Gilgo Beach killer sentenced; Peacock, Netflix docuseries examine case
June 19 (UPI) -- Rex Heuermann was sentenced Wednesday to multiple life terms without parole in the Gilgo Beach killings case. Here are two recent docuseries that examine the murders, investigation and victims.
The most recent series, The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets, began streaming in June on Peacock. It features interviews with the family of Heuermann, the Long Island architect convicted in the killings.
The other, Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer, premiered in March on Netflix. It is a follow-up to director Liz Garbus' 2020 filmLost Girls, which dramatized the effort of one of the missing women's mother to find justice for the alleged victims, all of whom worked in the sex industry.
Heuermann was sentenced Wednesday to multiple life terms without the possibility of parole after pleading guilty in April to the murders of seven women.
Police arrested him in 2023 after a witness reported seeing a vehicle that matched one he drove. They were able to match his DNA to a hair found on one of the victims' bodies.
Heuermann pleaded guilty to the murders of Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Costello, Megan Waterman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Sandra Costilla, Valerie Mack and Jessica Taylor. He also admitted responsibility for the death of Karen Vergata.
Costilla, 28, was the first woman tied to the alleged serial killings to be found dead in 1993 in North Sea, N.Y. Police said the Queens woman had been strangled and left in a wooded area.
Mack's partial remains were found in November 2000 in Manorville, N.Y., though she wasn't identified until 2020. Taylor's partial remains were also found in Manorville in July 2003 and identified later that year.
Four of the women Heuermann admitted killing -- Barthelemy, Brainard-Barnes, Costello and Waterman -- are collectively known as the Gilgo Four. They were each found along the same stretch of remote dunes called Gilgo Beach in December 2010 wrapped in burlap and bound with belts or tape.
Brainard-Barnes went missing in July 2007, Barthelemy in July 2009, Waterman in June 2010 and Costello in September 2010. They were identified in January 2011, with police revealing that each had advertised themselves as prostitutes online.
In the years after Costilla's death, police found Karen Vergata's remains on Fire Island in April 1996. Heuermann admitted responsibility for her death.
Another woman who worked as a prostitute, Shannan Gilbert, also went missing in 2010 after calling police while fleeing from a client. Her remains were found in 2011 in a marsh in Oak Beach, N.Y., but medical examiners said she died of an accidental drowning.
The three-episode Netflix docuseries dives deeper into the mysterious rash of killings and disappearances that had plagued Long Island's sex industry for decades. The series focuses on how the friends and family members of the women refused to give up searching for their loved ones and sought justice for their deaths.
"These women knew that there was a need to shake [up] the establishment to get attention for this case," Garbus said in a press release. "Of course, they shouldn't have [had] to work so hard. The system should work to protect them and should've protected their family members. But at the end of the day, their voices really mattered."
Also a three-part series, the Peacock show features interviews with Heuermann's ex-wife, Asa Ellerup, their older daughter, Victoria Heuermann, and his friends. Speaking from inside the home they shared with the convicted killer, the two women told filmmakers they were unaware he might be behind the Gilgo Beach slayings. Victoria Heuermann, however, admitted there were times she didn't know where her father was.
"Even when I saw him, when I visited him in jail, he just seemed like himself, how he always is, and it's so hard to even believe the fact that he's this sick killer," Victoria Heuermann told Today. "But at the same time, because I was so young at the time, I also don't know that he's not this sick killer."
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This story was originally published June 19, 2026 at 6:35 AM.