Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect Rex Heurman had a new supporter in his courtroom Tuesday: a shaggy black Labrador mix named Stewie.
Asa Ellerup appeared in a Long Island courtroom Tuesday with her dog, wearing a harness that read “service dog,” by her side as her troubled husband appeared before a Suffolk County judge.
“I mean, that’s his dog,” attorney Michael Brown told reporters. “I don’t know if he saw Stewie, but he did say his dog was there.”
Heurman, 60, is accused of brutally murdering six women between 1993 and 2010 and abandoning their bodies in a secluded area on Southern Parkway.
The murders of the women, all of whom were sex workers, went unsolved for more than a decade until Heuermann was arrested last year in the first three murder cases linked to him.
Brown said Tuesday he would ask that at least some of the murder cases be tried separately, particularly victims Jessica Taylor and Sandra Costilla.
These were the final cases linked to Heuerman. Heuerman was originally charged with the murders of four women collectively known as the “Gilgo Four,” whose murders appeared to be different from those of Taylor and Costilla.
“It has nothing to do with the other four. It has no connection to the other four,” Brown said. “The modus operandi is different. The way the murders were carried out is different. These bodies, I hate to use that word, were buried or left in completely different locations.”
“As we know about the Gilgo, Gilgo Beach murders, these two people have nothing to do with the case,” he added. “But the prosecutor’s office has sent them to a grand jury. There’s one indictment. And yes, we are going to move at some point to separate these victims.”
Officials say Ms. Elerap initially distanced herself from her architect husband but in recent months has faithfully attended his court appearances and regularly visited him in prison.
The couple’s daughter, Victoria, was not in court on Tuesday; instead, Ellup brought her daughter, Stewie, with the two sitting at the back of the courtroom during the hearing.
Heuerman appeared before Suffolk County Judge Timothy Massey in a new black suit, blue tie and a new hairstyle, shaking his head multiple times throughout his brief court appearance.
Prosecutors allege the hulking architect also stored ominous “planning documents” full of how-to’s and lessons learned that he had retrieved from his home computer.
The district attorney’s office said it has so far turned over to Heurman’s defense a massive trove of records, including more than 60,000 pages of documents seized from the suspect’s Massapequa Park home, 1,600 pages of lab reports and about 2,000 pages of DNA data.
“We’re looking through the documents, that’s all I can say,” Brown said. “It’s a huge amount of material.”
Heuerman is scheduled to appear in court again on Oct. 16.
“I think the judge is bending both sides,” Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney told reporters.
“The judge is forcing both sides to get the materials. They have to get the materials. Of course, once the defense has the materials, they have to evaluate them and take whatever action they deem appropriate.”
