Suspected Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann returned to a Long Island courtroom on Wednesday where his attorneys challenged the DNA evidence against him and argued that the high-profile case should be split into five separate trials for the seven murders he is charged with.
The 61-year-old architect from Massapequa Park stood completely still next to his defense attorney Michael Brown, who said splitting up the cases would give Heuermann the best chance at a fair trial.
Heuermann was arrested in July 2023 as part of an investigation police had been working on since 2010 into the deaths of at least 10 people — mostly female sex workers — whose remains were discovered along an isolated highway near Gilgo Beach on Long Island.
The defense is seeking one trial for the original three murders Heuermann was charged with – Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, and Amber Lynn Costello – and then four separate trials for all the murders he has been charged with since then – Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Jessica Taylor, Sandra Costilla, and Valerie Mack.
Brown argued there’s a “substantial disparity” in the evidence in some of the deaths, which he maintained involves different time frames, killing methods and locations for disposing of the bodies.
“The danger of having count after count, victim after victim in the same trial is that 'If there's smoke, there’s fire' mentality," Brown said.
“They shouldn’t be tried together. One issue has nothing to do with the other.”
Wednesday’s hearing was held to hear a pair of motions filed earlier this month, in which the defense also asked Suffolk Supreme Court Justice Timothy Mazzei to exclude DNA evidence in the case, arguing that the analysis relied on by prosecutors is not widely accepted in the scientific community and should be excluded from the trial.
The judge set a date of February 18 for a Frye hearing to discuss admissibility of the DNA evidence in court.
“A Frye hearing is really the admissibility of this new what they call science,” Brown said. “We call it magic, quite frankly.”
Brown told reporters following the hearing on Wednesday that his client risks being improperly convicted because of the “cumulative effect” of the evidence put forward by prosecutors.
The nuclear DNA testing in the case was done with the assistance of Astrea Forensics, a California-based lab that specializes in broken down, older DNA evidence such as rootless hair, The Long Island Press reported.
DNA results from hair strands found at some of the crime scenes are among the key pieces of evidence prosecutors have put forward in the case.
Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney has maintained the DNA science is sound and that the findings were also independently corroborated by mitochondrial DNA testing, a methodology long accepted by New York courts.
“This is the next generation of DNA testing,” Tierney said after the hearing. “I started in 1992, and we had RFLP, then we went to PSL, PCR, then we went to STR. Now I would submit that this is the next generation of the evolution of the technology. It’s exciting to be at the forefront of that, and we look forward to proving the scientific acceptance and the effectiveness of this technology.”
In the filing, prosecutors argued that the “whole genome sequencing” technique utilized in the case has been accepted in peer-reviewed scientific journals and by federal regulators, paleontologists, virologists, and medical communities.
Whole genome sequencing “enables more comprehensive collection and evaluation of DNA,” prosecutors wrote. It is “so widely used for scientific, medical, and forensic purposes, it would seem there is little question as to whether it has been accepted in the relevant scientific community."
Prosecutors also say Heuermann kept a “blueprint” of his alleged crimes on his computer that included a series of checklists with tasks to complete before, during and after the killings, as well as practical lessons for “next time.”
There are still at least four victims that have been linked to the Gilgo Beach murders, but Heuermann has not been charged with any additional murders.
Tierney has previously acknowledged the similarities but has refused to directly name Heuermann a suspect in the unsolved murders, which include “Peaches Doe,” whose remains were found at Hempstead Lake State Park in 1997 and on Jones Beach in 2011, and “Baby Doe,” a child believed to be the daughter of Peaches, who was found near Valerie Mack’s body in 2011.
There is also the case of Karen Vergata, whose dismembered legs were found on Fire Island in 1996 and whose skull was found on Tobay Beach in 2011, and an unidentified Asian individual who was biologically male.
Tierney insists the investigation into these killings is ongoing. Earlier this month, he announced that they had formed a Cold Case Task Force to look into a slew of unsolved cases dating back to 1965 in Suffolk County.
When asked on Wednesday about a possible connection between Heuermann and the cold cases, Tierney again would not say, but promised the task force was pushing forward with the investigation.
