Where Is Rex Heuermann’s Family Now? Inside His Wife and Children’s Lives Today

Rex Heuermann’s family is still dealing with the fallout from his alleged murders.

In July 2023, Heuermann was named as a suspect in the infamous Gilgo Beach serial killings and he was later charged with the murder of seven women. The investigation is at the center of Netflix’s three-part docuseries Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer, out March 31.

Heuermann, an architect and father, pleaded not guilty to all seven charges and has been held without bail at the Riverhead Correctional Facility in Suffolk County since the initial charges were unveiled.

The alleged serial killer is estranged from his wife, Asa Ellerup, who filed for divorce the same month he was arrested after 27 years of marriage. The pair have two adult children, daughter Victoria and son Christopher, whom Ellerup welcomed during a previous relationship.

The adult children’s lawyer, Vess Mitev, told Newsweek in 2024 that his clients are “two young adults that are caught in the crosshairs of this deeply unfortunate case that they have nothing to do with other than they are related to Mr. Heuermann.”

Police also don’t believe that the family knew about Heuermann’s alleged crimes.

“I think he lived this double life, and he used the anonymity of phones and computers to shield himself from the rest of society,” Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney claimed to PEOPLE in 2023. “Unfortunately for him — and fortunately for the rest of us — he wasn’t successful.”

Here’s everything to know about where Rex Heuermann’s family is now.

Who is Rex Heuermann?

Rex Heuermann is considered to be the Gilgo Beach Killer and has been charged in the slayings of seven women.

Heuermann graduated from Berner High School in Massapequa, N.Y., in 1981. One of his classmates was allegedly actor Billy Baldwin.

“Woke up this morning to learn that the Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect was my high school classmate Rex Heuermann,” Baldwin claimed on X in July 2023, adding, “Married, two kids, architect. ‘Average guy… quiet, family man.’ Mind-boggling… Massapequa is in shock.”

Heuermann earned his bachelor’s degree from the New York Institute of Technology and had an architecture consulting business in New York City. He and his wife, Ellerup, raised their daughter Victoria and his stepson Christopher in Heuermann’s childhood home in Massapequa Park, N.Y. The family kept to themselves, and Heuermann wasn’t well known to his neighbors despite having grown up in the close-knit community, the Long Island Press reported in 2023.

Heuermann was initially charged with the murders of four women: Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, Amber Lynn Costello and Maureen Brainard-Barnes. They were all working as escorts when they went missing between 2007 and 2010. Their bodies were found near each other on Ocean Parkway on Long Island in December 2010, bound with duct tape or leather belts and wrapped in burlap.

In June 2024, Heuermann was charged with the murders of Sandra Costilla and Jessica Taylor, who were killed in 1993 and 2003, respectively, and in December 2024, he was charged with second-degree murder in the death of Valerie Mack. Eleven sets of remains have been found in Suffolk County, N.Y., since 2010, but Heuermann has not been charged in the deaths of the last four.

A breakthrough in the case came in 2022 when a witness to Costello’s disappearance “identified a first-generation Chevy Avalanche as the vehicle believed to have been driven by her killer,” per court documents obtained by PEOPLE.

Motor vehicle records then connected Heuermann to the truck, and he was reportedly further linked to the murders by DNA evidence and phone records.

Investigators shared that Heuermann made Google searches related to the Gilgo Beach investigation and seemed fascinated by serial killers, looking up items like “11 currently active serial killers,” and “8 Terrifying Active Serial Killers (We Can’t Find).”

Heuermann is being held at the Riverhead Correctional Facility in Suffolk County, N.Y.

Who is Rex Heuermann’s wife?

Heuermann married Asa Ellerup in April 1996. New York authorities said the alleged killer’s family was out of state when at least three of the murders were committed.

Some of the hairs found with Waterman’s body matched Ellerup, which detectives believed was due to her close proximity to her husband, not because she was involved in the killings. Ellerup’s attorney, Bob Macedonio, told Newsweek in 2024 that when Costilla was murdered in 1993, Ellerup was not living in Massapequa Park with Heuermann.

With his family away, Heuermann had “unfettered time to execute his plans for each victim without any fear that his family would uncover or learn of his involvement in these crimes,” prosecutors claimed in court documents previously obtained by PEOPLE.

In a 2023 press conference, Suffolk County police commissioner Rodney Harrison said that the family appeared “shocked,” “disgusted” and “embarrassed” after initially learning the news about Heuermann, per ABC Eyewitness News.

“I don’t believe that they knew about this double life that Mr. Heuermann was living,” Harrison told CNN.

One week after Heuermann’s arrest, Ellerup filed for divorce in Suffolk County Supreme Court. The filing would be “uncontested,” per ABC News. In March 2025, court records showed that their divorce had been settled.

Who are Rex Heuermann’s children?

Heuermann and Ellerup welcomed a daughter together named Victoria. They also parented Ellerup’s son, Christopher. As of November 2024, both adult children still reside at the Massapequa Park home with Ellerup.

Before her father’s arrest, Victoria worked at Heuermann’s business in Manhattan, which has since shuttered, per The New York Times. Her lawyer, Mitev, told the outlet in November 2024 that she was having trouble getting a job.

Mitev also said that Christopher can’t “even walk his dog down the block.”

“He gets photographed, people stop and take pictures, he’s catcalled, the whole thing,” Mitev told the outlet, adding, “They can’t even check the mail. That kind of scrutiny is not for my clients. They never asked for it.”

Melissa G. Moore, the daughter of convicted murderer Keith Jesperson, known as the Happy Face Killer, launched a GoFundMe in July 2023 to help Heuermann’s children and Ellerup restart their lives.

In an interview with the New York Post in July 2023, Ellerup spoke of the distress she and her children had felt since Heuermann’s arrest.

“My children cry themselves to sleep,” she told the outlet. “I mean, they’re not children. They’re grown adults but they’re my children, and my son has developmental disabilities and he cried himself to sleep.”

Ellerup has tried her best to discuss the situation with Christopher.

“He’s so distraught and doesn’t understand, and as a mother, I have no answers for him,” she told the New York Post. “But I said, ‘We’re together.’ That’s really what matters right now. That you and me are sitting here together and we will get through this.’ ”

How was Rex Heuermann’s family informed of his arrest?

Heuermann was arrested near his office building in Manhattan on July 13, 2023. Suffolk County District Attorney Tierney said Heuermann seemed “pretty surprised” when he was taken into custody.

Ellerup’s attorney, Macedonio, told Fox News that one hour after Heuermann’s arrest, authorities arrived at his home in Massapequa Park to seize his electronic devices and inform his wife and children of the charges.

“They were home and the cops came in, and they were completely blindsided, and they told them what was going on,” Macedonio told the outlet, adding that Ellerup and “her children’s lives have been completely turned upside-down.”

Suffolk County Police Commissioner Harrison told PEOPLE in 2023 that Heuermann’s family was in “shock” and “disbelief” when they learned of his alleged double life.

“We had to kind of show them some type of proof to let it be known who their father was behind the curtain,” Harrison said. “But they’re cooperating.”

Shortly after his arrest, investigators pored over the Heuermann residence in an exhaustive 12-day search while his family stayed at a hotel.

On July 28, Ellerup’s lawyer issued a press release stating that she and her children were “enduring a profound and indescribable catastrophe” and included a direct statement from Ellerup.

“On behalf of my family and especially my elderly neighbors, who have also had their lives turned upside down by the enormous police presence, in addition to the spectators, and news crews. They deserve to live peacefully; they should be able to walk their dogs and go to the grocery stores without cameras shoved in their faces,” the statement read, per CBS News. “I am pleading with you all to give us space so that we may regain some normalcy in our neighborhood.”

In May 2024, a second search warrant was obtained, and the family home was searched again. Ellerup’s attorney told Newsweek that she “was away prior to the second search warrant.” Heuermann was charged with his fifth and sixth murders on June 6.

What has Rex Heuermann’s family said about him?

Ellerup’s attorney, Macedonio, told PEOPLE in 2024 that she had a “very difficult time believing that the Rex who she was married to for 27 years is capable of committing these homicides.” Ellerup planned to “listen to all the evidence” and withhold judgment about Heuermann’s guilt or innocence until after his trial ended.

“I have given him the benefit of the doubt, as we all deserve,” Ellerup said in a statement released by Macedonio.

The lawyer also told PEOPLE that Heuermann’s arrest was “like a death of a relative or a child or every day you learn to adapt a little bit more and more to the new reality.”

In the statement, Ellerup added that her “heartfelt sympathies go out to the victims and their families, ‘nobody deserves to die in that manner.’ ”

Heuermann’s children’s attorney, Mitev, told Newsweek in 2024 that “they look forward to the legal process running its course, whatever that course is.”

In July 2023, Heuermann’s sister-in-law, Dr. Johanna Ellerup, said in an email to NBC News that she was “stunned” over the arrest.

“This disbelief alone is profound and altering,” she wrote. “I vacillate between desperately wanting my niece and nephew’s life returned to its previous state, intact, without a father accused of being a serial killer to being pleased and secure in knowing that someone is in custody.”

“My ego has great difficulty processing the idea that I looked Rex in the eye and was unable to discern any murderous intentions,” she added.

Where are Rex Heuermann’s wife and children now?

Almost two years after his initial arrest, Heuermann’s family is still picking up the pieces.

In March 2025, as Heuermann’s attorneys attempted to have some DNA evidence ruled out, Ellerup and the alleged killer settled their divorce. She is participating in a multi-part Peacock documentary series and visits and calls Heuermann in jail. Ellerup has also attended his court hearings, per multiple outlets.

“She’s been vilified and then also victimized,” Macedonio told PEOPLE in November 2023. “She’s going to be known as the wife or the ex-wife of an alleged serial killer. She’s gathering herself, she’s dealing with herself. She’s getting her and her children back to a safe place. They got through the first holiday without a wreck, and that’s where they’re at.”

As of November 2024, Ellerup and her children live in the Massapequa Park home they shared with Heuermann. They had initially planned to wait until after the trial to decide what to do with the house, according to Macedonio, but Ellerup has since changed her mind.

The New York Times reported that Ellerup and her children would be moving to South Carolina, where a property had been purchased years earlier as a retirement home. The family lawyers said Ellerup would put the home up for sale once her divorce was finalized.

“People constantly stop in front of the house, to gawk and point and take pictures,” Macedonio told The New York Times. “She’s lost any emotional attachment she had to the premises because of everything that’s gone on, and the only way she can start recovering is to move.”

Mitev told the New York Post in 2024 that Heuermann’s children ”continue to bravely face the scrutiny and adversity head-on and they will wait for the legal process to conclude in a courtroom and not in the court of public opinion.”