Architect Rex Heuermann sentenced to life for Gilgo Beach serial killings

Rex Heuermann, a New York architect who murdered women for at least 17 years until police realised that their deaths were the work of a serial killer, has been sentenced to life in prison without parole.

The sentencing caps an extraordinary investigation that solved one of New York’s most perplexing mysteries – one that began as a series of seemingly unconnected, and largely unmarked disappearances of young sex workers, but became the focus of true-crime documentaries, books and podcasts after police began discovering the victims’ skeletal remains along a coastal parkway near Long Island’s Gilgo Beach.

Heuermann, 62, previously admitted that he killed eight women.

He pleaded guilty in April to charges that he murdered seven women: Barthelemy, Mack, Taylor, Megan Waterman, Amber Lynn Costello, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, and Sandra Costilla.

Heuermann also admitted in court to killing an eighth victim, Karen Vergata, though he was never charged in her death. He said he strangled his victims, many of them sex workers, and dismembered some of their bodies.