Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann to be sentenced after admitting to 8 murders
Rex A. Heuermann pleads guilty in court to the murders of eight women during a 17-year killing spree on April 8, 2026 in Riverhead, New York. (James Carbone/Pool/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Gilgo Beach, New York, serial killer Rex Heuermann may address the court when he is sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday.
In April, Heuermann pleaded guilty to killing seven women: Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Lynn Costello, Jessica Taylor, Valerie Mack and Sandra Costilla. He also admitted to killing an eighth woman, Karen Vergata, though he was not formally charged in her death. Their families will have the opportunity to address Heuermann on Wednesday.
At the April hearing, Heuermann agreed to serve three consecutive life sentences followed by four consecutive sentences of 25 years-to-life, according to prosecutors.
Prosecutors said the New York City architect targeted sex workers, strangled them and dumped their bodies near Long Island’s Gilgo Beach over the course of 17 years.
Heuermann “walked among us, play acting as a normal, suburban dad, when in reality, all along, he was obsessively targeting innocent women for death,” Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said in April.
The Gilgo Beach cases went unsolved for years, until Heuermann’s arrest in 2023.
Since then, Heuermann has been in custody at the Riverhead Correctional Facility. While in jail, Heuermann has been reading books about murder and serial killers, and he’s communicated with Keith Hunter Jesperson, a 1990s serial killer known as the Happy Face Killer, Suffolk County Sheriff Errol Toulon told ABC News.
Defense attorney Michael Brown said in April that the decision to plead guilty belonged solely to Heuermann.
“There came a point in this defense when Rex said, ‘I want to plead guilty,'” Brown said, adding that admitting his guilt brought Heuermann “a huge sense of relief.”
Brown said Heuermann would likely have more to say at sentencing.
Part of Heuermann’s plea agreement also requires him to be interviewed by the FBI’s behavioral analysis unit.
Stock image of court gavel. (STOCK IMAGE/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — An immigration law attorney whose career has spanned over two decades said he has never experienced a hearing like the one he had in Annandale, Virginia.
“Normally, these master calendars will have 10 people, maybe sometimes 15, but usually in that range. The judge opened the hearing and said well, we have 100 cases on today’s docket,” attorney Joseph M. Perez told ABC News.
Master calendar hearings are when immigrants in deportation proceedings first appear before a judge and are informed of their rights and the charges they may be facing. It’s a crucial first step in deportation proceedings that can occur on an individual basis or in groups of a few people.
But in recent weeks, attorneys like Perez said they are seeing as many as 100 people slotted for the same time with little to no notice in advance, prompting them to call these hearings “mega masters,” which they say could be a new tactic by the Trump administration aimed at deporting as many people as quickly as possible.
Multiple attorneys told ABC News that, in some cases, scheduled master calendar hearings are being abruptly canceled and consolidated into larger proceedings.
On Monday, attorney Briana Carlson represented a client in Virginia at one of the hearings and the judge announced she had 80 cases on the docket, she said. Her client’s hearing had originally been scheduled for July.
“He was scheduled for a hearing in July, which we knew about, but we were preparing an application for relief, and so my paralegal happened to check the portal for that relief, and that’s when she found the new hearing date that had been advanced to today, which no one received notice of,” she said.
Carlson said that when she reached out to an immigration court in Sterling, Virginia, for a different case that had also been rescheduled, a clerk notified her that the court had received a nationwide directive to advance master calendar hearings if they’re scheduled in July or later.
A spokesperson for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, an agency within the Department of Justice that oversees immigration courts, did not deny the existence of the directive, and in part, said the agency “prioritizes the timely completion of all cases.”
“Unnecessary delay hurts both aliens with meritorious claims and the American public who wish to see aliens with non-meritorious claims removed as quickly as possible. As it continues to add new immigration judges, EOIR will continue to make scheduling adjustments to ensure all cases are handled in a timely and lawful manner,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
NPR was first to report on the so-called “mega masters” hearings.
Reports of the massive hearings across the country have prompted the American Immigration Lawyers Association to issue guidance to lawyers, urging them to constantly check their online calendars to see if their cases have been rescheduled.
Vanessa Dojaquez-Torres, Practice and Policy Counsel at AILA, says there’s growing concern that the Trump administration is placing individuals who do not have attorneys in these consolidated hearings in an attempt to force them to miss a hearing, which can automatically trigger a final order of removal.
“The goal is for people that are not showing up, they’re going to get an in absentia removal order, and that is going to help the court kind of clear their backlog, as we know, is one of the main goals of this administration,” Dojaquez-Torres said.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration proposed a rule that, if approved, would increase the fee for migrants ordered removed in absentia from $5,130 to $18,000. Critics of the fee increase say it’s an attempt to force undocumented immigrants to self-deport.
In the notice announcing the proposed rule, the administration said the fee is meant to help reimburse ICE for the costs of immigration enforcement.
Perez said that the shift to larger master calendar hearings is shortsighted.
“They want to accelerate things, but there’s also existing scheduling orders. Scheduling orders are issued by every court; they lay out how the case is going to proceed, what days you have to send the documents for. They’re advancing these cases to a date upon which you do not have enough time to comply with the scheduling order, so they really haven’t thought about the whole thing here,” he said.
An Amtrak police officer moves barriers at the scene of a stabbing in Penn Station on June 7, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Adam Gray/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Five people were stabbed Sunday evening at New York City’s Penn Station by a man experiencing homelessness, sources told ABC News.
The suspect, a man in his 50s who has not been publicly named, was taken into police custody on Sunday, sources said.
“My heart is with everyone who was injured, their loved ones, and all those shaken by this unacceptable violence,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said in a statement posted on social media. “I’m wishing each of the victims a full and speedy recovery.”
None of the injuries are believed to be life-threatening, sources said.
Mamdani praised the “swift response” by Amtrak police and other first responders, who he said “acted quickly to apprehend the suspect and provide emergency care.”
“There are currently no impacts to Amtrak service,” Mamdani said.
The stabbings unfolded one night before Game 3 of the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden, which is directly above Penn Station. President Donald Trump will attend Monday night’s game, prompting massive security protocols and the cancellation of the watch party outside of Madison Square Garden.
(NEW YORK) — Tropical Storm Arthur has formed in the Gulf near the middle Texas coast, according to the National Weather Service. It is the first named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
