A 62-year-old architect accused of killing seven women and scattering their remains on Long Island, near New York, confessed to all the murders and pleaded guilty on Wednesday.

A man accused of murdering and dismembering several women, then scattering their remains in an upscale coastal area near New York, confessed on Wednesday, April 8, 2026, to committing eight murders.

Rex Heuermann, 62, pleaded guilty in Suffolk County court to the kidnapping, torture and murder of seven women on Long Island between 1993 and 2010, and faces a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

He also admitted to committing an eighth murder, for which he had not been charged.

This New York father and architect had never been questioned until his arrest in the summer of 2023, and until Wednesday had pleaded not guilty to the charges, raising the prospect of a long trial for the victims' families.

Gloria Allred, the lawyer for several of these families, praised them for their selflessness, believing that the alleged murderer had "disregarded (their) courage and tenacity."

The remains of about ten bodies were found between 2010 and 2011 along the beaches of Gilgo Beach, an hour's drive from central New York, in thickets of brambles located between the sand and the road, among the dunes.

These discoveries had terrified the local population. Police and the justice system had been thwarted for years, with some believing that the case would have progressed more quickly if the murdered women had not been sex workers.

Prosecutor Raymond Tierney, during a press conference, painted a picture of a serial killer who presented himself as an "inoffensive family man."

"This defendant lived among us, playing the role of an ordinary suburban family man, while in reality, from the beginning, he obsessively pursued innocent women to kill them," he said.

The investigation focused on this man in 2022 after the discovery that a vehicle in which a victim had been seen at the time of her disappearance was registered in his name.

From there, investigators discovered DNA and phone evidence against the suspect, including at his home in Massapequa Park, very close to the beaches where the bodies were found.

Investigators, who are seeking to link Rex Heuermann to the discovery of all the bodies, have also extracted files from his computers which they believe methodically listed his murders.