Gilgo killings investigation: Asa Ellerup, wife of suspected Gilgo killer Rex Heuermann, files for divorce, court filing shows

The wife of suspected Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex A. Heuermann filed for divorce Wednesday as investigators continued to search his home and a storage unit for potential evidence in the case, according to court records and her attorney. 

Robert Macedonio confirmed his client Asa Ellerup — Heuermann’s wife — filed a divorce proceeding against the incarcerated architect Wednesday in Suffolk County Supreme Court. 

"I can confirm a summons and a complaint has been filed," Islip Terrace-based Macedonio said by phone late Wednesday afternoon. "We have no further comment."

Ellerup has declined to comment since authorities arrested her husband last week.

The divorce filing came after Heuermann's wife and children expressed “shock, disappointment and disgust" over the allegations against Heuermann when they met with investigators, Suffolk Police Commissioner Rodney K. Harrison said Tuesday.

No attorney was listed for Heuermann in online records for the divorce filing. The contents of divorce proceedings are sealed in New York State. 

His criminal defense attorney, Central Islip-based Michael J. Brown, did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday on the divorce filing or other developments in the case. 

Meanwhile earlier Wednesday, the green Chevrolet Avalanche that investigators have called a critical piece of evidence against Heuermann was returned to Suffolk County. The vehicle was transported to the Suffolk County Crime Laboratory in Hauppauge after the FBI seized the vehicle in South Carolina last week.

Heuermann, 59, of Massapequa Park, has pleaded not guilty to first- and second-degree murder charges in the killings of three women who authorities said worked as escorts — Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Lynn Costello. The women’s remains — along with those of Maureen Brainard-Barnes — were found in proximity to one another along an area of thick vegetation at Gilgo Beach.

Heuermann, who was arrested last Thursday night outside his midtown Manhattan office, has not been charged in Brainard-Barnes’ killing, though prosecutors called him a “prime suspect.”

Prosecutors said they linked Heurermann to the victims through DNA, burner phones and triangulated cell site data. 

The remains of six other victims were also found, but authorities have not tied Heuermann to those killings. 

Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney has said a witness noticed a first-generation Chevrolet Avalanche parked in the driveway of Costello’s residence in West Babylon on Sept. 1, 2010 — the day before she was last seen alive — and saw a man inside who fit the physical description of Heuermann. 

The driver of the Avalanche also contacted Costello on the night she went missing, according to court documents filed in Heuermann’s case, which stated a witness also told police the person observed a dark-colored truck pass the house shortly after Costello exited.

Tierney said a New York State Police investigator — part of the multiagency "Gilgo Beach Homicide Investigation Task Force" convened by Harrison in 2022 — first identified Heuermann as a suspect by identifying him as the owner of a Chevrolet Avalanche. Heuermann's physical appearance — he stands at 6-foot-4 and weighs in excess of 240 pounds, according to authorities — also matched the witness description, Tierney said. 

After the task force linked a Chevrolet Avalanche pickup to Heuermann, the Suffolk County Sheriff’s office shared his physical description — and the locations they identified with the cellphone triangulation they called the “box” — with inmates they knew were trafficking victims to see if they had had contact with him. At the time, they could not share any photos of him, Sheriff Errol Toulon Jr. told Newsday on Tuesday.

In 2018, at the urging of federal prosecutors, Toulon created a human trafficking unit at the Suffolk County Jail to screen inmates who might have been victims of trafficking. The unit steers such inmates to services, but also gathers intelligence for law enforcement, Toulon said.

They didn’t gather additional information through those initial interviews, but then they checked phone records. They discovered that Heuermann had contacted two sex workers by phone, but never followed up with them, Toulon said.

Following Heuermann’s arrest, members of the human trafficking unit have been showing his photo to current inmates to see if any of them have had contact with him and are reaching out to sex trafficking victims no longer in custody, Toulon said.

Toulon, who said he had experience with high-profile inmates John Gotti and Bernhard Goetz when he worked in New York City Corrections, said the jail is taking special precautions to ensure Heuermann’s safety. He is being housed in a special unit, Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Vicki DiStefano said.

 Heuermann is being housed at the Suffolk County Jail in Riverhead, according to prison records. Only authorized personnel have access to that unit, and he is being watched and videotaped 24 hours a day. He will be jailed there through the legal process. Heuermann is allowed to see authorized visitors, but Toulon also is taking steps to screen other visitors who may be there at the same time, he said.

In addition, when Heuermann is being moved from one place to another within the jail, “All movement stops,” Toulon said. “That means all inmate movement stops.”

Heuermann remains on suicide watch. Because the jail is still observing COVID-19 protocols, he is being quarantined for 10 days, DiStefano said. He is in a standard cell with access to a TV in the hallway. He is allowed out of the cell for showers and phone calls, she said. 

Meanwhile, Suffolk County and New York State police continued to search an Amityville storage unit on Sunrise Highway they said was used by Heuermann, and they searched his home for the sixth day.

Crime lab analysts and police loaded trucks and thumbed through files and paperwork, one-by-one, with blue gloves at the storage location. Much of the search continues to be shrouded behind blue tarps and white tents as police empty the storage unit, where boxes are still stacked inside.

The storage unit is five minutes from Heuermann's home, where police said Tuesday investigators seized more than 200 guns from a vault inside.

Police have declined to elaborate on the guns seized and say whether Heuermann had permits for them. Tierney said last week that Heuermann had permits for 92 firearms.