Where Rex Heuermann’s Wife Is Now After His Murders Left Her ‘Disgusted’ & ‘Embarrassed’
There’s no doubt that the public has a fascination with serial killers. True crime, as a genre, has become more and more popular in the last few years, and every month, it feels like Netflix is putting out new documentaries about new solved or unsolved murderers. The latest is Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer, a docuseries directed and produced by Liz Garbus, which goes over how the police finally identified Rex Heuermann as the Long Island Serial Killer.
Before Heuermann was identified, the Gilgo Beach serial killings had been one of the most notorious unsolved investigations in the country. Finally, an investigation led to the arrest of Heuermann, who was charged not just with the murder of the so-called “Gilgo Four,” the first four victims whose remains were discovered along a stretch of Ocean Parkway in Suffolk County in 2010, but three other women in addition to them.
Heuermann, an architect and father of two, pled not guilty to all seven charges. He has been held without bail at the Riverhead Correctional Facility in Suffolk County, and he has been awaiting a trial since the initial charges. But what happened to his family and especially his wife after his arrest? Where is Rex Heuermann’s wife now?
Where’s Rex Heuermann’s wife now?
Heuermann married Asa Ellerup in April 1996. She, however, filed for divorce the same month he was arrested, a divorce which has already been settled. At that point, they’d been married for 27 years. The two share two adult children, Victoria, whom the couple welcomed together, and Christopher, who Ellerup welcomed during a previous relationship.
The family has tried to remain private, but in 2024, the children’s lawyer, Vess Mitev, told Newsweek 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 don’t believe the family knew anything about Heuermann’s killings. “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 told People in 2023. “Unfortunately for him — and fortunately for the rest of us — he wasn’t successful.”
Suffolk County police commissioner Rodney Harrison also said in a press conference in 2023 said that the family appeared “shocked,” “disgusted” and “embarrassed” after initially learning the news about Heuermann, according to ABC Eyewitness News.
The family still resided in the same home in Massapequa Park where Heuermann was living at the time of his arrest until a few months ago. But they had already begun preparations to move to South Carolina, to a home that was purchased as a retirement home, according to the New York Times.
“People constantly stop in front of the house, to gawk and point and take pictures,” Ellerup’s attorney 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.”
That same attorney also told People in 2023 about the Ellerup. “She’s been vilified and then also victimized. 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.”
In 2023, in one of the few times Ellerup has discussed the case personally, she spoke to the New York Post about the distress she and her children had felt since her husband’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.”
Her 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.”
