denials is one of the most disturbing threads in the case.
The Daily Mail reported that Ellerup has moved back into the Massapequa Park house and now resides there. The property had been the Heuermann family home for years before Rex Heuermann's arrest in July 2023. Authorities searched it extensively during the investigation, and the basement became a focal point of both the criminal case and public fascination.
Ellerup's decision to return to the house has not been explained publicly in detail. Investigators have not said whether the property remains subject to any ongoing forensic interest or legal holds. The house itself, in a quiet Long Island neighborhood, became one of the most recognizable addresses in American true crime after Heuermann's arrest.
Heuermann's guilty plea in April closed one chapter of the legal case but opened others. His admission covered eight murders. The bodies of the victims were discovered on or near Gilgo Beach between 2010 and 2011, but the killings themselves spanned a longer period. Heuermann told Ellerup the eight women were his only victims, a claim authorities have not publicly confirmed or denied.
Since his guilty plea, Heuermann has entered into a cooperation arrangement with the FBI. As CLN reported, he agreed to let federal investigators study his psychology as part of a broader effort to understand serial offenders. That deal raised eyebrows among victims' advocates and legal observers who questioned what, if anything, Heuermann gains from the arrangement.
Investigators will need to determine whether Heuermann's statements to Ellerup and to authorities are fully consistent, whether his claim of eight total victims holds up, and whether the basement yields any forensic evidence that has not yet been made public. The Gilgo Beach case consumed Long Island law enforcement for more than a decade before Heuermann's arrest. Even with a guilty plea on the books, the full picture of what happened in that house may still be incomplete.
The documentary featuring Ellerup's account is expected to bring renewed public attention to the case and to the question of what a spouse knew, or chose not to know, while living under the same roof as a serial killer. Ellerup's willingness to speak publicly, after years of defending Heuermann, represents a significant turn. But her decision to move back into the house where seven women were killed adds a layer that no documentary can fully explain.
The Gilgo Beach case tested Long Island law enforcement, exposed gaps in how missing persons cases involving sex workers were prioritized, and forced a reckoning with how long a killer can operate in plain sight. Heuermann lived as a working professional, a husband, and a father while carrying out murders in his own basement.
Ellerup now occupies that same space. The basement where Heuermann says he killed seven women sits directly below the rooms where she eats, sleeps, and goes about her day. No amount of renovation changes what happened there.
When a confessed serial killer's ex-wife moves back into the house he used as a killing floor, it tells you something about how far the ripple effects of these crimes travel and how strangely the people closest to them learn to keep living.
