Lawyers for Long Island serial killer suspect Rex Heuermann sparred with prosecutors Friday over the admissibility of DNA evidence that could put him away for life for the murders of seven women whose remains were found on a stretch of beach in Suffolk County.
Heuermann’s lawyers asked a judge to disqualify much of the DNA evidence obtained from the bodies of the victims, saying that the new DNA methodology employed by prosecutors has never been tested in New York courts.
Prosecutors, meanwhile, insisted that the DNA evidence was consistent with new technology accepted within the scientific community, and used in our everyday lives.
To make that case, Assistant District Attorney Nicholas Santomartino relied on witness testimony from Kelley Harris, a computational biologist and an associate professor in the Department of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle.
According to her website, she uses “large datasets of genetic variation to study the evolutionary history of humans and other species.”
She said she had been compensated for her time and transportation costs, a standard procedure for expert witnesses.
Harris explained the procedure of taking rootless hairs and using them to help develop a DNA profile.
“So they observed no false positives or false negatives,” she said of a study on the subject. “They never got it wrong, saying that it was not a match when it was a match or that it was a match when it was not a match.”
Harris had even written a review on the study.
“To be frank, it’s embarrassing for our criminal justice system that a method like this wasn’t the state of the art years ago,” Harris wrote, according to court documents. “But better late than never.”
Heuermann, 62, was charged with a seventh count of murder in December after prosecutors said they connected him to the death of Valerie Mack, 24, who was killed, dismembered and mutilated some time between Sept. 1 and Nov. 19, 2000, according to a superseding indictment.
Heuermann, an architect who lived with his family in Massapequa Park on Long Island, was arrested on July 13, 2023 and charged in the murders of three of the so-called Gilgo Four women: Melissa Barthelemy, 24; Megan Waterman, 22; and Amber Lynn Costello, 27. And in January 2024, he was charged with killing the fourth, 42-year-old Maureen Brainard-Barnes.
Heuermann has since been charged with murdering another three women — Jessica Taylor, 20; Sandra Costilla, 28; and Mack, 24.
He has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges.
Earlier in the day, lawyers for Heurermann’s estranged wife, Asa Ellerup, said the two have reached a divorce settlement.
The paperwork, signed by both Heuermann and Ellerup, was filed Thursday night in Suffolk County Supreme Court.
A judge must review the settlement and must sign off on the divorce before it is final.