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Suffolk County police are investigating startling new witness accounts linking accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann to two prostitutes whose deaths remain unsolved — Shannan Gilbert and Karen Vergata.
Joined by Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison at a Wednesday press conference, attorney John Ray said they came forward after Heuermann’s arrest for the murder of three sex workers in July.
According to her signed affidavit, one witness said she was working as a Suffolk County taxi driver in the fall of 2009 when she went to pick up a fare from a notorious hot-sheet motel.
The woman said a mammoth man she later recognized as Heuermann was hastily leaving the premises as she pulled up.
Soon after, a distraught woman she believes was Shannan Gilbert came out and climbed into her car.
The petite woman told the cabbie that Heuermann met her on Craigslist and convinced her to come to Long Island with promises of financial assistance for her family.
Upon her arrival, he handed her an envelope he said contained $1,000 and told her she could keep it regardless of how their evening went.
“But she said that she saw rage in his face,” the witness stated in her affidavit.
The prostitute said she opened the envelope after the unnerving john went to the bathroom and saw that it was stuffed with papers, not cash.
Now fearful, she ran into the restroom after the man exited, locked the door and called the cab company, the witness stated.
She told her driver to take her to the Ronkonkoma train station so she could then return to the city.
The witness said she noticed that she had a “drooping” eye and immediately recognized her as Gilbert after media reports of her 2010 disappearance.
Gilbert’s corpse was eventually discovered in dense marsh near Gilgo Beach in December 2011.
The woman said she told several people about the troubling encounter at the time and left messages on a police tip line after Heuermann’s arrest.
“I am certain that the girl was Shannan Gilbert,” she stated in her affidavit. “I recognized her unusual eye droop and unusual voice…Rex Heuermann appeared to me to be the very big man coming from the hotel room I mentioned in my affidavit.”
Another witness told police that she believes she went to a swinger gathering at Heuermann’s Massapequa Park home around Valentine’s Day in 1996.
According to her affidavit, she first went to a now-defunct Manhattan swinging club named Le Trapeze with her NYPD narcotics detective boyfriend at the time.
While there, they saw a bulletin board ad for swingers interested in coming to a home on Long Island.
The couple decided to drive out to the Massapequa Park residence, but first picked up a sex worker in Manhattan — a woman the witness believes was slain prostitute Karen Vergata.
“She was hungry and homeless,” she stated in her affidavit, adding that the girl was initially nervous about making the Long Island trek with the couple but relaxed after learning she was with a cop.
The witness said they were greeted by a husband and wife she later came to believe were Heuermann and his spouse, Asa Ellerup.
The woman said both she and her cop boyfriend had sex with Heuermann, and that Ellerup declined her offer of a tryst after initially expressing interest.
Ellerup has not been charged or named a suspect in any of the murders.
As they left, the woman said she saw Vergata run out of the house naked and asked her boyfriend if they should drive her home — but her boyfriend said Heurmann and Vergata were only “playing a game.”
“I felt uneasy that we left the woman,” she said, adding that she recognized Heuermann, Ellerup, and Vergata after the case appeared in the press.
“I was shocked and deeply sorrowful for having left her behind at Heurmann’s house,” she said. “I told John Ray of these things because I needed to speak with him so that Karen would not be left behind again.”
Vergata vanished in 1996, and her severed legs were discovered on Fire Island later that year. Her skull and several of her teeth were found in 2011 near Gilgo.
The same witness said she also picked up Heuermann several weeks or months later, and that she refused to drive him out to a distant location “in the woods” because he changed their destination.
Enraged, he threatened to kill her and flashed a gun before getting out of the vehicle, she said.
Heurmann has so far been charged with the deaths of slain sex workers Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello.
Officials said his list of victims could grow longer as their investigation proceeds.
The suspected serial killer has already been named the prime suspect in the murder of another Gilgo victim, Maureen Brainerd-Barnes.
A total of 11 bodies were discovered in the desolate brush near Gilgo Beach, including an Asian male, an unidentified woman and her infant daughter.
Harrison declined to comment on the credibility of the new witness accounts Wednesday but said police are following up on their recollections.
‘We have the information, we’re working it, we’ll see where it leads us down the road,” he said.
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