After decades waiting for justice, relatives of women murdered by New York's Gilgo Beach serial killer have laid into him before he was sentenced to life in prison. He told them: "I am responsible" for the crimes.
"The words I would say would have no meaning," added Rex Heuermann, the Long Island architect who lived a secret life of violence for years before admitting he killed eight women.
Wednesday's sentencing capped an extraordinary investigation that solved one of New York's most perplexing mysteries. The seemingly unconnected and largely overlooked disappearances of young women became the focus of true-crime documentaries, books and podcasts after police began discovering the victims' skeletal remains in the sandy scrub along a coastal parkway.
Heuermann, 62, will have no possibility of parole.
"A million years isn't enough," Jasmine Robinson, a cousin of victim Jessica Taylor, said.
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Sign up"Nothing will ever make this right."
"You fill me with so much repugnance, I can't stand it," she added.
As a series of victims' kin spoke, Heuermann sat with his hands on the defence table, looking straight ahead and lightly tapping his fingers.
Then Amanda Funderburg, victim Melissa Barthelemy's sister, commanded Heuermann to look at her. He glanced in her direction, but his eyes were slightly downcast.
"I hope you suffer," Funderburg said as she recounted a taunting phone call she received from him days after Barthelemy disappeared. Funderburg was 15 years old.
JoAnn Mack, the mother of victim Valerie Mack, told the killer her daughter "had dreams, and you took them all away from her".
"Justice has been done, but it can't replace what has been taken," Mack said.
Heuermann pleaded guilty in April to charges 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.
"Are you at least a little sorry?" Judge Timothy Mazzei asked on Wednesday in an indignant voice.
Heuermann nodded and appeared to mouth "Yes".
"You are disgusting — a despicable man, if you are a man at all," the judge said, his voice rising.
"And you are a coward."
As Heuermann was led away in handcuffs, spectators in the packed courtroom jeered.
Victims' families recount a confounding loss
Most of the women disappeared between 2000 and 2010 and their remains were all found on Long Island. Most were along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach. Costilla's remains were found in 1993 in the Hamptons, while Vergata's remains were found in 1996 on Fire Island.
Heuermann's ex-wife and two adult children said they did not attend the sentencing out of respect for the victim's families.
The case spilled into view in 2010, when investigators started to find remains along Ocean Parkway while looking into the disappearance of another sex worker, Shannan Gilbert, whose death was ultimately ruled an accidental drowning.
The case went cold until 2022, when detectives linked Heuermann to a pickup truck that a witness reported seeing when one of the victims disappeared in 2010.
Eventually, they matched DNA from a pizza crust Heuermann discarded in a Manhattan rubbish can to genetic material extracted from highly degraded hair fragments found on the women's remains.
Investigators amassed other evidence, including mobile phone and tracking data showing Heuermann arranged meetings with some victims shortly before their disappearances.
After Heuermann's 2023 arrest, prosecutors recovered what they described as a "blueprint" for the killings from his computer files. Among the documents was a series of checklists with reminders to limit noise, clean the bodies and destroy evidence.
Heuermann will soon be transferred to a state prison after having spent the past three years alone in a segregated cell at the Suffolk County jail, reading crime novels and striking up a brief correspondence with the infamous "Happy Face Killer."
As part of his guilty plea, Heuermann has agreed to co-operate with the FBI's behavioural analysis unit to help catch other serial killers.
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