The wife of the suspected Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann has been seen for the first time stepping inside an alleged ‘kill room’ in the basement of their Massapequa Park home.
The new Peacock docuseries ‘The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets’, gives viewers a rare look at the hidden chamber within the gun vault where Heuermann stored nearly 280 firearms.
Video shows Asa Ellerup entering the wood-paneled room where Heuermann’s clothes hang and a safe is bolted to the wall with a ‘warning’ sticker. ‘Explosives Inside. Do Not Attempt to Drill or Torch this Site.’
‘He didn’t want anyone to have access to (the secret room) so nobody would know not because he was hiding anything it was because he wanted to secure a safe in there,’ she said.
Asa’s daughter Victoria Heuermann, 29, says ‘that is the secret room everyone talks about. It is kind of a walk-in closet in the gun room that is actually underneath the stairs.’
‘I actually didn’t see what the inside actually looked like until after this happened. I wouldn’t go in there myself,’ she added.
The 61-year-old married architect was arrested in July 2023 for the murder of three young woman. He was linked to four other murders bringing that number to seven.
The chilling staircase leading to the basement of Rex Heuermann’s Massapequa Park home
Asa Ellerup is pictured in the secret room where many of Heuermann’s clothes were kept
‘A lot of media are calling the vault the kill room that is where he stored all his guns,’ Victoria reveals in the docuseries.
‘As a kid he showed them to me and did teach me to use a gun when I was old enough but the vault was always locked,’ she recalled.
‘The only time I was in there was when he was in there.’
In the clip, Ellerup shows where her ex-husband kept his guns along the wall which was now bare. ‘The steel door has a combination lock. The lever here is an easy way out so no one can get locked in here,’ she explained.
David Jiminez, a longtime friend of Heuermann, who went to the gun range with him spoke about the time he went inside the basement and saw the ‘the famous gun room.’
‘I recalled vividly he (Rex) said in 30 years you are the fourth person to ever be in this room. I was like wow. That is when he showed me his collection,’ he said. ‘He started collecting rifles and all sorts of gun at 18. It was an amazing collection.’
His vast collection of firearms were seized during one of the search warrants.
And, the steel door that housed the gun vault that showed his initials ‘RAH’ – ‘Rex Andrew Heuermann’ was removed from the property in May.
It is unclear what investigators found in the secret room that will not be disclosed until the trial begins.
‘He didn’t want anyone to have access to (the secret room) so nobody would know -not because he was hiding anything it was because he wanted to secure a safe in there,’ she said
Another angle of the secret room
Rex Heuermann’s family members are speaking out in the new Peacock docuseries
Rex pictured with friends at the gun range
Victoria touching the wooden dollhouse her father had made her when she was a child
Heuermann purchased his childhood home in Massapequa Park that he raised his family in
Rex Heuremann’s Massapequa Park home where police conducted multiple searches
Victoria talked about how much she admired her father growing up, and showed a wooden dollhouse he had built for her when she was a child.
Several photos of a young Victoria are seen with her father during the episode.
At one point, she speaks about her parents divorce that was finalized in April.
‘They did this divorce to protect the assets. It is now legally her house. If we lost the house we would be homeless. It’s our house but it doesn’t mean we are not a family anymore,’ she said.
In the docuseries, Ellerup also talks about her first marriage and her son Christopher, she had before her marriage ended and before she met Heuermann.
At the time, she was working at 7-Eleven, she said, and Heuermann was in college.
‘I love tall, dark and handsome,’ she confessed. ‘I was madly in love with him.’
Heuermann has lived in the home in Massapequa Park his whole life, with Ellerup moving in when the couple wed in 1995.
Looking through old photo albums, she shows a much thinner and younger Heurmann. A smiling wedding photo. Pictures from their early years and when he was a young father.
However, the recurring theme that comes up during the three- part docuseries is how his wife of 27 years could not have known.
Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect Rex Heuermann and his wife Asa Ellerup together on their wedding day in 1995
‘Rex was not seeing prostitutes. He was a family man,’ Ellerup insists. ‘He didn’t do it.’
‘I would need to hear if from Rex, face to face, that he killed these girls for me to believe it,’ she said
Ellerup along with her attorney Robert Macedonio have attended all of Heuermann’s court hearings with Victoria attending, at times.
In one clip, Asa is applying some makeup before she leaves her home and heads out to the courthouse.
‘My husband never kept me out of anything that is why I am going to the courthouse that is why. I want to see it for myself. It is important for me to know what he is going through and I want to be a part of it.’
One of the clips shows a smiling Asa in her attorney’s office telling him that she ‘really liked seeing him (Rex). It was comforting,’ she said.
‘I just don’t see him that way. No. That is not the Rex I know,’ she said in part.
Asa Ellerup pictured in the home she shared with Heuermann and her two children
Rex Heuermann appears in Suffolk County criminal court
Melissa Barthelemy (top left), Amber Costello (top right), Megan Waterman (bottom left), and Maureen Brainard-Barnes (bottom right) became known as the ‘Gilgo Four’
Valerie Mack (left) disappeared in 2000 and parts of her body were discovered in Long Island that November. Jessica Taylor (right) vanished in 2003 with some of her remains being found in Manorville that year
Sandra Costilla (left) was murdered in 1993, making her the earliest known victim. Karen Vergata’s (right) remains were identified in 2023. Heuermann has not been charged in connection to her death
Tanya Denise Jackson, 26, (left) and her two-year-old daughter Tatiana Marie Dykes (right) were identified this year
He is now charged with the murders of seven women over a two-decade reign of horror running from 1993 to 2011.
All the victims were working as sex workers when they vanished.
Their bodies were then found dumped along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach as well as other remote spots on Long Island.
Since Heuermann’s arrest, prosecutors have unveiled a trove of evidence against him, including hairs belonging to him and his family members found on some of the victims, cellphone data placing him in contact with some victims, and a chilling ‘planning document’ where he allegedly intricately detailed his kills.
He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
Fears that a serial killer or killers were at large on Long Island began back in May 2010, when sex worker Shannan Gilbert, 24, vanished in bizarre circumstances one night.
During a search for Gilbert in December 2010, officers came across the body of Melissa Barthelemy in the marshes by Gilgo Beach.
Within days, three more women’s bodies – Amber Costello, Maureen Brainard-Barnes and Megan Waterman – had been found.
The four victims, who became known as the Gilgo Four, had been dumped within a quarter mile of each other, some of them bound and wrapped in burlap.
Over the following months, the remains of seven other victims were found.
