Top donor to fundraiser for Gilgo Beach suspect’s wife is disgraced Times reporter Jayson Blair

The top donor to a fundraiser for Gilgo Beach suspect Rex Heuermann’s estranged wife is Jayson Blair, a disgraced former New York Times journalist who resigned amid a plagiarism scandal two decades ago.

“I just thought, of all the practical things that these people are going to have to rebuild, they’ll probably have to leave their neighborhood, it will forever impact their dreams,” Blair told the New York Daily News of his $2,000 donation to the GoFundMe campaign for Asa Ellerup, which was started earlier this week by the daughter of the Happy Face Killer.

“And I just thought that I want to be a part of helping them get back on their feet,” he told the outlet, noting that he can “relate” to the family’s struggle.

Blair, 47, who is now a life coach in Ashburn, Va., was the center of his own news frenzy in the spring of 2003, when he stepped down as a national reporter and editor for the New York Times after it was revealed that he fabricated and plagiarized details in several major stories.

In a May 11, 2003 cover story, the Times branded Blair’s deception as “a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper.”

Prior to his spectacular downfall, Blair was a hotshot rising journalist who famously decamped from his final year at the University of Maryland to take a position at the Times after wowing his superiors during an internship.

In the wake of his resignation, 30 of Blair’s former co-workers and the university’s newspaper, The Diamondback, claimed their own concerns about his integrity and work ethic were previously ignored.

While at the Times, Blair’s shocking fabrications included claiming to have traveled to Palestine, West Virginia to report on the capture and subsequent rescue of soldier Jessica Lynch.

Further investigation revealed that Blair never actually went to West Virginia, and his April 3, 2003 story on Lynch was culled from Associated Press details, the Times admitted.

Blair identifies himself as a former New York Times reporter on his website, where he advertises his life coach services.

“I have suffered from mental health problems for many years and after going untreated they cost me much of my life at the time,” he wrote on his website, which says he specializes in mental health coaching, career coaching, attention deficit disorder, pervasive developmental disorders, mood disorders and substance abuse.

Blair hinted at his past scandal in the short message he wrote alongside his GoFundMe donation.

“I believe that Rex Huerrman’s family members deserve all the support and grace we can give them as members of the broader community of people who struggle in life,” he said.

“I hope this helps them begin to the next steps in their lives. I hope this also helps them escape some of the media glare that I know can be so damaging.”

Blair is one of 731 donations that have raised over $28,000 for Ellerup, 59, and her two adult children.

The Massapequa Park family’s life was upended on July 13, when husband and father Rex Heuermann, also 59, was arrested and charged in connection with the murders of three women whose remains were found near Gilgo Beach in December 2010.

Ellerup, who is originally from Iceland, filed for divorce from Heuermann a few days after he was arrested.

“My children cry themselves to sleep,” she told The Post this week of the family’s struggles since the horrifying revelations brought by her husband’s incarceration.

Ellerup, her son, Christopher, and daughter, Victoria, returned to their home on First Avenue last week after investigators scoured the property for potential evidence.

“They treated them like animals,” Ellerup’s lawyer, Bob Macedonio, told The Post of the grieving relatives’ ordeal.

The GoFundMe – which aims to raise $50,000 – was launched by Melissa Moore, who was inspired by the trauma she suffered when her father, Keith Hunter Jesperson, was convicted of raping and murdering eight women in the early 1990s.

Jesperson was known as the “Happy Face Killer” because of the sinister smiling faces he drew on notes to police and the media.

“The funds are to assist Asa and their family to divorce her alleged serial killer husband and any extra for starting her new life, therapy, basic needs for the children, and to restore the home to whole (as evidence collection damage[d] or destroyed many critical household items),” Moore wrote on the fundraising page.

“I wanted to come forward as an adult when I got older to show the double life that serial killers live and how the family is the façade that helps them stay underground for so long,” she added in a conversation with the Daily Mail.

Heuermann is charged with the deaths of Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Lynn Costello, and is the prime suspect in the death of Maureen Brainard-Barnes.

He appeared briefly in court on Tuesday, where prosecutors presented the defense with 8 terabytes of evidence – and promised there was more to come.

“It’s going to be a lengthy process,” Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney admitted to Newsday of the trial preparation.