Jury in Bittrolff murder trial hears gruesome autopsy details

The extreme violence of an East Patchogue woman’s death more than 23 years ago was made visible Thursday to jurors with a series of autopsy photographs.

The beating that Rita Tangredi, 31, suffered on Nov. 2, 1993 in the woods of East Patchogue left wounds to her head typically seen in high-speed car crashes or falls from a great height, Suffolk Chief Medical Examiner Michael Caplan testified in Riverhead.

He reviewed the first of two autopsies at the trial of John Bittrolff, 50, a Manorville carpenter. He is charged with second-degree murder in the deaths of Tangredi and Colleen McNamee, 20, of Holbrook, on Jan. 30, 1994.

Assistant District Attorney Robert Biancavilla has argued that both women, who worked as prostitutes, were killed the same way — strangled and severely bludgeoned — and posed similarly, naked with legs apart and one or both arms over their heads. Severe head wounds to both women have been visible in crime scene photos.

Caplan said one wound to the left side of Tangredi’s head left a 4-by-2 1⁄2 inch hole in her skull, with bone fragments driven into her brain. A fracture extended from that hole to behind her nose, and back across the base of her skull to behind her left ear, Caplan said. Autopsy photos showed her skull was almost cracked in two.

Caplan said pinpoint hemorrhages in Tangredi’s eyelids and a fractured bone in her neck were evidence of severe neck compression before she died.

Some of McNamee’s relatives wept softly in the courtroom as they saw and heard how Tangredi died.

Caplan will testify about McNamee’s autopsy on Monday before state Supreme Court Justice Richard Ambro.

In addition to the similar deaths, Biancavilla has said both semen with Bittrolff’s DNA was recovered from both bodies.

He’s also said “wood chips” on both bodies are a link to Bittrolff because of his profession. But during cross-examination by defense attorney William Keahon of Hauppauge, forensic scientist Thomas Zaveski said the items were particles not easily seen by the naked eye. He said he didn’t test them before Suffolk police destroyed almost all of them.

“So you can’t state to the folks in this jury with any degree of scientific certainty that any of the items that you say were wood, were in fact wood, can you?” Keahon asked.

“That’s correct,” Zaveski said.