Wife of accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann says he's her 'hero'
The wife of accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann says he's her 'hero'' — and that it was like falling in love with him all over again when she first saw him behind bars.
Asa Ellerup, 61, said during an explosive interview in the upcoming Peacock docu-series, 'The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets' that she is convinced cops have the wrong guy — and that her 'wonderful' husband isn't the monster who killed and mutilated seven sex workers on Long Island over nearly 30 years.
'I know what bad men are capable of doing,' she told the show, which begins airing Tuesday. 'I've seen it, and I've heard it from other men. Not my husband. You have the wrong man.'
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9 Asa Ellerup, the wife of accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann, walks outside court with the couple's daughter, Victoria, 28.
Dennis A. Clark
9 Ellerup has called her accused serial killer husband Rex Heuermann her 'hero.'
Peacock
'I want him to come back home to me,' Ellerup said. 'They're trying to sit there and tell me that, but I have no knowledge of what they keep talking about. 'Oh, you must have known.' Know what? My husband was home here. He's a family man, period.'
Heuermann, a hulking Manhattan architect, was arrested in July 2023 at his Midtown office and charged with the cold-case murders of three young sex workers.
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Suffolk County prosecutors later also charged him with the murder and mutilation of four other victims, all also sex workers whose bodies were dumped along Ocean Parkway over nearly 30 years.
He allegedly kept news clips of the brutal slayings in his basement.
Despite a mountain of evidence, including DNA matches to all the victims, among them hairs from Ellerup and the couple's daughter, Victoria, the accused fiend's wife continues to believe her husband is innocent.
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Adopted by Icelandic immigrants, Ellerup met a 'tall, dark, handsome' Heuermann when she was an 18-year-old working at a Long Island 7-11, she said, adding that the pair formed an immediate bond.
9 Ellerup said she was 18 and working at a local 7-11 when she met a 'tall, dark and handsome' Rex Heuermann.
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Ellerup said she was molested at 16 by a classmate, tried to commit suicide and was forced to hide in a dumpster for hours at 19 to foil a kidnapping attempt — making the hulking Heuermann her savior.
She said he has stuck with her through more recent travails, too, including a double mastectomy.
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'He's my hero,' she said. 'There were times where he was working, but I'd call him, and he would come by and pick me up.'
9 The last three victims linked to Heuermann were (from left) Sandra Costilla, Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack.
Suffolk County Police Department
9 Heuermann was arrested July 13, 2023, outside his architecture office in Midtown Manhattan.
Newsday
The pair formed a years-long, platonic bond that eventually turned into a romance as their first marriages fizzled and they moved in together — which led to their wedding in Sweden in 1995.
The next year, their daughter Victoria was born.
These days, Ellerup said, she's brought to tears by the Buddy Holly tune, 'Crying, Waiting, Hoping.'
She denied claims that the couple had 'swinger' parties in the past, calling the notion 'absurd' — and maintained Rex would never ask.
She appeared to be in denial of some of the evidence Suffolk County prosecutors pulled from the couple's home, including sick porn involving videos, claiming she doesn't know if the footage is actually his.
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She also claimed her husband didn't solicit hookers, although she said she believes prostitution should be legal.
9 The slain victims known as the initial 'Gilgo Four' were (clockwise from top left) Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Lynn and Megan Waterman.
Suffolk County Police Department
Ellerup filed for divorce shortly after her husband's arrest, but their daughter maintained in the documentary that the move was 'to protect the assets.'
Despite the divorce filing, Ellerup said she regularly speaks to her husband behind bars.
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'I haven't seen him in all this time, and when I went down there, I was excited, and like I was, I don't know, I guess on a first date. You're nervous, you're scared. You don't know how the date is gonna go,' she said.
But she said she hasn't gone to see him in several months and is paranoid about their conversations being recorded behind bars — which makes her afraid to be open with him.
9 Ellerup is escorted from the Suffolk County Courthouse after a hearing for her husband.
Dennis A. Clark
9 Heuermann lived in his mother's former home in Massapequa Park and had an architecture firm in Manhattan.
Rex Heuermann Consultants & Associates
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'Telling him that I love him, that will hurt him,' Ellerup said. 'What I want to say to him is, 'I love you, no matter what.' But I don't even want to say 'no matter what' because I don't believe he did this. I don't see what everybody else is saying. I don't see phone calls to sex workers.
'I'm trying to keep myself sane,' she said. 'At the same time, people are saying, 'How could you not know that your husband was a serial killer?' Wait a minute, I picked him up from the train station every single day. He was home here on the weekends. He smoked a cigar in the garage.'
9 Ellerup and Heuermann were married in Sweden in 1995.
Peacock
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'If he told me that he went out to Lowe's to pick something up and he was gone for an hour, no freaking way is this man going out soliciting sex from a sex worker, killing them and dumping them on Gilgo Beach.'
She did have one issue with her embattled husband — she doesn't like his new haircut.
Additional reporting by Mikella Schuettler and David DeTurris
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