MASSAPEQUA PARK, N.Y. – Asa Ellerup, the wife of suspected Long Island serial killer Rex Heuermann, was pictured for the first time Wednesday, the same day she filed for divorce and less than a week after New York police arrested her husband on a half-dozen cold case murder charges.
Her Islip-based lawyer Bob Macedonio told Fox News Digital that they had filed a summons and complaint for divorce as he entered the Suffolk County Jail in Yaphank – where Heuermann is being held on suspicion that he killed three women and hid their bodies in the brush at Gilgo Beach, about 45 miles east of New York City.
"This is all still a whirlwind," Macedonio said. "Her and her children's lives have been completely turned upside-down."
Just over an hour after Suffolk County police arrested Heuermann, a 59-year-old architect, on Thursday near his office on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, authorities arrived at the family home in Massapequa Park and informed his wife and adult children of the accusations, Macedonio said.
Then they seized the family's passports, computers, phones and iPads, Macedonio said.
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"They were home and the cops came in, and they were completely blindsided, and they told them what was going on," he said.
Police have kept possession of the house for almost a week, roping off the block as investigators continued to process the scene – where they recovered hundreds of guns and other evidence, including a portrait of a battered woman. They also searched Heuermann's property in South Carolina and seized two Chevrolet Avalanche pickup trucks – the same make identified as a suspect vehicle in the disappearance of one of the Gilgo victims.
Heuermann pleaded not guilty Friday to charges of first- and second-degree murder in the deaths of Melissa Barthelemy, 24, Megan Waterman, 22, and Amber Costello, 27.
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They were killed between June 2007 and September 2010 and found wrapped in camouflaged burlap off Ocean Parkway in December 2010.
Heuermann is also the prime suspect in the death of a fourth victim, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25.
A task force with members from multiple law enforcement agencies allegedly linked Heuermann to the crime scene with a witness statement in Costello's disappearance and through phone records and a DNA sample collected from a box of pizza the suspect tossed in a New York City trash can.
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Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said last week that police also found his wife's DNA on some of the victims – but she was out of town during each of the murders and has not been named a suspect.
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Her husband allegedly met sex workers on the internet and through dating apps and lured them out – then killed them and dumped their bodies on a remote stretch of Ocean Parkway about 45 miles east of New York City.
Police discovered the four women's remains while searching for another missing woman, Shannan Gilbert, who vanished after calling 911 in another beach community on the same parkway.
Heuermann is due back in court on Aug. 1.
He faces up to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole if convicted.
Fox News' Julia Bonavita contributed to this report.
