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The family of Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuerman is now shunned, gawked at and forced to remain in the Massapequa Park home where the evil father brutally killed seven women, their lawyer told The Post.
Despite a hefty payout for their part in Peacock’s four-part documentary series, “The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets,” the killer’s kin can’t sell their house because of IRS liens and would be hard-pressed to even find a job, attorney Robert Macedonio said.
“If anything, it’s cost them money,” he said. “They’re unemployable at this point. Who’s hiring them? They are financially distraught because nobody’s hiring them, there’s no income.”
Their relation to Heuerman also affects their day-to-day lives, Macedonio added.
“There is no social life,” Macedonio said. “They pretty much all exist together, travel together. If you go to the grocery store and you get pointed out. People walk by the house constantly – it’s like a tourist attraction, taking pictures, pointing.”
He said Heuermann’s now-ex-wife, Asa Ellerup, and her two children, Victoria Heuermann and Christopher Sheridan, were “completely blindsided” by the burly architect’s arrest on July 13, 2023.
Following his arrest, the family was grilled by cops and later booted out of their disheveled house during two extensive police searches of the property, as reporters camped out outside.
“The whole life you thought you were living for the past approximately 30 years is not what it was,” Macedonio said. “They were in complete denial. They thought it was a conspiracy theory, wrong person, there’s no way. This is not the Rex that they knew, this is not the dad that Victoria knew.
“It’s been a process to bring them to the realization that Rex did this.”
Initially charged in the grisly slayings of three sex workers, Heuermann was ultimately indicted for killing seven women between 1993 and 2010.
Earlier this month, he pleaded guilty to killing Amber Lynn Costello, 27, Megan Waterman, 22, Melissa Barthelemy, 24, and Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, who were famously known as the “Gilgo Four.”
He also fessed to the murders of Valerie Mack, 24, Jessica Taylor, 20, and Sandra Costilla, 28, in the case that has gripped Long Island for three decades — and said he had killed another woman who had not been previously linked to him, Karen Vergata, who was murdered in 1996.
The four-part Peacock docuseries details the Heuermann family’s journey from denial to acceptance.
Macedonio won’t reveal how much the killer’s ex-wife and daughter were paid to open up their lives as the real-life drama unfolded, but published reports have placed the figure at approximately one million dollars.
“Everybody wants to make an issue about the Peacock, the money, money, money,” he said. “But honestly, they can’t afford to leave that house. There’s nowhere to go. They’re honestly stuck in that house right now, horrific as it may be. That’s where they are.”
Heuermann turned over the Long Island home and land he owned in South Carolina as part of the divorce agreement with Ellerup, but plans to build a new house down south fell through when selling the Massapequa Park home became impossible, the lawyer said.
Asked what’s next, Macedonio said the family is waiting for Heuermann’s June 17 sentencing.
“Let me get through the sentencing,” he said. “Asa has repeatedly said she would like the focus to remain on the victims and the victims’ families who have suffered immeasurable losses in this. She wants to move on with her life and hopefully get back to whatever sense of normalcy she can.”
He was asked if that was possible.
“Yeah, at some point it is,” he answered. “People recover from anything. She will.”
English (US)