Rex Heuermann Interview: Amira Tape, Jail Admissions, and FBI BAU

Only one on-camera interview of Rex Heuermann exists from before his July 2023 arrest: a February 2022 sit-down with a Long Island realtor and YouTuber named Antoine Amira. Everything else the public has heard from Heuermann in his own words comes from two later sources: jailhouse conversations with his ex-wife and daughter recounted in a Peacock documentary, and a post-plea cooperation agreement requiring him to sit for interviews with the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit. A Rex Heuermann interview in the traditional press sense — a reporter questioning him about the killings — has not happened.

The 2022 Pre-Arrest Interview With Antoine Amira

In February 2022, more than a year before he was arrested, Heuermann agreed to be interviewed on camera by Antoine Amira, a realtor who ran a YouTube channel called “Bonjour Realty” and a series titled “L’Interview by Antoine.” The conversation focused on Heuermann’s career as an architectural consultant and his personal life. It remains the only known interview footage of him from before his arrest.¹

Amira later described the experience as “very difficult.” He called Heuermann “narcissistic” and said his handshake hurt. During a segment about cabinet-making, Heuermann described his favorite tool as a “cabinet maker’s hammer,” adding: “It is persuasive enough when I need to persuade something.” When Amira jokingly asked if he meant “not someone,” Heuermann replied: “Something, and it always yields excellent results.” The exchange drew widespread attention after his arrest.²

Amira also said Heuermann’s adult daughter, Victoria, was present during filming, and he described what he perceived as a “strange relationship” between them, saying he felt Heuermann intimidated her.

What Heuermann Told His Ex-Wife in Jail

After his arrest, Heuermann’s most substantive statements about the killings came in private conversations with family members. Those conversations were later recounted in a four-part Peacock documentary, The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets, which featured interviews with his ex-wife, Asa Ellerup, and his daughter, Victoria.

During a jail visit, Ellerup asked him directly: “So Mr. Heuermann, I understand that you are confessing to me on these murders. Can you please tell me how many of these women did you kill?” He told her he had killed eight women and that seven of the murders took place in the basement of their family home in Massapequa Park while she was away.³

Ellerup said she deliberately refused to use his first name during the visit, calling him “Mr. Heuermann” to keep emotional distance. She later said she is “haunted by dreams every night” and that the reality of what happened in her home “will follow me for the rest of my life.”⁴ Their divorce was finalized in March 2025. Through their attorney, Ellerup and Victoria have stated they had “no knowledge, no involvement, or any connection to these heinous acts.”⁵

What He Told His Daughter

In conversations with Victoria, Heuermann was asked about his motives. He said “his demons got to him.” When she asked whether he had seen the victims as people, he replied that “he didn’t even see them as human.” He told family members that one killing had been spontaneous but that “the rest of the killings were all planned.”⁴

How He Described the Killings

According to the Peacock series, Heuermann described a structured four-day process for each killing: one day to build trust with the victim, one day for the murder in a basement “kill room,” one day he spent with the body, and one day to transport and dispose of the remains. He claimed that by the time he killed Amber Lynn Costello in 2010, he could dispose of remains in 37 seconds.

He described the compulsion in his own words as an “obsession” and a “sickness” that gave him an “adrenaline rush.” He said he stopped killing after Shannan Gilbert’s disappearance drew police attention to the Gilgo Beach area.⁶

The Peacock documentary reported that Heuermann’s family was paid over $1 million for their participation, a figure later cited in a civil suit filed by the son of victim Valerie Mack.⁶

The Courtroom Allocution

Heuermann’s own statements in court came on April 8, 2026, when he pleaded guilty in Suffolk County Court to killing eight women: Sandra Costilla (1993), Karen Vergata (1996), Valerie Mack (2000), Jessica Taylor (2003), Maureen Brainard-Barnes (2007), Melissa Barthelemy (2009), Megan Waterman (2010), and Amber Lynn Costello (2010).⁷

During his allocution he told the court he had contacted victims using prepaid burner phones, lured them with offers of money, and strangled them. He said he wrapped several victims in burlap before dumping their bodies at Gilgo Beach, Manorville, and Southampton, and admitted to dismembering Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack and scattering their remains across multiple sites.⁸ He confirmed it was his intent to kill each victim, satisfying the elements of the first-degree murder charges. Karen Vergata was not part of the indictment, but Heuermann admitted to her killing as part of the plea and prosecutors agreed not to charge him separately.

The FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit Interviews

Heuermann’s plea agreement requires him to sit for interviews with the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit. Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney described those sessions as “clinical rather than investigative in nature” and characterized them as “an academic exercise” aimed at understanding “the things that created him, that drove him, what causes this.”⁹

Defense attorney Michael Brown confirmed that Heuermann would “cooperate with and answer truthfully.”¹⁰ Former FBI profilers said investigators hope to learn when Heuermann’s violent fantasies first developed, how he selected victims, and how he evaded detection for decades. The intelligence will be combined with data from interviews with other serial offenders to help identify patterns in future cases.¹¹ Tierney said he expected the FBI to limit its questioning to the crimes Heuermann pleaded guilty to.

The FBI has not indicated whether any recordings or transcripts of these sessions will be released publicly.

The Netflix Lawsuit Over the 2022 Interview

The pre-arrest footage Amira recorded has become the subject of a copyright lawsuit. In August 2025, Amira sued Netflix and two production companies in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging that the documentary Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer used 49 seconds of his interview without permission. His complaint noted that other networks, including ABC, CBS, and NBC, had licensed the footage. The case, expected to turn on fair-use principles, was still pending as of mid-2026.¹

What Heuermann Has Not Addressed

Neither Heuermann’s allocution nor his family conversations addressed the other remains found along Ocean Parkway that are not among his eight admitted victims. Shannan Gilbert, whose 2010 disappearance triggered the search that uncovered the Gilgo Four, was found dead in a marsh near Oak Beach in December 2011. Suffolk County police have said they do not believe her death was a homicide, though an independent autopsy by former New York chief medical examiner Michael Baden concluded the findings were “consistent with homicidal strangulation.” Her cause and manner of death remain listed as undetermined, and Heuermann has not been charged or publicly connected to her death.¹²

Two other sets of Gilgo-area remains — identified in April 2025 through genetic genealogy as Tanya Jackson and her daughter Tatiana Dykes — were linked to a different suspect, Andrew Dykes, the child’s father, who was arrested in December 2025 and has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder. Another set of remains, that of an unidentified young man of Southern Chinese or Han descent, has never been identified.¹²

After sentencing on June 17, 2026, Tierney said the Gilgo Beach Homicide Task Force had expanded its mandate to review other unsolved cold cases involving human remains in Suffolk County. “This case closes, and another one opens,” he said. “There are still bodies on that beach.”⁵ Whether Heuermann will speak to any of that in his FBI sessions, or ever be interviewed by a journalist, remains unknown.

1
Bloomberg Law. Netflix Serial Killer Documentary Infringed Interview, Suit Says
2
NewsNation. Rex Heuermann’s On-Camera Interview in 2022 Was Difficult, Realtor Says
3
NY1. Rex Heuermann Told Ex-Wife He Murdered Gilgo Beach Victims at Family Home
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NBC News. Gilgo Beach Serial Killer’s Ex-Wife Relives Slayings Every Night
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CBS News. Rex Heuermann Gilgo Beach Long Island Serial Killer Guilty Plea
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The Guardian. Gilgo Beach Serial Killer Rex Heuermann Documentary
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The Guardian. Rex Heuermann Pleads Guilty to Gilgo Beach Killings
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NBC News. Gilgo Beach Serial Killer Suspect Rex Heuermann Expected to Plead Guilty
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The New York Times. FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit and Gilgo Beach
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New York Post. Gilgo Beach Serial Killer Will Team With FBI in Mindhunter-Style Deal
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NBC News. Gilgo Beach Serial Killer Rex Heuermann to Help FBI
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CNN. Gilgo Beach Victims