Family of Gilgo Beach Murders Suspect Rex Heuermann Returns Home After Police Search

The wife and son of Rex Heuermann, the man police allege to be the Long Island Serial Killer, returned to the family’s house Thursday after investigators concluded a 12-day search of the home.

Asa Ellerup – who police have told PEOPLE filed for divorce from her husband last week – and her adult son Christopher were spotted by local news cameras returning to their home after staying the past two weeks in a hotel.

The family was reportedly seen walking around the front yard, sitting somberly on the front porch, and then looking around the house that investigators and forensic teams pored over for much of the last two weeks.

"Don't talk to me," Ellerup told reporters stationed outside the home who attempted to ask her questions, according to local Fox 5.

Her 33-year-old son Christopher, who is Heuermann’s stepson, added: "Don't even say a word.”

Investigators searched the family’s residence extensively over the last 12 days, digging up a large hole in the backyard and then discovering a vault with a “big iron door” in the basement. 

Authorities have said they’re investigating whether Heuermann, a 59-year-old architect and father of two, had killed any of his alleged victims inside the family’s suburban Massapequa Park home while his family was away.

"We're looking for potential trophies, souvenirs, jewelry, anything that could be attached to the four women or other women that he might have been involved with," an investigator told CBS News last week.

Heuermann was arrested earlier this month and charged with three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of Amber Costello, 27, Melissa Barthelemy, 24, and Megan Waterman, 22. He has pleaded not guilty. Police say DNA evidence connects him to the murders.

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Heuermann also remains the primary suspect in the murder of 25-year-old Maureen Brainard-Barnes. All four women were sex workers who went missing and whose remains were later discovered on Gilgo Beach more than a decade ago.

"There have been items that we have taken into our possession. That makes it fruitful,” Suffolk Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison told reporters outside the home earlier this week, according to WABC. The outlet reports investigators have also dismantled a wood deck in Heuermann’s backyard, as they continue searching for clues in the Gilgo Beach murder case.

The case, which remained unsolved for more than a decade, became one of New York’s most notorious mysteries and gained notoriety after the investigation became the focus of author Robert Kolker’s 2013 bestselling nonfiction book Lost Girls. (It later also became a true crime Netflix movie of the same name.)

Heuermann’s family was “shocked, embarrassed, and disgusted” when police arrived to arrest the suspect, Harrison told CBS last week. “I don't believe they knew about this double life Heuermann was living,” the commissioner said.