Did Rex Heuermann's Confession Destroy His Own Family?

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

**Tony Brueski** (0:09)
It is sentencing day for Rex Heuermann, the Gilgo Beach killer, Asa Ellerup, not going to be present at the courtroom. But she's already said a lot, she said enough, we'll get into to some of that. But today we're going to kind of take a retrospective look on the case and where it all sits from here. What's going on next? What can be gleaned off of the story of Rex Heuermann? Because Rex Heuermann sat across from his ex-wife in a jailhouse visit. She asked him how many women he killed. He said eight, didn't pause, didn't finish. Told her seven of them died in the basement of the house she still lives in. Room she goes and sleeps in, the kill room, made it into a nice beany baby filled the lair or bedroom or whatever you want to call it. The daughter Victoria says she believes he most likely did it.
Asa's own lawyer has said she may never quite get there. Although Asa has accepted it, she still she still seemingly buddies, at least last time she was on the Netflix documentary, calling him Mr. Heuermann. Shavaun Scott, psychotherapist and author, joining myself and Robin Drake, retired FBI Special Agent, Chief of the Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program to help us dissect this.
Let's talk about Asa here initially.
Obviously, he's pled guilty. He's facing his sentencing the day that we are recording this. He's confessed to her face. She, for the longest time, sat there, though, and said, you know, I just, I don't know what's him, or if that's good, that's him. I think she might accept it a bit more now.
But, but I mean, really, what's going on in a mind like that? When you've told yourself that story for so long that it couldn't possibly him, and then even him is telling you, it's me. And she may verbally say, okay, you know, I accept it now. But, but is she really? I mean, are the mechanisms, are her emotions in her brain? Are they all flipping over the same way her surface level is saying, yeah, he did it?

**Shavaun Scott** (2:18)
I think she's a wonderful example of how the human brain is capable of extraordinary acts of avoidance and compartmentalization. I mean, it's glaring with her. She is such a damaged, damaged woman, and she was damaged when he met her. We know from her background, she was abused, neglected, had no one wanted her as a child, and this was a vulnerable target for him.
I think she built her whole life around her identity of being married to this wonderful family man. There's a compartmentalization going on within her still, I think.
We saw in the documentary, a therapist who I think was doing excellent work trying to help her, and trying to get her to see the truth. But there are still probably parts of her, you can almost say it's like dissociation, where she just still has love for the part of him that she holds as, you know, the family man that cared about her.

**Robin Drake** (3:31)
Yeah, because she still thinks there's a part of him that's separate than that. Anyway, Shavaun, what do you think that she was doing behaviorally earlier in her life and then continued obviously throughout her life that drew Rex to her that said to him without her even saying any words that this is the person I'm going to manipulate to live the hell out of so I can take advantage of her?

**Shavaun Scott** (3:54)
I would guess that she always has come off, and particularly with him, as very dependent. You know, she saw him as the tall, dark, her words, tall, dark and handsome knight in shining armor, which I don't think any of us would have looked at it quite that way.

**Robin Drake** (4:12)
That's your trick.

**Shavaun Scott** (4:13)
Yeah, but that's how she was looking at it. And probably just a very dependent, very dependent person looking for help would be my guess.

**Tony Brueski** (4:26)
I'm trying to walk through the process here of how she does this.
I think what you said early on here, the extreme acts of avoidance that the human brain is capable of. You said something of that nature. I mean, it really is, I mean, it's amazing how much one can avoid these sort of things. I mean, so what's going on here? Like when she's having this, when he confesses to her and she's, she's processing this and then sits down and tries to have a conversation with him or he calls and she's like, hello, Mr. Heuermann, in the really weird, almost playful tone.