Upstate NY victim's family says life sentence falls short at Gilgo sentencing

“A million years isn’t enough,” Jasmine Robinson said in Suffolk County Court as Rex Heuermann was sentenced to consecutive life terms without parole for the murders of seven women and the admitted killing of an eighth.

For Jessica Taylor’s family, and for other relatives who spoke in Riverhead, the punishment marked legal finality without emotional closure. Heuermann, 62, will never be eligible for parole, which means he will not be released from prison on the sentence imposed June 17. But for the families of the women he killed, the courtroom proceedings made clear that no sentence could restore what was taken from them.

Taylor, an Upstate New York woman whose death resonated in Central New York, was among the eight victims tied to the Gilgo Beach case. Syracuse.com reported that two Upstate New York women were among Heuermann’s victims, a detail that gave the long-running Long Island investigation particular weight in places like Syracuse and across Onondaga County. Taylor’s cousin, Violet Swager, described her as “fierce, kind, compassionate, beautiful and intelligent.”

Heuermann pleaded guilty in April to killing seven women and admitted to an eighth death. The victims named in the case were Jessica Taylor, Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Lynn Costello, Valerie Mack, Sandra Costilla and Karen Vergata. According to ABC News, Heuermann admitted in court that the murders spanned from 1993 to 2010.

The investigation began after human remains were discovered along Gilgo Beach in 2010 and 2011, a case that had haunted Long Island for years and later became one of the most closely watched homicide prosecutions in New York. At sentencing, Judge Timothy Mazzei ordered officers to remove Heuermann from the courtroom after relatives delivered their statements, following what ABC News described as decades of anger directed at the man accused of destroying their loved ones’ lives and futures.

Heuermann briefly addressed the court before sentencing, saying, “I am responsible.” For the families who came to Riverhead, that acknowledgment did not come close to answering the larger question left by the Gilgo case: how to measure justice when the dead cannot come home.