A Long Island architect who lived a secret life as New York's Gilgo Beach serial killer has been sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Rex Heuermann appeared before a judge in Riverhead, New York, on Wednesday after admitting in court that he murdered eight women.

He entered the New York courtroom wearing a black suit, a blue shirt, and a light-coloured tie.

Heuermann, 62, of Massapequa Park, pleaded guilty in April to charges that he murdered seven women: Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Lynn Costello, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Valerie Mack, Jessica Taylor and Sandra Costilla.

Though he was never charged in her death, he also admitted in court to killing an eighth victim, Karen Vergata.

Speaking before his sentencing, Jasmine Robinson, a cousin of victim Jessica Taylor, told the killer: "You fill me with so much repugnance, I can't stand it."

Heuermann sat with his hands clasped and resting on a table in an eastern Long Island courtroom, looking straight ahead and lightly tapping his fingers.

"A million years isn't enough," Ms Robinson said. "Nothing will ever make this right."

Amanda Funderburg, Melissa Barthelemy's sister, urged Heuermann to look at her as she spoke. He glanced in her direction, but his eyes were slightly downcast.

"I hope you suffer," said Ms Funderburg, who recounted getting a taunting phone call from him days after Barthelemy disappeared, when Ms Funderburg was 15 years old.

Police matched DNA from pizza crust

Heuermann said he strangled his victims, many of them sex workers, and dismembered some of their bodies.

Most of the women disappeared between 2000 and 2010, and most of their remains were found on a desolate parkway not far from Long Island's Gilgo Beach, around 50 miles from New York.

The case gained widespread attention in 2010, when investigators started to find remains along Ocean Parkway while looking into the disappearance of another sex worker - whose death was ultimately ruled an accidental drowning.

While the hunt for the other women's killer went cold for years, a renewed investigation identified Heuermann as a potential suspect in 2022.

Detectives linked him to a pickup truck that a witness reported seeing when one of the victims disappeared in 2010.

Police also managed to match DNA from a pizza crust he discarded in a bin in New York to genetic material extracted from highly degraded hair fragments found on the woman's remains.

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Other evidence, including mobile phone tracking data and what prosecutors called a "blueprint" for the killings from his computer files, was also found.

Among the documents was a checklist with reminders to limit noise, clean the bodies and destroy evidence.

He was arrested in July 2023 and had remained largely silent through multiple court appearances since then.

As part of his guilty plea, Heuermann has agreed to cooperate with the FBI's behavioural analysis unit to help catch other serial killers.

Asa Ellerup, his ex-wife, and their two grown children had said through their lawyers that they wouldn't be attending the sentencing out of respect for the victim's families.

Heuermann has spent the past three years alone in a segregated cell at the county jail in Riverhead.

According to Suffolk County Sheriff Errol Toulon, who oversees the jail, he has spent his time reading crime novels, occasionally being visited by his lawyers or family, and striking up a brief correspondence with the infamous "Happy Face Killer".

(c) Sky News 2026: Serial killer architect who murdered eight women in the US jailed for life