Lawyer for alleged Gilgo Beach serial killer jokes trial should move to ‘Mars’ to find impartial jury
Rex Heuermann is charged with the murders of Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Costello, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Jessica Taylor and Sandra Costilla
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The defense attorney for accused Gilgo beach serial killer Rex Heuermann said he hopes to have his client’s highly-anticipated trial taken out of the Long Island county in an attempt to find an impartial jury – but joked that would mean moving it all the way to Mars.
Attorney Michael Brown made the comment outside of the Suffolk County Courthouse in Riverhead, New York on Wednesday, following a status hearing as the judge indicated that the case could be inching toward setting a trial date.
“I say that in jest only because I don’t know where we will be able to find a fair and impartial jury,” Brown told reporters.
“I have great confidence in the people of this country,” he said, but claimed there have been law enforcement officials who have made statements to the media that have “poisoned the jury pool” about “devil eyes” and the lack of emotion from Heuermann.
Heuermann, a 60-year-old architect from Massapequa Park, who is accused in the murders of six women, appeared at the hearing dressed in a suit and tie. He glanced over at the courtroom gallery, where his wife Asa Ellerup and their children were notably absent, before shuffling out in handcuffs.
He will return to the Suffolk County jail in Riverhead where he has been held without bail since he was arrested near his Manhattan office in July 2023.
This was Heuermann’s second appearance since his arraignment on a superseding indictment charging him in the killings of Jessica Taylor and Sandra Costilla, a year after he was charged with the murders of the so-called Gilgo Four: Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Costello, and Maureen Brainard-Barnes.
Heuermann’s estranged wife Asa Ellerup, who filed for divorce after his July 2023 arrest, was not in the courtroom on Wednesday. Her attorney, Bob Macedonio, told The Independent that she is in South Carolina, where she is staying in a trailer on the family’s property with with her son and service dog.
It was revealed at the hearing that the Suffolk County District Attorney has turned over 99.9 percent of the raw data that was extracted from the more than 400 electronic devices.
“It’s a tremendous amount of information, we are pumping out an extraordinary amount of discovery,” Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said.
The case returns to court on December 17 and Judge Timothy Mazzei told the attorneys that he’d like to set a trial date at that time.
But Tierney said the DA’s office lacks the resources and funding for the “ambitious” timeline.
“I think the timeline right now is very ambitious and very compressed, again, given the ridiculous nature of our discovery laws, where I have to provide every single piece of paper that was generated in a case that started in 1993,” he said.
He explained that the government has frozen assets from the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office as part of a separate FBI investigation.
An estimated $13m is tied up in the investigation which has also slowed the progress of the Gilgo case.
“I’d love to have that money and be able to use it to bring this case to a resolution,” Tierney said. “So, I’m going to the Department of Justice again, hat in hand, and I’ll beg them: Please give me this money so I can litigate this very significant serial killer case.”
Meanwhile, Heuermann’s attorney said that other than seeking a change of venue, he plans to file a motion severing the cases so that the fifth and sixth victims are different trials than the Gilgo Four.
It was decided on Wednesday there would be a “fry hearing” in the spring to determine the admissibility of certain DNA evidence in the case.
“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,” Tierney said.
“In this case, we have SDR, short tandem repeats that have been litigated in Suffolk County in New York State and found to be admissible. We have mitochondrial DNA that has been litigated and found admissible. Now we have this SNP DNA, which is an issue of first impression for New York State. So we’ll have to go through that.”
As a special task force continues to investigate whether Heuermann may also be responsible for additional murders on Long Island, the district attorney’s office gave an update Wednesday on a case known as “Asian Doe.”
“We’re culling through the information we’ve received,” Tierney said. “We hope to identify that person soon.”
Last month, investigators released an updated composite sketch of the unidentified Asian male victim whose remains were found in 2010 near Ocean Parkway, Tierney called on the community to help identify the victim.
Informational fliers were distributed in English, Cantonese, Mandarin, Thai, and Bahasa.
“Asian Doe” is one of 11 people whose remains have been found scattered in the Gilgo Beach area since 2011.