Serial killer pleads guilty to eight murders in case that haunted Long Island, New York

Serial killer pleads guilty to eight murders in case that haunted Long Island, New York10 minutes agoShareSaveAdd as preferred on GoogleMadeline HalpertLong IslandGetty ImagesIn court on Wedneday, dressed in a black suit, Heuermann stood alongside his attorney and pleaded guilty to the murders of eight women A decades-long saga came to an end in a Suffolk County courtroom on Wednesday, as a six-foot-four man dressed in a black suit and blue tie stood across from a judge and confessed to the gruesome details of murdering eight women.Rex Heuermann appeared expressionless as he confirmed to Judge Timothy Mazzei that he had strangled and bound them each in the same manner before dropping their remains along Long Island's remote beaches.He answered mostly "Yes" to each of the judge's questions about his crimes, not looking back at the courtroom packed with victims' family members, some of whom stifled cries.The families of the women had waited for over a decade, as it took years for investigators to solve the murders that had haunted many Long Islanders."A lot of people would talk about it - it was not taboo," Sandra Symon, a high school classmate of Heuermann told the BBC. "Everybody had a theory."Those theories ended in 2023, when police arrested Heuermann, a married father-of-two living in Massapequa Park, a quiet Long Island suburb, in a run-down house where he spent his childhood.The 62-year-old architect was arrested by Suffolk County police who swarmed his Midtown Manhattan office after tying him to the murders with DNA from a pizza box. Heuermann was first charged in the murders of seven women, but on Wednesday he pleaded guilty to an additional killing in 1996. Though many of his victims were missing for years, the case came to light in 2010 when investigators found four sets of remains within a quarter mile of each other on Gilgo Beach.After initially pleading not-guilty, Heuermann ultimately pleaded to the murders o...