Stop profiling Gilgo Beach killer

Another day, another Rex Heuermann front page headline in Newsday, followed by multiple prime pages of coverage — this time about his current living conditions [" 'No emotion' during his time in lockup," News, June 7]. Really?

Why give even more coverage to a depraved individual who killed so many and crushed the lives of countless others? He should be forgotten, his memory buried with him in the bin where he belongs. What makes Newsday think that its readers want to pick up a Sunday newspaper and read about this — and staring at us on the front page, no less?

Edward Johnston, Medford

I can hardly believe some of what I read about Rex Heuermann. When and why did jails and prisons stop checking inmates' mail? That any inmate, especially those two infamous, vicious psychopaths, Keith Hunter Jesperson and Heuermann, can share and send God knows what in their correspondence is both dangerous and outrageous. It also highlights the incompetence and ongoing disintegration of our entire prison system the past three decades.

Newsday also details Heuermann's selection of disgusting and deeply disturbing jail library books. But in case anyone missed it, they add an extra highlighted box of his book list to ensure that any creep or deranged wannabe copycat can read them, too. Jails allowing brutal, psychotic rapists and murderers to have total access to such horrible and highly stimulating (to them) books is a jaw-dropper. It's wrong on every level.

Edyth Dunne, Melville

I am so sick of seeing that lowlife, vile, depraved Gilgo Beach killer in Newsday. There was nothing else you could think of to write about? He's admitted his guilt to those heinous crimes, so stop posting articles and pictures of him.

Let him rot in jail.

Christine Harrington, Farmingdale

It was alarming to read Sunday's article on the mass killer in jail. It is troubling to hear that Rex Heuermann is allowed to read macabre, grisly novels. What purpose does it serve any inmate to be reading such material?

I am shocked to see that after three years in jail, he still appears to be morbidly obese. He deserves a slow lifetime incarceration with nutritional constraints and limited reading availability. His upcoming sentencing should be the beginning of a long, lonely life.

Joe Campbell, Port Washington

Limiting cellphones aids student focus

Newsday's editorial board is right to applaud New York's cellphone ban in schools ["After cellphones, time to tackle tech," Opinion, June 4]. The reported improvements in classroom engagement, student behavior and social interaction should encourage policymakers to think carefully about how technology is used in education.

As a parent, I have seen these benefits firsthand. My wife and I chose to send our children to a school that has long limited the use of phones and other classroom technologies. We made that decision not because we oppose technology, but because we value an educational approach that emphasizes play, creativity, hands-on learning, and independent thinking during a child's formative years.

Technology and AI will undoubtedly play an important role in our children's futures. But before students learn to rely on powerful digital tools, they should develop the ability to think critically, solve problems independently and engage meaningfully with those around them.

The success of the cellphone ban reminds us that education is about more than access to information. It is about cultivating curiosity, judgment, creativity and genuine human connection.

David A. Chauvin, Freeport

Press should ask tough questions

God bless journalists. Without a free press, there can be no democracy. Our nation's founders understood this, which is why they enshrined freedom of the press in the First Amendment. We cannot condemn the press when it reports facts we dislike and celebrate it only when it tells us what we want to hear.

Kristen Welker's "Meet the Press" interview with President Donald Trump, which aired Sunday, was a reminder of why a free and independent press is so essential ["Trump denies no new wars vow," Nation & World, June 8]. Her job was not to flatter, protect, or promote the president. Her job was to ask tough questions and seek evidence for his claims. When journalists do that, they are serving the public — not acting as political opponents. Yet Trump responded by personally attacking the interviewer and NBC.

A free and independent press is not a luxury — it is one of the cornerstones of a free society. The media is not the enemy of the American people, despite Trump's repeated attempts to portray it that way. The press may be Trump's enemy when it challenges his narrative, but it is not ours.

Martin Geller, Manhasset