Victims' Families Speak Out At Gilgo Beach Killer's Sentencing, Bring Judge To Tears: 'Horrendous Atrocities'

LONG ISLAND, NY — An emotional Riverhead courtroom was packed Wednesday as, almost three years after his arrest, self-confessed Gilgo Beach killer Rex Heuermann was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences as well as four, separate, 25 years to life sentences, all to run consecutively.

As the victims' families spoke of all they'd lost, many in the courtroom wiped away tears — including Judge Timothy Mazzei.

Speaking to Heuermann, Judge Timothy Mazzei asked him if there was anything he'd like to say.

"Yes," he said. "There are no words I can say. I am responsible for what was said in this room today. Any words I would say have no meaning. So I'm going to leave it there at this time."

"Speak up!" family members in the audience screamed.

Mazzei then said: "Mr. Heuermann, I know you say you're sorry that you got caught and I assume you're sorry for what you did to your wife and children. But are you even a little bit sorry for what you did to those poor, innocent women — eight women that you strangled to death? Are you at least a little bit sorry?"

"Yes, I am," Heuermann said.

The judge continued: "You've been described as a big man. But you're disgusting and despicable, a small man — if you're a man at all. You're a coward."

And, after rendering the verdict, Mazzei thundered: "Get him out of here!"

Family members in the courtroom erupted in applause, shouting at him that they hoped the same obscenities he'd described, regarding the women he'd tortured, happened to him in prison.

"At least we know where you are!" one shouted.

More than 10 family members gave heartaching and emotional impact statements during the proceedings.

Ed and JoAnn Mack, adoptive parents of victim Valerie Mack, gave the first testimony.

"You have done horrendous things to Valerie's body but you have not touched the real Valerie," Ed said. "Imagine when my day comes and I stand before Jesus — Valerie will be at His side."

"Even though justice is done, it cannot replace what you have taken from us and it cannot give our beloved Valerie back her life," JoAnn said. "Even though you were able to commit these horrendous atrocities against our daughter . . .you were never able to touch her soul. Unless you get yourself right before God, Valerie is the one who is free today — and you are not. She is living her life with her savior Jesus Christ and what you have done has gained you nothing."

She added: "The thing that is the saddest to bear is that you took away every chance that she ever had, the past 26 years since you took her life, to attain any of the goals that she had set for herself. She had hopes and she had dreams and you took it all away from her. You cannot give her back what you took from her and her son — you took away a lifetime, for him, of his mother's love."

Danielle Mack, Valerie's adoptive sister, added, of Heuermann: "I didn't come to address him because I don't believe he is worth addressing. He doesn't have the ability to feel remorse. He's a selfish and entitled man who felt that my sister and the others were his to destroy."

She added: "My sister wasn't in a good place and he took advantage of that. She would never have looked twice at him if she was not struggling."

Describing her sister, she said: "Valerie Mack has a fire inside of her that lit up the world around her."

She was sharp, protective, funny, she said.

"Mr. Heuermann may have snuffed out their lives but the fires they lit roar inside of each and every one of us — and that is something he can never rob us of."

Mack's son Benjamin "Aaron" Torres, added: "You will reap what you have sown. No one is exempt from that universal truth."

Jasmine Robinson and Violet Swager, cousins to Jessica Taylor, also spoke.

"I'll never forget how I felt when I got that call," Swager said. "I couldn't wrap my mind around the word 'torso.' There was no way someone could do that to someone I love. 'Torso.' 'Headless and handless.' Those words haunt me. It was monstrous. Brutal."

Not all of her cousin's body parts were immediately found, she said.

"I still didn't understand. She was supposed to come home that weekend. Family and friends were searching for her, calling her. She never picked up."

Of Heuermann, she said: "I can't put into words the loathing I have for you. You are sick, twisted. Heartless. You fill me with such repugnance, it's suffocating."

Later, she said, another call came, she said: "My cousin's skull was found, miles away."

She described the early summers "the three of us girls" had shared, calling themselves "the weekend warriors." Times during the '80s and '90, playing Double Dutch and Nintendo, having dance parties, enjoying both city and country life.

"We were longing to live full lives," she said. "We shared everything. Family secrets that are not yours to know. We shared good and bad and we had each other's backs. We loved each other and we had each other's backs. And then, we almost grew up."

She was working, Swager said, when she saw her cousin's face on television, "that awful mugshot, and her tattoo."

To Heuermann, she said, of his sentence: "A million years isn't enough."

The cousins hugged tightly before Jasmine spoke.

The words she'd heard in her childhood became an ominous refrain, Robinson said. "Do you want to end up like Jessica? I hard that so many times as a teenager, spoken out of fear of what a monster is capable of."

"She was pure as sunshine"

Jessica, she said, was "fierce, kind, compassionate and intelligent. She left everyone she met better than she found the. She never met a stranger. She was as pure as sunshine."

Robinson said she wished she could have known the woman her cousin would have become, wished she could have known her own son. "I would have hugged her tighter if I knew it was the last time," she said.

In the long years since she was killed, Robinson said: "I fought for her even when it felt like I was screaming underwater. You thought you took her voice but you didn't know that she had people who loved her. You hunted her — and I hunted you."

To Heuermann, she said, "You certainly were sloppy, with holes in that planning document," including identifying marks, such as her cousin's tattoo, that he'd failed to erase.

"You're nobody," she said. "You're boring. I think she saw you as the huge freak that you are — and I know that she didn't go out without a fight. I know that you picked small women because you are a weak, disgusting, coward." Looking at his high school days, she said, "You tried to fit in your whole life but you could never get it right."

Wednesday, Robinson said, sentencing day, was Jessica's birthday. "She would be 42 today and I would have been making fun of her for being an old lady with me." Her voice filled with emotion, she added: "One day I will get to hug her in heaven. I am so grateful for this day of justice. Happy Birthday, Jess."

Missy Cann, sister of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, spoke next, her voice shaking with emotion. "Nothing prepared me for the day Maureen didn't come home," she said. "I kept saying she'd call and ask the days turned into years, my hope slowly faded. After years of searching for Maureen my world shattered when she was found in the brambles on the side of the road," in the dark of night," she said. "This was was not just a murder, it was incalculable evil. And when Maureen was identified it meant we had to face the truth that she was gone forever. And that pain was unbearable."

Cann said she lived with survivor's guilt for more than a decade. Finally, she said, she realized: "My actions did not cause my sister's death. The burden was not mine to carry. That belonged to Rex and Rex alone."

Her sister, she said, "was a rare soul, someone you didn't come across often." Intelligent, deeply insightful, extraordinary.

"Maureen was there for me, comforting me when I was a scared child and thunder shook the house." She was the first person she saw after waking from a medically induced coma after a car crash; her sister was picking the dirt and glass from her hair, she said.

Her sister was found, she added, on the day she was in labor.

"She was my protector. She never judged me or tried to change me. She loved me exactly as I was. If her life was not taken I believe she would have gone on to touch countless lives."

Their brother, she said, died before knowing that her body had been found. "He carried that pain with him until the day he died," she said.

"This was not only the destruction of a life," she said. "It was a lifelong devastation of the family who loved her, passed down to the children. Rex didn't just take my sister, he ripped her out of my life and shattered all I knew about safety and trust. I am not who I was, because of him — and I never will be again. In many ways I am his victim, too."

On Wednesday, she told Heuermann that she was present to take back her sense of safety and confront her deepest fears. "Rex, while you think you got away with it, I made it my life's mission to find justice. I became your worst nightmare. Our voices grew louder."

Despite a public persona of a family man, a "mask," Cann said Heuermann preyed on innocent women. "That mask was a lie. Beneath the surface is a man without empathy who hunted and tortured women. But you are no longer the one in control of this story. . . You can never destroy love."

Brainard-Barnes' daughter Nicolette also spoke. Her mother, she said, was warm, lovely, funny, intelligent, artistic — and "had the biggest heart of anyone you would ever know."

She was a "language arts girlie," an avid reader and a poet, and she loved rap. She had a sense of humor and a contagious laugh, she said. "She was young at heart — but also, just young."

When she turned 25, Nicolette said, it was "jarring and painful because I'd lived longer than she will. Rex Heuermann stole decades from a woman who should still be here, making memories."

"I was a little girl — and I needed my mother"

Nicolette said she's had years of therapy to deal with depression, anxiety, PTSD and more.

On the first Christmas without her, she said: "I had every present a person could want but I didn't have my mother. I was a little girl — and I needed my mother."

Of her mother, she said: "She was not a headline, not defined by her circumstances." Not just a sex worker, "she was an entire human being. A mother, daughter — she was deeply loved and never replaced." She wasn't just a name or a number on Heuermann's list, she said. "She had a real, colorful, complicated life. She struggled, she matured — and she deserved to keep living," she said.

Of Heuermann's victims, she added: "They were not disposable."

And, the "smirk" Heuermann gave at his plea deal appearance showed a level of depravity and "proves you need to be locked away for the safety of the community. You make me sick and I don't forgive you."

Melissa Barthelemy's sister Amanda Funderburg said today, her sister would be 42. "Instead, she's forever 24." Her sister, she said, was alway there for her, making her lunch, walking her to their aunt's house, playing games.

"I looked up to her," she said. "She was my sister but she was my second mom. My protector."

Even when she moved, she gave her sister a nightlight, which she still has, "because she knew how I was afraid of the dark," she said.

Melissa, she said, "was a fighter" for those she loved; she wanted a better life, dreamed of opening a hair salon. "She was kind-hearted and would give you the shirt off her back." She loved to cuddle, laugh, the color baby blue and her beauty rest, and she loved her family, including her cats — as well as "a good Long Island iced tea."

The last time she saw her sister, Funderburg said, she didn't hug her good-bye, thinking she'd see her soon. They'd made plans, tickets were ordered for a trip for her to go see Melissa. "She went missing a week before I was supposed to fly out," she said.

"Look at me while I'm talking"

Directly addressing Heuerman, she said: "You can look at me while I'm talking. It's been 17 years since we spoke, don't forget."

Heuermann, she said, had taken her sister's phone and called her. "My heart skipped a beat when I got a call from a blocked number," she said.

And then, she said, it was Heuermann's voice on the phone, not her sister's — and he was speaking vile words.

"You called her a whore," she said, detailing the horrific things he'd described, the torture he'd inflicted on her sister. "And then you told me you were letting her body rot and that maybe one day, you'd tell me where her body was."

She paused. "I had to tell my mother and watch my mother grieve her baby girl was one of the most heart-wrenching things. I was 15 years old."

Her voice gaining fury, she continued: "What made you think she was expendable —what made you think she didn't have someone who cared about her?"

The families of all the women lost have joined together, she said. "You might have taken our girls from us but we gained each other — and that worked against you," she said.

And, she added: "I hope you suffer at the hands of others."

The word "ogre" is an apt moniker for Heuermann, she said. "You are an impossible monster — a demon inside," she said. "You murdered my sister and the things I'd like to do to you. . . .Save me a spot in hell because I'll see you there."

Elizabeth Meserve, Megan Waterman’s aunt, said Megan was "being prostituted by a pimp who disguised himself as a boyfriend and because of his trafficking, you were able to rob her of her life."

She added that Megan's death "shattered our family. . . My niece was more than just a statistic, a headline, or a number. Megan was a daughter, niece, sister and vibrant young woman who dreamed of building a wonderful life for herself and her daughter."

Heuermann, she said, was a "sick individual who had fantasized about ending her life."

Large in stature, the fact that Heuermann searched for small women and children mean that he "was cowardly," she said.

When Megan disappeared, her daughter Liliana Waterman would ask "if her mother had died of hunger because she was lost and couldn't find food."

And then when Megan was found, her small child asked why her mother wasn't brought home to her.

"She wasn't there for her first day of school," Meserve said. "Her high school or college graduations. She won't have her mother to help her buy a wedding dress. She will hurt forever and forever, our family will hurt."

A cry for legal change

Meserve also questioned how Heuermann's family could benefit financially from a recent Peacock docuseries, something she described as "completely disgusting and inexcusable — I was both sickened and shocked, and deeply disturbed, that these individuals profited from these monstrous acts. A demon tortures and kills our loved ones and his family gets filthy rich off his crimes?"

To that end, Meserve is advocating for legislation, NY State Assembly Bill 2025-A6730, that would "close the loopholes" and keep prisoners and their families cannot benefit financially from the crimes committed.

"Be gone, cowardly demon," she told Heuermann said.

Liliana Waterman also spoke of her mother, who was killed when she was three years old. "A little girl needs her mom," she said. "I never had a chance to be comforted by her after a bad day."

She spoke of the day when she was in the fourth grade and found an article about what had really happened to her mother.

"I wondered, was she in pain, in her last moments was she scared — was she thinking of me?" she said.

Liliana also asked the media not to glorify serial killers but instead, to focus on the victims — to show their faces and tell their stories.

"This is my 16th Mother's Day without my mom," she said. "She was a human being, someone's daughter, someone's friend. Most importantly, she was my mother. Every milestone in my life is marked by her absence — the first day of school, my first heartbreak. Every accomplishment comes with the reminder that I cannot call her. He stole an entire lifetime of memories. My mother mattered — she was loved. She was more than a headline, more than a victim, more than a case number — and she deserves so much better."

Kimberly Overstreet, sister of Amber Costello, and Ruth Ramos, sister of Sandra Costilla, also had their impact statements read in court.

Outside the courtroom, sex workers, wearing red, showed support for their "sisters.

Heuermann's ex-wife Asa Ellerup and children were not present.

"This is not about her," Ellerup's attorney Robert Macedonio said. "It's about the victims."

As the proceedings were set to begin, Judge Timothy Mazzei said brusquely, "Let's get him out."

In a stunning turn of events after nearly three years of court proceedings, Heuermann pleaded guilty to killing seven women and took responsibility for the death of an eighth victim, Karen Vergata, in a Riverhead court in April.

During the allocution, Heuermann answered a series of questions posed by Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney, who was prosecuting the case.

Tierney asked, in succession, whether Heuermann had intended to murder his eight victims, including Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, Amber Costello, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Jessica Taylor, Valerie Mack, Sandra Costilla, and now, Vergata.

"Yes," he said simply, in a voice devoid of emotion or remorse. "Yes." "Yes." "Yes." "Yes." "Yes." "Yes." "Yes."

As a condition of the plea agreement, Heuermann waived his right to appeal — and the plea agreement stated that there will be no more prosecutions related to the death of the eight women.

Also, a condition of the plea was that Heuermann must work with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and their behavioral analysis unit.

Heuermann, 62, of Massapequa Park, pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder and four counts of second-degree murder, after killing the seven victims previously referenced by the indictment, as well as admitting publicly, as part of his allocution, to killing the eighth victim, Karen Vergata, the DA said.

Heuermann was due back for sentencing on Wednesday, where he wasexpected to be sentenced to three consecutive sentences of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for killing Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, and Amber Costello, the DA said.

Heuermann was also expected to be sentenced to a consecutive sentence of 100 years to life imprisonment for killing Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Jessica Taylor, Sandra Costilla, and Valerie Mack, Tierney said.

In exchange for Heuermann’s admission to the murder of Karen Vergata, the additional murder was covered by Heuermann’s plea to the murders of the seven charged victims, Tierney said.

On the day of the plea, his voice emotionless, Heuermann admitted to strangulating all the women and wrapping their bodies in burlap.

Heuermann also admitted to a "common scheme of plan," using burner phones, luring each victim with the promise of money, and wrapping the women's bodies "in the same manner — using burlap" to bind their midsections and legs.

He also admitted to dismembering the victims.

Heuermann pleaded guilty voluntarily.

In July 2023, Heuermann was indicted on three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of sex workers Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello, whose remains were found along Ocean Parkway in 2010.

Heuermann was also charged with the murder of a fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, the DA said. New DNA evidence helped connect Heuermann to all four of the deaths, said Tierney.

Heuermann was next slapped with new second-degree murder charges in the deaths of two additional women, Jessica Taylor and Sandra Costilla, the DA said. Heuermann was also later charged with the death of a seventh victim, Valerie Mack, the DA said.

After the court appearance, District Attorney Ray Tierney, who prosecuted the case, said it was the words of the families that meant everything.

"For the families of these eight young women who have waited decades for this day, your voices have been heard," said Tierney. "Rex Heuermann will now serve the rest of his life in prison for taking the lives of your loved ones. None of the success of the Gilgo Beach Task Force would have been possible without your relentless dedication and assistance. You are the reason we do what we do. I also extend my heartfelt thanks to all the talented investigators from the partner agencies in our task force for their amazing work."

Heuerman's attorney Michael Brown also spoke, saying that the families never gave up. "I sincerely believe because of their persistence in this case, it led to a lot more pressure, a lot more resources being dedicated and ultimately, the arrest of my client."