Did Asa Ellerup Really Renovate Rex Heuermann's Basement and Move In?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Drake.

**Tony Brueski** (0:07)
Sentencing Day is today, as of our recording of this, and we'll bring you the audio from that.
She's skipping sentencing. Asa Ellerup is the she I'm talking about. That's the ex-wife of Rex Heuermann. She says, the day should be about the families after making a million dollars, making a documentary about all of this. Meanwhile, Valerie Mack's son has filed a lawsuit naming Asa and Victoria alongside Rex claiming they knew or deliberately looked away and going after a share of the million plus the family made from the Peacock Dock. I imagine there's not much left, quite honestly. I'm sorry. Attorney fees and all that shit. I can't imagine that they really had a huge payday at the end of the day. Plus Uncle Sam's going to take about three to 400,000 of that. The neighborhood wants the house torn down and Asa won't leave. That's where we're starting on this part of the conversation.
Skipping sentencing, because the day should focus on the families. That sounds like the right thing to say. Think it's the real reason?

**Shavaun Scott** (1:19)
No, well, and it's possible to have multiple reasons that are all true at the same time. It sounds like something that was a prepared statement, something that sounds right.
But the other thing that watching the sentencing would do is, again, hit at her denial.

**Tony Brueski** (1:40)
Yeah.

**Shavaun Scott** (1:41)
It would probably make her very uncomfortable to sit there and have to listen more. Yeah.

**Robin Drake** (1:48)
And I want to pick up on one of our viewers, Rowena.
What an interesting question. Do you think that also because, you know, not wanting to confront this side of Rex, but do you think there's any element to what Rowena is saying? Is there any kind of jealousy she might have because these other girls got that kind of attention from Rex? I mean, do you think any kind of weirdness plays into that?

**Shavaun Scott** (2:10)
It sure could be. That could be an element of it. She had said in one of the earlier interviews, I don't think it was in the documentary, but she didn't believe that he would ever want to have sex with another woman. She just couldn't believe that, that he would utilize, you know, sex workers because she was enough for him. And obviously, that was not true.
There was this other Dark Side, this rage that was mixed in with his sexuality, and there could be resentment about that. So that certainly could be one piece of it.

**Tony Brueski** (2:49)
It's going to be very fascinating to watch the deposition of Asa Ellerup in the civil suit if we ever do get a chance to see it. Because Benjamin Torres, who was six when Heuermann killed his mother Valerie Mack, now suing Asa and Victoria, he's alleging that they knew or deliberately avoided knowing. That's an interesting thing here. I mean, forget the legal question here. I mean, can a person's brain actually choose not to see something that's right in front of them like this? Or is it there? Is it registered? Deliberately not seeing. We've been talking about this in our segments here.
I get how one can mentally box it out, but at the end of the day, the data came in. And if you are able to recognize that that data came in and you just didn't process it in some other way, that's not the same as not knowing.

**Shavaun Scott** (3:47)
Yeah. People have really strong feelings. All the comments on online and various places that she had to know, they had to know.
My thinking is that denial is not something somebody chooses. It's a survival mechanism. We don't get up in the morning and say, I'm going to choose not to see all sorts of things here today. I always go back to the analogy. Every time we get in a motor vehicle, there's some denial going, right? Because we don't want to look at car crash statistics. If we did, we might never get in that car if we're out looking at all the accident scenes. But we don't see it. We don't think about it.
I think that the brain is capable of extraordinary acts of not seeing. I call it the negative hallucination, just the ability not to see what's right in front of you.

**Robin Drake** (4:49)
I'm just going to swoon over Shavaun again right now. Every week, you come out with something that is just such a nice little tight, profound statement and denial is not something we choose elegantly.

**Tony Brueski** (5:02)