Attorney Representing Gilgo Beach Serial Killer Suspect Rex Heuermann Disputing Validity of DNA Evidence Against His Client
At a court appearance on Wednesday, the attorney representing suspected Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann called into question the validity of some of the DNA evidence presented by the office of Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney linking his client to his alleged crimes.
As a result of the objection of Heuermann's attorney, Michael Brown, both sides have agreed that a new hearing will be held in the near future to determine if the DNA in question - part of the large amount of evidence collected by Tierney's office, most of which has already turned over to the defense during discovery - is indeed admissible.
“I would suggest, based on my review of the evidence, that the DNA is the strongest piece of evidence they have in this case,” Brown said to the media following the hearing. “The judge is going to have to decide whether or not, in the scientific community, this is acceptable. The crime lab in Suffolk County indicated, not just in their paperwork, but under oath to a grand jury that these hairs that we’re talking about were unsuitable for DNA nuclear analysis, very important. Mitochondrial and nuclear are two different animals."
"The mitochondrial DNA that was presented early on in this case, when I say early on, post arraignment, the statistics were very unconvincing," Brown continued. "The amount of donors just here in Suffolk County that could potentially be contributors to that DNA, they exceed thousands. So that’s unconvincing, and that’s just limiting it to Suffolk County. Get Long Island, get the Metropolitan areas, get the rest of the United States. After we spoke about that numerous times, we then were told that, magically, this company from the West Coast, we now have nuclear DNA.”
Tierney, while speaking to reporters, dismissed the threat of the DNA evidence being suppressed.
“It’s a preliminary evidentiary hearing to decide whether or not the technology used in the case, and specifically talking about the DNA, whether it’s generally accepted in the scientific community, and it’s reliable and therefore can be presented to the jury,” he said. “In this case, we have SDR, short tandem repeats that has been litigated in Suffolk County in New York State and found to be admissible. We have mitochondrial DNA that has, likewise, been litigated and found admissible. Now we have this SNP DNA, which is a issue of first impression for New York State. So we’ll have to go through that.”
Heuermann, 60, made national headlines when he was arrested on July 13, 2023, as a suspect in the Gilgo Beach case; he was charged the following day by Tierney in the murders of three of the "Gilgo Four" victims: Amber Lynn Costello, 27, Melissa Barthelemy, 24, and Megan Waterman, 22.
On January 16, 2024, Tierney unsealed additional charges against Massapequa Park Heuermann at the Suffolk County Courthouse in Riverhead, tying him to the murder of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, a fourth woman whose remains were discovered near Gilgo Beach; Heuermann was already the prime suspect in her death.
In June, Heuermann was also arraigned and charged with the murders of Jessica Taylor and Sandra Costilla, bring the number of his alleged victims to six. It was also revealed that Heuermann is under investigation in the 2000 death of Valerie Mack as well.
Heuermann has pleaded not guilty to all charges. A trial date has yet to be set.