Riverhead resident Denise Merker accused of killing infant told police 'I did it," court documents show

A Riverhead woman accused of killing her newborn daughter in a decades-a old cold case told a Suffolk police detective she stuffed a paper towel in the infant’s mouth because she was crying, court records show.

Denise Merker, 55, allegedly made the admission during a Feb. 2 interview that preceded her arrest for second-degree murder in the 1993 killing, according to a criminal complaint filed in Riverhead Town Justice Court.

“I did it,” Merker is alleged to have told Suffolk Homicide Squad Det. Michael Repperger. “I did everything. I put the paper towel in the baby’s mouth because she was crying.”

The charging document reveals Merker, who was 22 years old and known as Denise Reischman at the time, left the baby girl near the intersection of Middle Country and Wading River-Manor roads in Calverton on or about 10:30 a.m. on Sept. 27, 1993.

A law enforcement source said forensic investigative genetic genealogy was a “significant factor” in recently identifying the child, leading detectives to Merker. FIGG involves comparing DNA from crime scenes with public databases to locate relatives, helping to identify victims and suspects in criminal cases.

Merker was arrested Feb. 2 and arraigned in Riverhead Town Justice Court the following morning, records show. She was remanded to the county jail and is currently scheduled to be arraigned on a grand jury indictment before State Supreme Court Justice Steven Pilewski in Riverhead March 2.

Merker’s attorney, Edward Burke Jr. of Sag Harbor, called the case “gut-wrenching” and “emotional,” but has declined further comment.

A 1996 wedding announcement published in Newsday shows Merker previously lived in Selden and worked as a manager at a dental office in Jamesport on the eastern edge of Riverhead Town.

The child was found near Riverhead’s western border on Sept. 27, 1993. She was discovered in a garbage bag by a state highway cleaning crew among the grass and bushes adjoining what was then Grumman Corp. property, according to an article published in Newsday the following day.

"They were doing their routine maintenance, picking up paper, when they came across this," a transportation department spokesperson told the paper.

Little effort was made to obscure the bag, police said at the time.

The baby’s identity remained unknown as recently as January 2025, when her information was added to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons Systems database, records show. The child was among nine infants whose information was uploaded by the Suffolk County Medical Examiner’s Office between October 2024 and January 2025.

Other infant cold cases in Suffolk County include discoveries made in Huntington (1974 and 1976), Southampton (1989), Shirley (1992), Commack (1996), Amityville (2004), Brookhaven (2005) and Yaphank (2010), each of which remain among the 39 unidentified persons listed in the NAMUS database for Suffolk County.

Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney, who declined comment pending next week’s arraignment, previously announced a multiagency cold case unit investigating unsolved killings across the county that officially launched in 2024. The task force is applying modern scientific investigative techniques like FIGG to solve older cases, his office has said.

Last February, Tierney announced the arrest of a Georgia man for the killing of an 88-year-old Bay Shore woman in 2003. A 1997 homicide investigation into a 69-year-old woman whose body was also found in Calverton, about 4.5 miles from where the Baby Doe was recovered more than three years earlier, was closed in November after police identified a deceased suspect. DNA was a factor in solving both of those killings, prosecutors said.

Tierney has said the cold case unit, formed following the Gilgo Beach serial killings arrest by a separate multiagency task force using many of the same techniques, is actively investigating more than 300 additional unsolved homicides.

By Grant Parpan

grant.parpan@newsday.com@GrantParpan

Grant Parpan covers Suffolk County courts and federal courts for Newsday. A Long Island native, he joined Newsday in 2022.