Creepy moment Gilgo Beach suspect’s wife goes into ‘secret’ room hidden in the basement for the first time

The wife of the suspected Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann has been seen for the first time stepping inside an alleged ‘kill room’ in the basement of their Massapequa Park home. 

The new Peacock docuseries ‘The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets’ gives viewers a rare look at the hidden chamber within the gun vault where Heuermann stored nearly 280 firearms.

Video shows Asa Ellerup, 61, entering the wood-paneled room where Heuermann’s clothes hang and a safe is bolted to the wall with a sticker warning: ‘Explosives Inside. Do Not Attempt to Drill or Torch this Site.’

‘He didn’t want anyone to have access to [the secret room] so nobody would know –  not because he was hiding anything. It was because he wanted to secure a safe in there,’ Ellerup says.

Her daughter, Victoria Heuermann, 29, notes it is the secret room that everyone wants to talk about. ‘It is kind of a walk-in closet in the gun room that is actually underneath the stairs.

‘I actually didn’t see what the inside looked like until after this happened. I wouldn’t go in there myself,’ she adds.

The 61-year-old architect was arrested in July 2023 for the alleged murders of three young women. He has been linked to four other killings, bringing the total to seven.

The staircase leading to the basement of Rex Heuermann’s Massapequa Park home

Asa Ellerup is pictured looking through some of Heuermann’s clothes in the secret room

As Victoria reveals in the docuseries that premiered on June 10: ‘A lot of media are calling the vault “the kill room”. That is where he stored all his guns.

‘As a kid, he showed them to me and did teach me to use a gun when I was old enough but the vault was always locked,’ she recalls.

‘The only time I was in there was when he was in there.’ 

In the clip, Ellerup shows where her ex-husband kept his guns along the wall, which now stands bare. ‘The steel door has a combination lock. The lever here is an easy way out so no one can get locked in here,’ she explains.

David Jimenez, 63, a longtime friend of Heuermann who went to the gun range with him, recounts the moment he was invited into the basement to see the ‘the famous gun room’.

‘I recalled vividly he [Rex] said: “In 30 years, you are the fourth person to ever be in this room.” I was like: “Wow.” That is when he showed me his collection,’ Jimenez said. ‘He started collecting rifles and all sorts of guns at 18. It was an amazing collection.’ 

The whole cache was seized during one of the search warrants, and the steel door housing the gun vault that bears the initials ‘RAH’ – ‘Rex Andrew Heuermann’ – was removed from the property in May.

It remains unclear what investigators found in the secret room. Details are not expected to be disclosed until the trial begins.

‘He didn’t want anyone to have access to [the secret room] so nobody would know – not because he was hiding anything. It was because he wanted to secure a safe in there,’ Ellerup said

Another view of the secret room 

Rex Heuermann’s family members are speaking out in the new Peacock docuseries 

Rex pictured with friends at a gun range

Victoria touching the wooden dollhouse that Heuermann made for her when she was a child

Heuermann purchased his childhood home in Massapequa Park where he raised his family 

Rex Heuermann’s Massapequa Park home where police conducted multiple searches

Victoria talks of her childhood admiration for her father, and shows a wooden dollhouse he had built as a gift. 

Several photos appear in the episode showing her with Heuermann.  

At one point, she discusses her parents divorce that was finalized in April. 

‘They did this divorce to protect the assets. It is now legally her house. If we lost the house we would be homeless. It’s our house but it doesn’t mean we are not a family any more,’ she says.

The docuseries also features Ellerup talking about her first marriage and her son Christopher, whom she had before meeting Heuermann.

At the time, she was working at 7-Eleven, while Heuermann was in college.

‘I love tall, dark and handsome,’ she says. ‘I was madly in love with him.’ 

Heuermann has lived in the home in Massapequa Park his whole life, with Ellerup moving in when the couple wed in 1995.

Paging through old photo albums, she shows pictures of a younger, thinner Heuermann smiling in a wedding photograph and as a young father.

But the recurring theme in the three-part docuseries is how his wife of 27 years could not have known anything about Heuermann’s alleged double life. 

Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect Rex Heuermann and his wife Asa Ellerup on their wedding day in 1995 

‘Rex was not seeing prostitutes. He was a family man,’ Ellerup insists. ‘He didn’t do it.

‘I would need to hear if from Rex, face to face, that he killed these girls for me to believe it,’ she says.

Ellerup and her attorney, Robert Macedonio, have attended all of Heuermann’s court hearings, sometimes with Victoria.

In one clip, Ellerup is seen applying makeup before setting off for the court.

‘My husband never kept me out of anything,’ she says. ‘That is why I am going to the courthouse. That is why. I want to see it for myself. It is important for me to know what he is going through and I want to be a part of it.’  

Another scene shows a smiling Ellerup in her attorney’s office saying how much she liked having been able to watch Heuermann in court. ‘It was comforting,’ she says.

‘I just don’t see him that way. No. That is not the Rex I know.’

Asa Ellerup pictured in the home she shared with Heuermann and her two children 

Rex Heuermann appears in Suffolk County criminal court 

Melissa Barthelemy (top left), Amber Costello (top right), Megan Waterman (bottom left), and Maureen Brainard-Barnes (bottom right) became known as the ‘Gilgo Four’

Valerie Mack (left) disappeared in 2000 and parts of her body were discovered in Long Island that November. Jessica Taylor (right) vanished in 2003 with some of her remains being found in Manorville that year

Sandra Costilla (left) was murdered in 1993, making her the earliest known alleged victim. Karen Vergata’s (right) remains were identified in 2023. Heuermann has not been charged in connection to her death

Tanya Denise Jackson, 26, (left) and her two-year-old daughter Tatiana Marie Dykes (right) were identified this year

Heuermann is now charged with the murders of seven women during a two-decade reign of horror from 1993 to 2011.

All the victims were sex workers who vanished before their remains were found along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach as well as other remote spots on Long Island.

Since his arrest, prosecutors have unveiled a trove of evidence, including hairs allegedly belonging to Heuermann and his family members found on some of the victims, cellphone data allegedly placing him in contact with them, and a chilling ‘planning document’ in which he allegedly outlines his killings in detail.

He has pleaded not guilty to all charges. 

Fears that a serial killer or killers were operating on Long Island began in May 2010 when 24-year-old sex worker Shannan Gilbert disappeared in strange circumstances one night.

During a search for Gilbert that December, officers found the body of Melissa Barthelemy, 22, in the marshes by Gilgo Beach.

Within days, three more bodies – Amber Costello, 27, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, and Megan Waterman, 22 – had been found. They became known as the Gilgo Four.

The women had been dumped within a quarter-mile of each other, some bound and wrapped in burlap.

Over the following months, the remains of seven other victims were found.

‘The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets’ is a three-part docuseries that premiered on June 10, 2025, and all episodes are now available to stream exclusively on Peacock