Wife of Gilgo Beach Suspect Gets a Documentary Deal

The New York Times, November 28, 2023: Wife of Gilgo Beach Suspect Gets a Documentary Deal

“After Rex Heuermann was arrested in July and accused of slaughtering women found bound in burlap and buried along a desolate stretch of Gilgo Beach, his family was left reeling and destitute.

“With their dilapidated Massapequa Park ranch house turned inside out by investigators, Mr. Heuermann’s wife, Asa Ellerup, and their two grown children were left to sleep on mats and cook on a grill in the front yard in full view of news crews and true-crime gawkers. Things got so bad that the daughter of a West Coast serial killer created an online fund-raiser.

“But where some saw evil, depravity and tragedy, media companies saw pay dirt, swooping in with lucrative bids to turn the whole thing into content.

“Peacock, the streaming service owned by NBCUniversal, is paying the family to participate in a documentary series covering the family through Mr. Heuermann’s trial, which is likely to begin next year.

“The intense bidding for Ms. Ellerup’s story and the payment caused an outcry from relatives of women whose remains were found in the Gilgo Beach area, including those of Shannan Gilbert, whose disappearance several miles from Gilgo in 2010 led to the recovery of the other victims.

“‘Disappointed, disgusted, flabbergasted, frustrated are a few words that come to mind right now,’ her sister Sherre Gilbert wrote in a social media post. ‘The way that the media will buy stories to further re-victimize, re-traumatize, and exploit the families & victims of serial killers is evil!’”

Additional reading:

NBC News, November 15, 2023: Watch the Dateline episode, “The Hunt for the Gilgo Beach Killer” now

The New York Times, November 10, 2023: Gadfly Lawyer for Gilgo Beach Families Courts Cameras and Tipsters

The New York Times Magazine, October 19, 2023: The Botched Hunt for the Gilgo Beach Killer