Rex Heuermann, 62, from Long Island, entered the pleas in a courtroom packed with reporters, police and victims’ relatives, some of whom wept as he detailed his crimes.
He will be sentenced in June to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Heuermann’s guilty pleas — to three counts of first-degree murder and four of intentional murder — bring finality to a case that bedevilled investigators, tormented victims’ relatives and tantalised a true-crime obsessed public for years.
Rex Heuermann pictured in court (Newsday/AP)
Although he was not charged over her death, he also admitted he killed Karen Vergata in 1996.
Under questioning by Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney, Heuermann admitted that he strangled all eight victims and dismembered some of them, that he used burner phones to contact them, and that he wrapped their bodies in burlap before dumping them.
Wearing a black suit jacket and white button-down shirt, Heuermann appeared matter-of-fact and unemotional as he answered questions from Mr Tierney and the judge. He never looked back at the packed courtroom gallery, keeping his gaze fixed straight ahead.
The women, many of them sex workers, were killed over a 17-year span and buried in remote locations, including along an isolated beach highway across the bay from where he lived, authorities said.
“This defendant walked among us play acting as a normal suburban dad when in reality, all along, he was obsessively targeting innocent women for death,” Mr Tierney said at a news conference.
He thanked relatives of the victims, including some standing alongside him, for helping bring their loved ones’ stories to life, and praised members of the Gilgo Beach Homicide Investigation Task Force, which cracked the case with the help of clues that included DNA lifted from a discarded pizza crust.
“He thought that by killing them, he could silence them forever and get away with murder,” Mr Tierney said. “But he was wrong.”
Gloria Allred, a lawyer for several of the victims’ families, described several of the women as young mothers who were trying to earn extra money to support their children because they did not have the means to go to college or get a decent job.
“Little did they know that the defendant, Rex Heuermann, did not care about their hopes and dreams, or that they had families and friends who loved them,” Ms Allred said before calling up family members to speak directly about the case and what they thought about the plea deal in which prosecutors dropped several counts.
Elizabeth Baczkiel, the mother of victim Jessica Taylor, said: “I am glad that this is over as far as him pleading guilty. It took a big chunk of stress off of me and my family.”
Asa Ellerup, left, wife, of Rex Heuermann and Mrs Ellerup’s lawyer, Robert Macedonio, right, arrive at court (Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AP)
Fighting back tears, Missy Cann, whose sister Maureen Brainard-Barnes was murdered by Heuermann, said his guilty plea “brings solace” after living 19 years “in the space between heartbreak and hope”.
Investigators and members of the public packed the hearing. Reporters and camera operators swarmed Heuermann’s ex-wife, Asa Ellerup, and their daughter as they entered and left the courthouse.
“My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families,” Ms Ellerup said afterwards. “Their loss is immeasurable and the focus should be on them at this time and moment. I ask that you give some privacy to my family as they navigate through this very difficult time.”
She and her daughter Victoria had no knowledge of or involvement in the killings, said their lawyer, Robert Macedonio. Ms Ellerup has said she found it difficult to believe her husband was a serial killer, because he never gave off warning signs during their time together.
Asked about Heuermann’s admissions, his lawyer Michael Brown told reporters: “There came a point in this defence where Rex said, ‘I want to plead guilty’,” noting that one of Heuermann’s concerns was sparing the victims’ families and his own family from the ordeal of the case going to trial.
In response to a question about whether Heuermann was sorry, Mr Brown responded: “I would hope so. I would expect at sentencing he would have something to say.”
As part of his guilty plea, Heuermann agreed to co-operate fully with the FBI’s behavioural analysis unit.
The case began in earnest in 2010 after police found numerous sets of human remains while searching for a missing woman, Shannan Gilbert, along Long Island’s South Shore, setting off a search for a potential serial killer that attracted global interest and spawned a Hollywood movie.
Although her relatives disputed the finding, authorities eventually determined that Ms Gilbert drowned, and Mr Brown said Heuermann “had nothing to do with Shannan Gilbert”.
Investigators used DNA analysis and other evidence to identify victims. In some cases, they were able to connect them to remains found elsewhere on Long Island years earlier.
Elizabeth Baczkiel, mother of victim Jessica Taylor, walks into court (Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AP)
Remains of six victims — Melissa Barthelemy, Ms Brainard-Barnes, Amber Lynn Costello, Valerie Mack, Ms Taylor and Megan Waterman — were found in the scrub along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach. Another victim, Sandra Costilla, was found more than 60 miles away in the Hamptons.
Police also identified the remains of Ms Vergata, which were found on Fire Island, more than 20 miles west, in 1996, and near Gilgo Beach in 2011.
Despite the attention, including a documentary series and the 2020 Netflix film Lost Girls, the investigation dragged on for more than a decade, punctuated by fleeting leads and dashed hopes.
In 2022, six weeks after a new police commissioner formed the Gilgo Beach task force, detectives identified Heuermann as a suspect by using a vehicle registration database to connect him to a pick-up truck that a witness reported seeing when one of the victims disappeared in 2010.
Heuermann lived for decades in Massapequa Park, about a 25-minute drive across a causeway spanning South Oyster Bay to the sandy stretch where the women’s remains were found. Some of the victims were believed to have disappeared from that community and their phones were found to have pinged towers in the area, authorities said.
After the truck discovery, a grand jury authorised more than 300 subpoenas and search warrants, allowing the task force to dig in to Heuermann’s life.
Detectives collected billing records for burner phones he allegedly used to arrange meetings with the victims, retested DNA found with the bodies and scoured Heuermann’s internet search history, which showed that he had viewed violent torture pornography and exhibited an intense interest in the Gilgo Beach killings and the renewed investigation.
Mobile phone data showed Heuermann was in contact with some victims just before they disappeared, investigators said.
To obtain his DNA, a task force surveillance team tailed him in Manhattan, where he worked, and watched as he threw the remnants of his lunch — a box of partially eaten pizza crusts — into a rubbish bin.
Investigators grabbed the box and sent it to the crime lab, which matched DNA from the crust to a male hair found on burlap used to restrain one of the victims. He was arrested in July 2023.
After Heuermann’s arrest, detectives spent more than 12 days searching his yard and home, where they found a basement vault that contained 279 weapons. On his computer, investigators said, they found what they described as a “blueprint” for the killings, including a series of checklists with reminders to limit noise, clean the bodies and destroy evidence.