When Rex Heuermann pleaded guilty on Wednesday to murdering eight women, he did more than admit that he was the Gilgo Beach killer. He also took a step that could help investigators hunt down others with similarly violent minds.
Raymond A. Tierney, the Suffolk County district attorney, said at a news conference that the plea agreement called for Mr. Heuermann to be interviewed by the F.B.I.’s Behavioral Analysis Units about “his motivation, his background.”
“It’s sort of an academic exercise,” Mr. Tierney said, describing the interviews as clinical rather than investigative in nature. Referring to the F.B.I. analysts in comments to several reporters after the news conference, he added, “They’re going to hopefully gain insight into the things that created him, that drove him, what causes this.”
The F.B.I. declined to comment on Mr. Heuermann’s plea agreement, but said in a statement that the bureau’s “researchers and analysts routinely conduct interviews with incarcerated offenders, including individuals convicted of serial homicide, to deepen the F.B.I.’s understanding of violent criminal behavior.”
That Mr. Heuermann agreed to be interviewed by F.B.I. analysts as part of the plea is “a bit unusual,” said Gregg O. McCrary, a retired special supervisory agent with the bureau who spent 10 years with the Behavioral Analysis Units.
It is not uncommon for analysts to interview serial killers and other violent criminals for insights into why they do what they do, Mr. McCrary said in an interview. By now, the unit has a database filled with the results of hundreds of such interviews, he added. Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy and Richard Speck are among those who have spoken with analysts.
But the interviews usually take place well after convictions have been secured and the criminals are in prison, he said. “We let things cool off, let the headlines die down” to the point that they are “yesterday’s news,” he explained.
“They’re the experts here,” Mr. McCrary said of the interview subjects. “They’re the ones doing the killing, not us. Let’s learn from them.”
In entering his plea, Mr. Heuermann, an architect by trade, told the court he had hired his victims as escorts, strangled them, bound them in burlap and dumped them along an oceanfront parkway on Long Island near the beach that gave the case its name.
The F.B.I. division that Mr. Heuermann agreed to meet with was created in 1972 as the Behavioral Science Unit “to consult with criminal justice professionals worldwide on different, unusual, or bizarre cases,” according to its website. Its work was known then as “profiling.”
Analysts with the unit, which has gained popular attention through movies like “The Silence of the Lambs” and television shows like “Criminal Minds,” examine “an offender’s motivation, victim selection, sophistication level, actions and relationship” to particular crimes, according to the website.
Typically acting as consultants to state and local authorities through the unit’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, the website says, the analysts focus on “crimes that may be serial in nature, including homicides or attempted homicides that may be part of a series and/or appear random or sexually motivated.”
Once a serial killer is in prison, Mr. McCrary added, an approach by an analyst offering him an opportunity to revisit his crimes — the killers, he said, are almost always men — taps into the latent narcissism that was probably a factor in his drive to kill, making him quick to open up.
“Now, they’re important again,” Mr. McCrary said.
Mr. Heuermann’s agreement to speak with bureau analysts as part of his plea, Mr. McCrary added, means that his lawyer will not intervene later to try to block an interview, easing the analysts’ task.
The investigation that led to Mr. Heuermann’s guilty plea began in 2010 with the discovery of four women’s remains around Gilgo Beach.
The inquiry stalled for years and then got a jump-start in 2022, when the authorities announced the creation of a new task force dedicated to solving the case. Mr. Heuermann was arrested the next year after investigators used cellphone data and DNA evidence taken from pizza crust, bottles and human hairs to link him to the killings.
During the investigation, court documents show, the authorities discovered that he had used so-called burner phones to search for “sex workers, sadistic, torture-related pornography” and imagery and videos of women and children being sexually assaulted.
Prosecutors also said he had created a document in 2000 that described his methods for finding, imprisoning and murdering his victims.
The goal of the F.B.I. interviews will be to learn directly from Mr. Heuermann as much as possible about what drove him to kill and to kill in the way he did, Mr. McCrary said. Information from one serial killer, he added, could be critical in catching another.
“And there will be another one,” he said. “I can almost guarantee you that.”
Corey Kilgannon, William K. Rashbaum and Nate Schweber contributed reporting.
Ed Shanahan is a rewrite reporter and editor covering breaking news and general assignments on the Metro desk.
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