Serial killer featured on Korean TV show admits, "I killed eight" in U.S. case – but what happened to the missing Korean woman?

According to Financial News, the suspect in the "Gilgo Beach (Long Island) serial killings," often called the American version of Memories of Murder, has finally confessed to all of the crimes.
However, he never once mentioned the name of a Korean woman surnamed Lee, who disappeared in June 2003. Her case was previously featured on Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS) program Unanswered Questions in 2024.
On the 8th (local time), foreign media including The Associated Press (AP) and New York Post reported that serial murder suspect Rex Heuermann, 62, admitted in court that he strangled eight sex workers, mutilated their bodies, and dumped them in remote areas. His confession has effectively brought one of the most notorious cold cases in the United States to a close after decades.
The case became known as the "Gilgo Beach serial killings" in 2010, when the remains of four victims were found near Gilgo Beach. Subsequent investigations linked the crimes back to incidents in 1993, and a total of 11 sets of remains were ultimately connected to the case.
At least 11 victims were identified, but in 2011 the case remained unsolved. A special task force was formed in 2022, and the investigation was reopened.
Investigators narrowed in on Heuermann as the suspect based on witness statements, hair found on the victims' remains, and cell tower data. They then obtained his DNA from a discarded slice of pizza, which allowed them to identify him as the killer, and more than a decade after the murders, in 2023, he was finally brought before the court.
Since his arrest, Heuermann had consistently claimed he was innocent, but in this trial he admitted his guilt for the first time.
He had worked as an architect in Manhattan. In court, he acknowledged killing a total of eight women, including one newly identified victim in addition to the seven murders for which he had already been charged, all part of a series of killings dating back to 1993.
When prosecutors asked how he killed each victim, he repeatedly answered, "Strangulation." Family members in the courtroom were reportedly unable to hide their shock and let out cries of anguish.
Heuermann also testified that after the murders he dismembered the bodies, placed them in bags, and dumped them.
According to prosecutors, he repeatedly searched for pornography involving bondage, torture, and sexual violence, and used so-called burner phones to contact sex workers more than 500 times.
He was a father of two and appeared to be an ordinary neighbor, but behind that façade he was carrying out brutal crimes.
He is scheduled to receive his final sentence on June 17.

Meanwhile, an episode of SBS Unanswered Questions that aired in March 2024 followed the mystery of the skeletal remains of a Korean woman buried on Long Island.
In January 2013, skeletal remains of a woman were found on the northern shore of Long Island, near Lattingtown Beach. The victim was believed to be an Asian woman in her 20s to 50s, likely Korean. Next to the body, investigators found a pure gold necklace with a pig-shaped pendant.
The production team later learned that a Korean woman surnamed Lee had gone missing in 2003 in Queens County, New York.
Lee grew up in a childcare facility in Jeju Special Self-Governing Province and moved alone to the United States when she was 20. In 2003, at age 22, she returned to her apartment in Queens, New York, and then all contact with her was lost.
The producers focused on the possibility that the woman found with the pig pendant necklace might be the missing Lee, and on a potential connection to Rex Heuermann, but they were ultimately unable to prove it.
And in Heuermann's confession that day, Lee's name was not mentioned.
moon@fnnews.com Moon Young-jin Reporter