Rex Heuermann, 62, the serial killer on Long Island who pleaded guilty in April to murdering eight women in the so-called Gilgo Beach killings, is to be sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday, bringing an end to a case that took investigators more than a decade to solve.
Under the terms of the plea deal Mr. Heuermann agreed to, he is expected to be sentenced to multiple terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Mr. Heuermann had pleaded guilty to seven murders and admitted to an eighth, which he had not previously been charged with.
He admitted to hiring the young women as escorts, strangling them and leaving most of their bodies along Ocean Parkway, at or near Gilgo Beach on the South Shore of Long Island, more than a decade ago.
More than a dozen of the victims’ family members are expected to speak at the sentencing, as is Mr. Heuermann. It will be the first time he has done so publicly at any length.
Gloria Allred, a lawyer for some of the victims’ relatives, said that the sentencing would be “a very emotional day for my clients,” many of whom have waited years to speak in court about the impact the murders have had on their lives.
Mr. Heuermann, who had maintained his innocence since his arrest in July 2023, stunned followers of the case by abruptly pleading guilty in April. His lawyer, Michael J. Brown, attributed the decision in part to a desire to spare the victims’ loved ones and Mr. Heuermann’s own family the pain of a lurid trial.
Before the plea, prosecutors and Mr. Brown had told reporters that the case would proceed to trial, even as a deal was being discussed behind the scenes as Mr. Heuermann began losing hope about his chances.
Ray Tierney, the Suffolk County district attorney, acknowledged the talks and said that given the emotional duress the families would have experienced if Mr. Heuermann were tried in court, “if he’s willing to plead guilty, there’s no point in a trial.”
During the same period, Mr. Heuermann started talking to his family about the killings, a process captured in a true crime docuseries that premiered on Peacock last year.
The series, “The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets,” depicted conversations that Mr. Heuermann’s ex-wife, Asa Ellerup, had with the family’s therapist.
Mr. Heuermann also began speaking to the therapist, and eventually confessed his crimes to Ms. Ellerup, she said in the series.
Ms. Ellerup, who had filed for divorce days after her husband’s arrest but refused to denounce him, recounted in the series how he finally admitted to eight killings, seven of them carried out in the basement of their home in Massapequa Park, while she and the children were away on vacation.
He admitted to carrying out one of the killings mere days before his wedding with Ms. Ellerup in 1996, she said in an episode that included his confessions, which aired only after his guilty plea.
The investigation into the Gilgo murders began in 2010, when the police discovered four bodies at and around Gilgo Beach. Some investigators quickly believed the deaths were the work of a serial killer, but the investigation was hindered for years by dysfunction, disarray and corruption within the Suffolk County Police Department.
Mr. Heuermann finally emerged as a suspect in 2022. Investigators tracked him for more than a year before arresting him on a Midtown street in 2023, nearly three decades after the death of his first victim in the case.
The arrest shocked his neighbors in Massapequa Park, a Long Island suburb not far from Gilgo Beach. To them he was Rex, a towering, eccentric family man who for decades had commuted from his rundown house to his architectural consulting firm in Midtown Manhattan.
Ms. Ellerup, who has attended many of Mr. Heuermann’s hearings, planned to skip the sentencing on Wednesday because she “believes this day should be centered on the victims, their families and the profound impact these crimes have had on their lives,” her lawyer, Bob Macedonio, said.
Ms. Allred said many relatives of Mr. Heuermann’s victims had waited years to speak publicly about their loss.
“They want the public to know that the victims were an important part of their family, who were loved, and contributed emotionally and financially in many ways and sacrificed to help others,” she said.
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