US man pleads guilty to murdering 7 women and admits he killed another

A Long Island architect who led a secret life as a serial killer pleaded guilty on Wednesday to murdering seven women and admitted he killed an eighth in a string of long-unsolved crimes known as the Gilgo Beach killings.Rex Heuermann, 62, entered the pleas in a courtroom packed with reporters, police and victims’ relatives, some of whom wept as he detailed his crimes for the court. He will be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole at a later date.Heuermann’s guilty pleas – to three counts of first-degree murder and four of intentional murder – bring finality to a case that bedevilled investigators, agonised victims’ relatives and tantalised a true-crime obsessed public for years. Although he was not charged in her death, he also admitted that he killed Karen Vergata in 1996.