Gilgo Beach serial murder case hangs by a hair and its DNA
After thirteen years of dead ends and blown leads, the Gilgo Beach murder investigation finally uncovered the pizza crusts that Rex Heuermann threw into a trash can in Midtown Manhattan.
It was a jackpot for investigators who had been watching Mr. Heuermann for months.
“Pizza crust is like a sponge: It allows the saliva to seep into the dough,” said Ray Tierney, a Suffolk County district attorney, in a recent interview.
The sample provided investigators with the genetic match that helped link Mr. Heuermann to four bodies found on Long Island in 2010, and his arrest followed in July, Mr. Tierney said. When Mr. Heuermann's trial begins, possibly this year, DNA evidence will support allegations that he murdered women he hired as escorts and left their bodies wrapped in burlap along a desolate oceanfront parkway.
Investigators say the DNA profile obtained from a male hair found on the burlap used to wrap one of the four victims found in 2010, Megan Waterman, matches Mr. Heuermann's pizza slice sample.
Authorities charged Mr. Heuermann with three of the murders but abandoned a fourth charge because genetic test results in July were incomplete. Mr. Heuermann, who is expected to appear in court Tuesday, has pleaded not guilty and is being held without bail in a Suffolk County jail.
Mr Tierney, who plans to argue the case himself, said the DNA evidence makes the case strong.
But for Mr. Heuermann's lawyer, Michael J. Brown, a withered lock of hair — the only physical evidence claiming to link his client to any of the bodies — is a weak clue on which to hang a case .
And genetic experts say Mr. Brown will try to sow doubt among jurors about the DNA evidence.
This could include challenging the constitutionality of obtaining the pizza sample and scrutinizing every aspect of the collection, transportation and testing of the genetic samples, said Steve Mercer, a Maryland attorney representing as an expert witness and advisor for lawyers in forensic DNA cases.
Mr. Mercer said the defense could also look at data from the forensic labs that investigators used and tell jurors that the genetic evidence “does not establish what happened.”
“You're talking about a piece of hair that doesn't reveal any activity or even a connection to the murder itself,” he said. “The evidence itself doesn't tell you how it got there.”
Presenting complex evidence to jurors can be challenging, says Lawrence Kobilinsky, a forensic science consultant.
“It's never a slam-dunk case with DNA evidence because you're never sure how a jury will react,” he said. “I've given testimony in cases where I look over and see jurors nodding.”
Mr. Brown did not respond to a request for comment, but at a recent court conference he took issue with the mitochondrial DNA tests used by prosecutors, which do not prove a link to a specific person but rather narrow down matches by most others to exclude. people. It is useful when nuclear DNA is severely degraded, as in this case.
Prosecutors say that while 99.96 percent of the population has been ruled out as a match for the Aquarius hair, Mr. Heuermann cannot be, based on his genetic profile from the DNA on the pizza and a court-ordered swab after his arrest.
Mr Brown replied that this is still possible “thousands and thousands” of men on Long Island alone whose DNA could match Aquarius hair.
Mitochondrial DNA tests on other hair strands found on the victims indicate they came from Mr Heuermann's wife, Asa Ellerup, leaving little doubt about Mr Heuermann's involvement, Mr Tierney said .
Prosecutors say Mrs. Ellerup, who has not been charged, was on vacation when the victims disappeared, but her husband likely accidentally carried her hair from home to his victims, perhaps on a roll of tape used to bind the bodies.
The victims – Ms. Waterman, Amber Costello, Melissa Barthelemy and Maureen Brainard-Barnes, known as the Gilgo Four – were the first of ten sets of remains that would eventually be found along Ocean Parkway in 2010 and 2011. The remaining six deaths are still under investigation.
The young women who were part of the Gilgo Four all worked as escorts and had gone missing after meeting a client who contacted them using disposable cellphones.
They were identified early on by their own DNA, but the stray hairs found on each of them provided no direct clues. The hairs, exposed for months or years to the harsh elements on windy oceanfront terrain, were so decomposed that it was impossible to perform the nuclear DNA analysis that identifies suspects in genetic databases.
When Mr. Heuermann was identified as a suspect in March 2022, it was not through DNA, but rather a decade-old tip about his distinctive pickup truck.
Investigators soon had enough circumstantial evidence to convince them that Mr. Heuermann was their man, including cell phone location data that linked him to the four victims at the time of their disappearance. They also discovered his internet history of using burner phones to search sadistic pornography and escort sites, Mr Tierney said.
But to secure an indictment, they had to build a solid genetic case using mitochondrial DNA analysis. To do this, they would have to secretly obtain samples from Mr. Heuermann and his family.
“You don't arrest someone on a wing and a prayer, let alone the biggest case in Suffolk County,” Mr. Tierney said.
In fact, the DNA evidence was so crucial that it prompted investigators to release Mr. Heuermann for more than a year so they could collect it. They feared he might kill again or get a tip that he was a suspect. The task force set up surveillance teams to track Mr Heuermann and installed cameras outside his home.
In July 2022, a third-party forensic laboratory using techniques including direct genome sequencing confirmed investigators' suspicions that the hairs found on Ms. Barnes, Ms. Waterman and Ms. Costello were indeed female hairs that did not belong to the victims.
That same month, an undercover detective picked empty bottles from a recycling bin outside Mr. Heuermann's dilapidated home in Massapequa Park.
Now researchers could use the bottle samples to create genetic profiles of Ms. Ellerup, Mr. Heuermann and their two adult children. But they still wanted a direct genetic sample from Mr. Heuermann.
As the months passed, tension rose among task force officials over whether to arrest him, the more they learned about Mr. Heuermann.
He used burner phones and fake identities to access his Tinder account, contact massage parlors and escorts and continue the investigation. Moreover, as an avid hunter with more than 90 gun permits, he seemed to have an arsenal of weapons at home.
“Our surveillance could have been detected, or he could have engaged in activity that would have brought us to a standstill,” Mr Tierney said. “So it was tough.”
There were also concerns about leaks. This task force began as a trusted core of mostly law enforcement officials and maintained a tight ring of secrecy for more than a year, Mr. Tierney said. By spring 2023, “that was expanding every day,” Mr. Tierney said, as more people were needed to follow Mr. Heuermann. Hundreds of subpoenas were issued and finally witnesses began testifying before a grand jury.
In June 2023, genetic testing on the bottles and DNA from the pizza slice positively linked Mr. Heuermann and his wife to the bodies, and a grand jury was convened.
Prosecutors eagerly awaited laboratory results linking Mr. Heuermann to Ms. Brainard Barnes. But when they heard rumors of a possible media leak about Mr. Heuermann, they decided to immediately arrest him and charge him with three murders.
Mr Tierney said an elaborate puzzle had to be put together.
“The reason there was no arrest in this case for 13 years is because there were no eyewitnesses,” he said. “You have to look at all the available evidence, evaluate it all and put it all together.”
But Mr. Mercer said that because the genetic samples were collected more than a dozen years ago and because the investigation has followed a winding path, “the defense will have to do quite a bit to come up with a counter-narrative.”