HUNTER: With Gilgo Beach and Green River killers, wives were last to know
· Toronto Sun
Judith Mawson was a kindly, somewhat mumsy woman.
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Soft spoken and pleasant, I interviewed her for the New York Post , where I worked at the time. She lived in a tidy, suburban bungalow in a working-class bedroom community of Seattle.
She lived there quietly with her husband. If there was anything untoward, she was oblivious. To Mawson, her hubby was perfect.
Hubby’s dark secrets
His name is Gary Ridgway. He is also known as the Green River Killer.
Between 1982 and 1998, the unknown predator preyed on vulnerable sex workers and runaways. In the end, cops suspect he murdered nearly 50 of them.
Mawson was in the dark about hubby’s nocturnal predilections. He would go to work in the Kenilworth truck factory as a painter, then come home. Sometimes he would go out at night.
Wife was oblivious
The wife of Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann, Asa Ellerup, was in the dark too. The beefy Manhattan architect, 62, pleaded guilty to murdering eight sex workers on Long Island over the course of two decades.
It was only after her hubby of 27 years was arrested in 2023 that Ellerup realized he wasn’t like the other suburban dads. After he was busted, he confessed to her.
In a new documentary on Peacock, The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secret s, she revealed his horrific confession that was shattering to her and their two children.
“He looked very nervous. Very, very nervous,” Ellerup said in a trailer for the true crime doc. “He said he killed eight women.”
Ellerup added: “He said I wasn’t home during all of them.”
When she asked if any were murdered in the family home, Heuermann said: “He said, yes, they were killed in his room downstairs. All except one.”
Heuermann was a careful, methodical killer who used checklists while engaged in his sinister activities. His wife and their children would often be out of town and that’s when the Massapequa Park man’s homicidal alter-ego would come out to play.
Focus on the victims
The rest of the time, he, too, was a “perfect” husband.
“This has been an extremely emotional and painful process for the family to endure and come to terms with the allegations that Rex Heuermann was the Gilgo Beach serial killer,” family lawyer Robert Macedonio said in a statement to USA Today.
“Ms. Ellerup would like the focus to remain where it belongs – on the victims and their families, who have suffered immeasurable and lasting losses.”
Heuermann is slated for a June 17 court appearance and will be sentenced then. He faces three consecutive life sentences without possibility of parole for killing three of the women, and a consecutive sentence of 100 years to life for killing four women.
The serial killer agreed to admit to Karen Vergata’s murder so that her case would be covered by his guilty plea in the other seven murders, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office.
“My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families. Their loss is immeasurable and the focus should be on them at this time and moment,” Ellerup said.
Judith Mawson and Ellerup should talk. She was married to the Jekyll and Hyde Green River Killer for 14 years. Even as cops questioned her hubby days after they met, she was clueless.
His homicidal rampage slowed after they married and the pair were happy. Ridgway has said as much. Mawson eventually recovered. Not everyone does in these affairs.
Two of Ridgway’s victims remain unidentified.