What to know about Timothy Mazzei, the Suffolk judge presiding over the Gilgo Beach killings case

When State Supreme Court Justice Timothy P. Mazzei marches up to the bench Wednesday morning in anticipation of taking a guilty plea from Rex A. Heuermann in the Gilgo Beach case, he will write the latest chapter in a long legal career that led him to the path of deciding an alleged serial killer's fate. 

A veteran of the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office, where he prosecuted murder cases — including the 1979 killing of 13-year-old John Pius in Smithtown, one of the county’s most infamous — Mazzei has both tried and overseen his fair share of headline-grabbing cases.

"I’m a professional prosecutor — I handle the high-profile cases because I win them," Mazzei declared at a Brookhaven Republican Committee meeting in 1989, in an ill-fated attempt to get the backing of the GOP to run for district attorney, Newsday reported at the time.

The case of the alleged Gilgo Beach serial killer is his biggest one yet.

"He’s always prepared and he does not suffer fools, gladly," said retired Suffolk Supreme Court Justice William J. Condon, who is longtime golfing buddies with Mazzei. "He doesn’t do anything halfway. He’ll be prepared for whatever happens."

High profile defendants

Over the years, Mazzei has not held his tongue when it comes to his opinions on legal matters, and even some defendants.

When Mazzei presided over the 2023 trial of Angela Pollina, who was convicted of second-degree murder in the killing of her then-fiance Michael Valva’s son, Thomas Valva, who was 8 years old when he died of hypothermia, he delivered a tongue-lashing to Pollina.

He sentenced her to 25 years to life after telling her that he only regretted that the upstate prison where she would serve her sentence didn’t have the same conditions that Thomas endured — a freezing garage with no blankets or pillows.

He called her "evil," and Michael Valva a "spineless, poor excuse of a man."

On more than one occasion, he has ruffled a few legal feathers.

Former veteran Nassau prosecutor Fred Klein, in a guest essay in Newsday, criticized Mazzei’s comments as "outlandish" and said the judge "gratuitously grandstanded" while sentencing Pollina. 

Mazzei presides over felony-level cases inside a large, fourth-floor courtroom in Riverhead, where he is known for his acerbic style and quick temper. Newsday reporters have seen him frequently yell at attorneys appearing before him for coming back from lunch a few minutes late or other minor infractions.

For attorneys appearing before Mazzei, the Cliff's Notes for success include these instructions: Be early and super prepared.

"Justice Mazzei is the hardest-working judge in Suffolk County," said defense attorney Anthony La Pinta, who has been before the judge countless times and described him as "tough."

"He expects promptness and preparation and demands the highest standards from lawyers that appear before him," said La Pinta, who said he remembered watching Mazzei — and admiring him — as a lawyer when he was a high school student.

First judge in

Top legal officials have told Newsday privately that while some of his behavior can be off-putting, he has one of the sharpest legal minds in Suffolk's judiciary.

Attorney Mark Lesko, who in 2009 won a special election for Brookhaven Town supervisor over Mazzei, said the judge has always been "an extremely hard-working guy … and that hasn’t really changed."

Lesko, who appeared before Mazzei last year as an attorney for the owner of two Suffolk brothels, said Mazzei was a good choice to handle the high-profile Gilgo Beach case. 

"This case had the real potential to develop dozens of rabbit holes, legally," said Lesko, a former acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York. "It needed a judge that could really maintain the pace and get through groundbreaking legal hearings and issues."

Lesko noted how Mazzei is the first judge in the building every day and handles an enormous trial caseload.

"Is he a demanding judge? There’s no doubt about that," Lesko said. "But he’s a fair judge and his work ethic is crazy."

Mazzei declined a Newsday interview request ahead of Heuermann's Wednesday court appearance via a court spokesman.

Mazzei, now 71, never became district attorney despite being in the thick of the rough-and-tumble world of Suffolk politics.

A Blue Point resident, he graduated from the University of Tampa in 1976 and Pace University School of Law in 1979.

He worked at the district attorney’s office for 9 1/2 years, leaving as the bureau chief of the Homicide Division.

After leaving the office, Mazzei went into private practice.

Brookhaven politics

He was elected to the Brookhaven Town Board, where he served from 2003 to 2014, before being elected a judge in 2015.

Brookhaven Town Supervisor Dan Panico, who served on the Town Board alongside Mazzei for more than four years beginning in March 2010, said the judge was dedicated to the constituents of the South Shore district.

"He was a no-nonsense town board member who had very little patience for histrionics," Panico said.

The supervisor said that as he got to know Mazzei on a personal level, developing a lasting friendship, he’s found the judge to be a "very caring and loyal person."

"He’s also an extremely disciplined person, so much so he still fits into his suits from law school," Panico said.

Last September, when a group of first-year associates in the District Attorney’s Office dropped in his courtroom to observe the proceedings, Mazzei deadpanned from the bench: "You know what I did on my first day? I got sent to Central Islip arraignment court by myself."

Mazzei, who’s been a judge in Suffolk County since 2015, has overseen Heuermann’s prosecution since after his initial arraignment in 2023 and through a series of legal maneuvers, including several defense motions and a multiple-day Frye hearing to determine the admissibility of DNA evidence.

Mazzei's 2025 ruling allowing prosecutors to present advanced DNA techniques as evidence against Heuermann — for the first time in New York State — set a precedent.

Newsday first reported that Heuermann, 62, of Massapequa Park, plans to plead guilty to murder charges in the killings of seven women. Newsday also reported exclusively Tuesday that Heuermann is expected to admit to an eighth slaying, the 1996 killing of Karen Vergata, a Manhattan mother of two whose remains were found west of Gilgo Beach and on Fire Island more than a decade apart.

'He's all business'

Mazzei is divorced and has an adult daughter. The judge is also an avid dog lover and spends a lot of his free time boating on the Great South Bay, said his friend Condon. He also previously owned an Italian restaurant, originally called Mazzei's, on Montauk Highway in Blue Point.

Lawyers and others that have worked with him say Mazzei has the same hard-charging and gruff demeanor behind closed doors in his chambers as he does when he’s on the bench.

"He’s stern but fair," said Condon. "He holds himself and everybody in the legal profession to a very high standard. He takes the law seriously. And he’s not going to yuck around. He’s all business."

When he was at the District Attorney's Office, Mazzei was the lead prosecutor during three retrials in the infamous Pius case after earlier convictions were thrown out on appeal. Pius was killed on April 20, 1979, in Smithtown, but the case didn't end until 2003, following eight trials and five successful appeals. Disgraced former Suffolk Police Chief James Burke, who later went to federal prison for attacking a handcuffed prisoner, was a teenager when he testified as a witness in the case.

"A young boy fought for his life in a school playground because four tough guys wanted to shut him up about seeing them with a stolen worthless minibike," Mazzei said in opening statements for one of the retrials. "So you know what these tough guys did? They shoved rocks down his young throat, rocks shoved so far down that he lost the fight for his life in that schoolyard."

After one of the defendants, Robert Brensic, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 1988, Mazzei told Newsday about agreeing to the plea: "We never had the wrong guys. This was one way to prove to everyone we had the right people."