Gilgo Beach killings suspect Rex Heuermann skips court hearing over health concerns

Accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex A. Heuermann was excused from court Tuesday over health concerns as a Suffolk judge set a decision date on requests by the defense to exclude some evidence at his upcoming murder trial.

Defense attorney Michael J. Brown, of Central Islip, said Heuermann has been using crutches to get around for the past month, so they sought to have his appearance at the proceeding waived. He declined to say if his client had been injured from a fall.

"I’m not at liberty to discuss," Brown told reporters gathered outside the Riverhead courtroom of state Supreme Court Justice Timothy Mazzei. "He has some health issues so that’s what we’re dealing with. At this point in time I thought it was probably just better for him to stay at the jail."

Brown said the decision was made in a phone call with Heuermann Monday.

"Nothing was going to happen today," the judge said during a proceeding that lasted less than one minute.

The judge said he would decide on the defense requests on April 8.

Heuermann, 62, of Massapequa Park, is set to go on trial in September for allegedly killing seven women between 1993 and 2010.

"Novel argument"

Prosecutors have argued Mazzei should deny all of the defense's requests, including for the judge to throw out DNA evidence linking Heuermann to the killings because it was first discovered on a discarded pizza box and therefore allegedly violated privacy laws.

Brown called the defense privacy arguments "novel," and said he believes the practice of investigators using DNA from discarded materials to track down suspects in criminal cases will ultimately lead to new laws, "no matter what the judge [in this case] decides."

"You can’t think that when you’re throwing away garbage, you’re giving up your genetic makeup," Brown said. "It’s just not feasible."

Suffolk District Attorney Ray Tierney said the Gilgo Beach Task Force was working within the law when investigators obtained the abandonment samples.

"We are in good standing with regard to the manner in which we obtained all evidence," Tierney said.

Tierney downplayed the defense suppression motions Tuesday and said if they do lead to any hearings they would likely be brief.

In a rebuttal filed Monday, Heuermann co-counsel Sabato Caponi also attacked the prosecution's basis for receiving warrants to access Heuermann's computer and phones as "pure speculation," saying there is no evidence linking Heuermann to any of the burner phones used to contact the victims.

Prosecutors, in a recent filing, said a Suffolk police investigation that included an examination of more than 1,000 searches on Heuermann's computer had concluded he was a "sexual sadist."

Suspect's computer searches

Heuermann's computer showed searches for images of family members of alleged victims "mourning the deceased" before he was arrested. Another search using an email account tied to one of Heuermann’s cellphones included attempts to access pornographic "snuff" films depicting murder and "bruised and impaled women," prosecutors said.

And in the four years leading up to his arrest, Heuermann contacted at least 60 sex workers more than 500 times, prosecutors said.

The defense, in its newly filed court papers, appears to question the motives of prosecutors, who recently said they would not seek to present to a jury Heuermann's statements to police after his arrest, saying the prosecution had "apparently experienced an epiphany and now claims in its opposition papers that these same statements constitute inadmissible self-serving hearsay statements," which the defense said denies Heuermann "the right to contest the voluntariness of these statements through a pretrial suppression hearing."

Calling it "suspect," Caponi said Heuermann would give up his right to a suppression hearing on the statements if prosecutors agree not to introduce the statements and agree not to attempt to use the statements to impeach Heuermann's credibility if he takes the stand in his own defense at trial. Brown said Tuesday that he would not rule out any approach before the trial, including his client testifying.

Tierney reiterated that the prosecution has no plan to use any statements Heuermann made to police.

"We’re required to turn them over, but we’re not going to use them," he said.

Caponi also argued a photo of Heuermann that detectives showed to a person whom prosecutors called "Witness #1" should be excluded as evidence. Detectives asked the witness "whether he could identify the person in the photograph as someone he had seen on some other occasion relative to this case."

"Heuermann maintains that the subsequent identification procedure orchestrated by law enforcement personnel was unduly suggestive, cannot be justified by any exigency, and must be suppressed," Caponi wrote.

Defense filing

The defense filing Monday included a note near the top of the first page that stated prosecutors in their response to the suppression motion resorted to "hyperbole and inflammatory declarations" that "have no place in legitimate civil discourse."

Brown said that was a response to a similar note prosecutors made calling the original suppression motion an "exaggerated and tortured description of the facts."

Tierney said it’s important that as the defense makes its arguments the prosecution continues to protect the case it has built.

"They vigorously attacked our evidence," the district attorney said. "We vigorously attacked those arguments. Apparently they didn’t like that, but it’s the way the cookie crumbles."

Heuermann was arrested on July 13, 2023, on first- and second-degree murder charges in the killings of Melissa Barthelemy, Amber Lynn Costello and Megan Waterman, who were killed between 2009 and 2010.

He was later indicted on a charge of second-degree murder in the killings of Maureen Brainard-Barnes in 2007, Jessica Taylor in 2003, Valerie Mack in 2000 and Sandra Costilla in 1993. All seven alleged victims were said to have been sex workers Heuermann contacted at times he was alone in his Massapequa Park home.

He has pleaded not guilty to all 10 murder charges.