Rex Heuermann’s Wife Asa Ellerup and His Kids Break Their Silence on Gilgo Beach Murders

Rex Heuermann‘s wife, Asa Ellerup, and their kids are finally breaking their silence — and giving an unfiltered look into their home — in Peacock’s Gilgo Beach murders doc.

The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets, released on Tuesday, June 10, offered Ellerup the chance to address the allegations leveled against her husband as he awaits trial for the alleged murder of seven women.

“[Did I] know what? My husband was home here. He is a family man,” Ellerup told the cameras in the three-part doc. “They are telling me he has been soliciting sex from sex workers. What? I don’t have sex with my husband? I don’t satisfy him?”

She continued: “He comes home and he eats my dinner. It isn’t good enough? No. I don’t believe my husband did this.”

Heuermann was arrested in 2023 after several missing persons cases involving numerous women — including Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Costello and Maureen Brainard-Barnes — went unsolved for more than a decade. He was charged in connection to the deaths of Barthelemy, Costello, Waterman and Brainard-Barnes and later with the deaths of Sandra Costilla, Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack.

After Heuermann’s arrest, his wife, their daughter, Victoria, and his stepson, Christopher, remained tight-lipped about the case. Heuermann, for his part, has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets, produced by 50 Cent‘s G-Unit Film and Television production company, allowed Heuermann’s family and loved ones to share their perspective on the allegations — including why some of them have remained by his side. Keep scrolling for a breakdown of what Ellerup, Victoria and others revealed about their time with Heuermann:

Their Relationship Before the Arrest

In the second and third part of the docuseries, Ellerup reflected on the early days of their relationship.

“The two of us were married for 27 years. I met Rex when I was 18 years old. He’s the kind of guy you turn your head and you go take a look at. He was a tall and handsome young man. I love tall, dark and handsome,” Ellerup noted. “At that time, I was madly in love with the man. There’s no doubt about that.”

Ellerup married Christopher Sheridan but kept in touch with Huermann.

“I met my first husband and got married. But things didn’t go well at all. After my son, Christopher, was born, my ex-husband became somebody completely different. I was in the process of getting a divorce,” Ellerup recalled. “Christopher’s father, he wasn’t very nice about it. He said to me that there’s no way in the world he was going to be OK with me being happy with somebody else.”

At the time, Ellerup was thankful to have Huermann’s support, adding, “Rex was the kind of person that you could call. We were friends. Rex was standing there and he heard what he said. Rex then says, ‘OK, I’m not worried. Let’s get a lawyer and let’s take him to court.’ Then he paid for the lawyer to take him to court.”

Ellerup recalled immediately getting into a relationship with Heuermann after her divorce.

“There was no reason to hold back. So Rex said to me, ‘I’ve got a nice house. It’s not big and not elaborate. But how about you come and see if you’d like to stay there?’ she added. “Then I found out I was pregnant with Victoria. He said to me, ‘Well, how do you feel about marrying me?’ I said yes. There’s a picture of me on our wedding day and I’m looking up going, ‘I finally got him. He’s mine.’”

Life With Rex

According to Heuermann’s daughter, she didn’t notice her father exhibiting any concerning behavior prior to his arrest.

“Sometimes he would come home frustrated. He needed to wind down,” Victoria noted. “But he never hit any of us. The worst he would do is throw a plate in the sink.”

She continued: “My dad was an open book. A lot of people who knew my dad, like long term clients and people he worked with for years: it was no secret he hunted. It was no secret he had guns. He was an open book.”

Ellerup also shut down any insinuations that there were warning signs that could have hinted at her husband’s alleged behavior, saying, “There’s no abnormal behavior that I had ever actually noticed. If there was any knowledge at all of some unusual behavior in that man, I would have walked out the door.”

The Day Before the Arrest

Heuermann’s family got a visit from the FBI one day before he was officially charged.

“I knew my dad had stuff with the IRS and Department of Labor but [not the] FBI,” Victoria said. “They started asking about if my dad was ever sexually [abusive] toward me or touched me. I said, ‘No, I do not recall any time he was like that.’”

Ellerup, for her part, assumed they received a visit from the government because of her “husband’s guns.” (Heuermann had 279 guns in his possession when the FBI raided his home in 2024 and there was a walk-in vault located in his basement as well.)

The Aftermath of Rex’s Arrest

“When we got back home, after they raided it, it was not recognizable. No beds, no clothes and bathroom sink was broken,” Victoria shared as the documentary crew filmed the family walking through their ransacked home. “They should have actually deemed our house uninhabitable. It was as if they were trying to leave us for dead.”

Ellerup recalled the family’s initial reaction to the charges brought against Heuermann.

“The kids, they were crying themselves to sleep before we actually got into the house. We were all doing it,” she detailed. “Fear, anxiety and guilt. All of those emotions were like going on a roller coaster. But we needed to come home. They have a lot of sentimental stuff in the house — and I still feel Rex is here.”

Do They Think Rex Is Guilty?

Heuermann’s immediate family spent the entirety of the doc explaining why they weren’t willing to consider their loved one the Gilgo Beach killer.

“Nobody deserves what they got. But Rex was not seeing [sex workers]. He’s a family man. He didn’t do this,” Ellerup claimed. “I would need to hear it from Rex face to face that he killed these girls for me to believe it. My husband never kept me out of anything.”

Ellerup was subsequently filmed going to court to support her husband,

“That’s why I’m going to the courthouse. That’s why I want to see it for myself. It’s important for me to know what he’s going through. I want to be a part of him,” she added. “I really liked seeing him. There was comfort in seeing him.”

She continued: “I just don’t see him that way. That’s not the Rex I know. If they’re gonna sit there and tell me that he only did this during this particular time period that I was away on vacation then I’d have to question that. If a man is that much of a genius that he’s capable of doing that — I don’t believe it.”

Breaking Down the Timeline

The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets had Ellerup and Victoria weigh in on the dates when Heuermann was allegedly involved in the murder of several women. They started with Barthelemy, who went missing in July 2009.

“I remember July 2009. I planned a trip to Iceland for five weeks to visit my family. The reason why my husband didn’t go with us on vacation is because construction is highest in New York City during the summertime. He would also try to take advantage of times that we were not in the house to do some reconstructing in the house,” Ellerup claimed. “When I was in Iceland, I remember that conversation when he called me the night before he left. He said to me, ‘I made a big mess and I have a big surprise for you when you get home.’”

Heuermann alleged to Ellerup that he “ripped apart the whole bathroom,” adding, “He threw everything out. He had to pick up some supplies. There are receipts from when it was purchased. He had put in the toilet and the sink downstairs in the basement. He had redone the plumbing. The bathroom had been completely gutted from top to bottom. That was Rex.”

When it came to the events leading up to Brainard-Barnes’ disappearance two years prior, Ellerup recalled a different family vacation.

“I was trying to do something fun with my kids. There were credit card receipts of us being in Atlanta City at this particular time period,” she said. “They’re alleging that my husband managed to go to work, solicit sex from a sex worker, sit on a train and then come home to make plans to pick them up, kill them and dump them. Then he turned around to go to Atlantic City to come see us? I’m sorry. It’s bulls***.”

Victoria, meanwhile, discussed a different family trip to a theme park that Heuermann skipped out on. She admitted in her confessionals and in conversations with convicted serial killer Dennis Rader’s daughter, Kerri Rawson, that there were periods of time where she couldn’t account for her father’s whereabouts. Still, she wasn’t willing to acknowledge he could have been spending that time living a double life as an alleged serial killer.

Waiting for the Outcome of the Trial

“I didn’t see anything. How did I not know? I was 10 or 12 or 13 years old when these girls were murdered. I was in school. That’s exactly how I wouldn’t know anything,” Victoria fired back in a confessional. “Now that I actually look back on my childhood, I do find it very hard to believe my dad actually really did all this.”

Victoria recalled nothing but positive moments with her dad.

“I saw him at regular times every day, morning and night — and the vacation that he did join us on. But like I said, there were a lot of hours out of the day that I also was not home — including vacations that he did not join us on,” she explained. “That’s exactly what I mean by on the fence. I can’t know whether or not he did or did it because I was not around for it. I was too young to understand.”

An offscreen producer encouraged Victoria to unpack her conflicting feelings.

“Me standing on my ground and wanting to see the evidence first is, in a way, protecting myself. It keeps my head on straight with everything that everybody is saying,” she continued. “Whether the world likes it or not or whether I like it or not, he’s my dad. They can’t take that away from me.”

Victoria concluded: “I don’t know what acceptance looks like. Acceptance to me is just, “F*** I have to move on. If he was guilty, it’s going to start to become like a love-hate relationship. This is my dad and I love him as my dad. The hate is the other side of him that came out. Going forward, I’m not gonna interact with him the same way. I would have if this never happened. Both the feelings of love and hate, they can coexist.”

Asa’s Decision to Remain Loyal

“He’s never said to me, ‘Don’t use my computer.’ He’s never said, ‘No, I’m not going give you the password.’ There is nothing off limits with Rex,” she stated. “I’m not picking a side just yet until I see the evidence. I need to hear it in a court of law. I need to hear it at trial.”

The Prison Phone Call From Rex

During the three-part doc, Ellerup is seen speaking with Heuermann while he is in prison.

“I’m talking to him all the time but he only has a certain amount of time to be able to make calls,” she explained. “So I can’t get too comfortable talking to him about things that are gonna hurt him. … Like telling him that I love him. That will hurt him.”

Addressing the Divorce — And the Family’s Move

Ellerup filed for divorce shortly after Heuermann was arrested in July 2023. They reached a settlement in early 2025.

“I understand why she divorced my dad. They did the divorce to protect the assets,” Victoria claimed. “It’s now legally her house. She was married to him so she gets the asset from the divorce. If we lost the house, we’d be homeless. It’s our house. It doesn’t mean that we’re not a family anymore.”

Ellerup didn’t clarify her split from Heuermann, but she did confirm she was moving out of their home in Massapequa Park.

“Now that this life in this house is coming to an end, it makes me feel like there’s a new beginning,” she shared at the end of the doc. “What that life is going to be like, I do not know. I will find out eventually. I will deal with it the best that I can. I did what I had to do to protect myself and my children.”