In an eastern Long Island courtroom, relatives of women murdered by Rex Heuermann, the admitted Gilgo Beach serial killer, condemned him as sentencing proceeded. Jasmine Robinson, Amanda Funderburg and others described taunting calls, lifelong grief, and the r
RIVERHEAD, N.Y. — Jasmine Robinson kept her hands clasped on the defense table as Rex Heuermann faced sentencing in an eastern Long Island courtroom. He looked ahead, then down, as she told him, “You fill me with so much repugnance, I can’t stand it.”
Robinson is a cousin of Jessica Taylor, one of the eight women Heuermann admitted he killed. “A million years isn’t enough,” she said. “Nothing will ever make this right.”
The outburst landed not as a closing argument. but as a reminder that the courtroom is the final stop for a case that began as something far more scattered and cruel: a series of disappearances of young women that. for years. seemed unconnected. After police began finding skeletal remains in sandy scrub along a coastal parkway. the story hardened into a mystery that gripped public attention through true-crime documentaries. books and podcasts.
On Wednesday, relatives spoke with the kind of anger that doesn’t fade with time. Amanda Funderburg, the sister of Melissa Barthelemy, urged Heuermann to look at her as she spoke. He glanced toward her, his eyes slightly downcast.
“I hope you suffer,” Funderburg said.
She described a taunting phone call she received from Heuermann days after Barthelemy disappeared, when Funderburg was 15. “I hope you suffer,” she repeated, pressing the message into the quiet between Heuermann’s movement and the words from the families.
For many relatives, the sentence itself cannot reach what they lost. JoAnn Mack, the mother of victim Valerie Mack, said, “Justice has been done, but it can’t replace what has been taken.”
“She had dreams, and you took them all away from her,” Mack said.
Heuermann, 62, will face the likelihood of a life sentence. The Long Island architect pleaded guilty in April to charges that he murdered seven women: Barthelemy, Mack, Taylor, Megan Waterman, Amber Lynn Costello, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, and Sandra Costilla.
In court, he also admitted killing an eighth victim, Karen Vergata, even though he was never charged in her death. He said he strangled his victims, many of them sex workers, and dismembered some of their bodies.
Heuermann has remained largely silent through multiple court appearances since his 2023 arrest. Wednesday’s hearing includes another moment he will be allowed to take—he will also have a chance to speak.
His ex-wife and two grown children did not attend. Through their lawyers, they said they would stay away out of respect for the victim’s families.
The effect of the crimes rippled for years after the disappearances ended in discoveries of remains on Long Island. Brainard-Barnes’ two children were 7 and 1 when she disappeared, and their lives, they said, were permanently altered by an absence they did not understand.
Her sister, Melissa Cann, told the court that she lived with “survivor’s guilt” for decades. She spoke of wondering whether she could have done something more to protect Brainard-Barnes.
“It was a weight I carried everywhere,” Cann said, sobbing deeply. Then, fighting back tears, she added that guilt is not something she should hold as a lifelong punishment.
“But, she said, that guilt is ‘not mine to carry. It is for Rex and Rex alone.’”
Another relative described childhood memory breaking under the weight of what happened. Liliana Waterman was 3 when her mother, Megan Waterman, vanished. The daughter said she didn’t fully understand what had happened until she was about 9.
“In an instant, my world was shattered,” she said. “Was she in pain? Was she scared?”
Most of the women disappeared between 2000 and 2010. Many of their remains were found on a parkway not far from Long Island’s Gilgo Beach—about 50 miles from Manhattan. Costilla’s remains were found in 1993 more than 60 miles away in the Hamptons. Vergata’s remains were found in 1996 on Fire Island, more than 20 miles east of Gilgo Beach.
The case came into view in 2010 when investigators began to find remains along Ocean Parkway while looking into the disappearance of another sex worker. Shannan Gilbert. whose death was ultimately ruled an accidental drowning. The investigation later went cold until 2022. when detectives linked Heuermann to a pickup truck a witness reported seeing when one of the victims disappeared in 2010.
Eventually. investigators matched DNA from a pizza crust Heuermann discarded in a Manhattan trash can to genetic material extracted from highly degraded hair fragments found on the women’s remains. Prosecutors also gathered evidence including cellphone and tracking data showing Heuermann arranged meetings with some victims shortly before their disappearances.
After Heuermann’s arrest, prosecutors recovered what they described as a “blueprint” for the killings from his computer files. As part of his guilty plea, Heuermann agreed to cooperate with the FBI’s behavioral analysis unit to help catch other serial killers.
Heuermann has spent the past three years alone in a segregated cell at the Suffolk County jail, reading crime novels. Sheriff Errol Toulon said he has occasionally been visited by his lawyers or family, and that Heuermann also struck up a brief correspondence with the “Happy Face Killer.”
For the people who spoke Wednesday, the details of how the investigation worked were never far from the point: time did not heal what was done.
“You fill me with so much repugnance,” Robinson told the man sitting before her, as she carried decades of waiting into one final courtroom moment.
It wasn’t the anger of a verdict alone. It was the anger of families who said justice arrived too late to restore what was taken.
Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann sentencing Jasmine Robinson Jessica Taylor Amanda Funderburg Melissa Barthelemy Valerie Mack Megan Waterman Amber Lynn Costello Maureen Brainard-Barnes Sandra Costilla Karen Vergata