Rex Heuermann‘s wife, Asa Ellerup, stood by his side after he was accused of being the Gilgo Beach killer.
Heuermann and Ellerup were married for nearly three decades when he was arrested in 2023 after several missing persons cases involving numerous women — including Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Costello and Maureen Brainard-Barnes — went unsolved for more than a decade. Heuermann was charged in connection to the deaths of Barthelemy, Costello, Waterman and Brainard-Barnes and later with the deaths of Sandra Costilla, Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack.
After his arrest, Heuermann pleaded not guilty to all charges. His family, including his kids, publicly supported him.
“The two of us were married for 27 years. I met Rex when I was 18 years old. He’s the kind of guy you turn your head and you go take a look at. He was a tall and handsome young man. I love tall, dark and handsome,” Ellerup recalled on The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets in June 2025. “At that time, I was madly in love with the man. There’s no doubt about that.”
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Keep scrolling to relive Heuermann and Ellerup’s romance:
1980s
Heuermann and Ellerup met when she was 18 years old but didn’t start dating until later. Instead, Ellerup exchanged vows with Christopher Sheridan, and they expanded their family with a son also named Christopher.
Ellerup got in touch with Heuermann amid her divorce from Sheridan.
“I met my first husband and got married. But things didn’t go well at all. After my son, Christopher, was born, my ex-husband became somebody completely different. I was in the process of getting a divorce,” Ellerup recalled in the 2025 Peacock doc. “Christopher’s father, he wasn’t very nice about it. He said to me that there’s no way in the world he was going to be OK with me being happy with somebody else.”
Ellerup was grateful for Heuermann, adding, “Rex was the kind of person that you could call. We were friends. Rex was standing there and he heard what he said. Rex then says, ‘OK, I’m not worried. Let’s get a lawyer and let’s take him to court.’ Then he paid for the lawyer to take him to court.”
1996
After ending her marriage to Sheridan, Ellerup started a whirlwind romance with Heuermann.
“There was no reason to hold back. So Rex said to me, ‘I’ve got a nice house. It’s not big and not elaborate. But how about you come and see if you’d like to stay there?’ she explained in The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets. “Then I found out I was pregnant with Victoria. He said to me, ‘Well, how do you feel about marrying me?’ I said yes. There’s a picture of me on our wedding day and I’m looking up going, ‘I finally got him. He’s mine.’”
1996
Ellerup gave birth to her and Heuermann’s daughter, Victoria. The family resided in Heuermann’s childhood home in Long Island.
2023
Heuermann was arrested in 2023 and charged for the murder of seven women. Ellerup defended her husband at the time but subsequently filed for divorce a week after he was accused of being the Gilgo Beach murderer.
2023
Rex Heuermann, Asa Ellerup. James Carbone-Pool/Getty Images ; Peacock
Despite filing to end their marriage, Ellerup attended court to support Heuermann.
“That’s why I’m going to the courthouse. That’s why I want to see it for myself. It’s important for me to know what he’s going through. I want to be a part of him,” Ellerup shared in the three-part Peacock doc. “I really liked seeing him. There was comfort in seeing him.”
She continued: “I just don’t see him that way. That’s not the Rex I know. If they’re gonna sit there and tell me that he only did this during this particular time period that I was away on vacation then I’d have to question that. If a man is that much of a genius that he’s capable of doing that — I don’t believe it.”
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2025
Peacock’s The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets filmed Ellerup speaking with Heuermann while he is in prison.
“I’m talking to him all the time, but he only has a certain amount of time to be able to make calls,” she told the producers. “So I can’t get too comfortable talking to him about things that are gonna hurt him. … Like, telling him that I love him. That will hurt him.”
2025
Ellerup used the docuseries to defend her husband, saying, “Nobody deserves what they got. But Rex was not seeing [sex workers]. He’s a family man. He didn’t do this. I would need to hear it from Rex face-to-face that he killed these girls for me to believe it. My husband never kept me out of anything.”
At the time, Ellerup questioned the evidence against Heuermann.
“They’re alleging that my husband managed to go to work, solicit sex from a sex worker, sit on a train and then come home to make plans to pick them up, kill them and dump them. Then he turned around to go to Atlantic City to come see us? I’m sorry. It’s bulls***,’” she fired back. “He’s never said to me, ‘Don’t use my computer.’ He’s never said, ‘No, I’m not going give you the password.’ There is nothing off limits with Rex. I’m not picking a side just yet until I see the evidence. I need to hear it in a court of law. I need to hear it at trial.”
2025
After reaching a divorce settlement, Ellerup confirmed she was moving out of their home in Massapequa Park.
“Now that this life in this house is coming to an end, it makes me feel like there’s a new beginning,” she shared at the end of the Peacock doc. “What that life is going to be like, I do not know. I will find out eventually. I will deal with it the best that I can. I did what I had to do to protect myself and my children.”
Ellerup and Heuermann’s daughter, Victoria, weighed in on the reason for their legal split, adding, “I understand why she divorced my dad. They did the divorce to protect the assets,” Victoria claimed. “It’s now legally her house. She was married to him so she gets the asset from the divorce. If we lost the house, we’d be homeless. It’s our house. It doesn’t mean that we’re not a family anymore.”
