Charges against suspected Gilgo Beach serial killer face scrutiny

For years, prosecutors saw a connection between the murders of three young women who disappeared during the winter of 1993 and 1994, their naked bodies found strangled, beaten and abandoned in similar poses in the Long Island brush.

In new charges unsealed Thursday, prosecutors said Rex Heuermann — the man already accused in a series of deaths known as the Gilgo Beach serial killings — was responsible for the death of one of the women, Sanda Costilla. The findings, authorities say, indicate that Heuermann began stalking his victims more than a decade earlier than previously thought.

That raised questions about the conviction of another man, John Bittrolff, who was incarcerated for the murders of the other two women — Rita Tangredi and Colleen McNamee — and who prosecutors once considered a suspect in Costilla's death.

Bittrolff's lawyers have long accused prosecutors of relying on questionable forensic analyzes to convict him. They say the new charges against Heuermann cast further doubt on the charges against their client, who has maintained his innocence since being sentenced to 50 years to life in prison in 2017.

“You have three women killed in the same time frame and exposed in the same way, and now one of them is allegedly killed by Rex Heuermann,” said attorney Lisa Marcoccia of the Legal Aid Society, which runs the 'call. “The evidence indicates there is only one murderer, and the new indictment supports John Bittrolff's claim of innocence. »

Those three murders took place about 16 years before the remains of 10 people — most of them sex workers — were discovered along a highway near Gilgo Beach on the South Shore of Long Island. Heuermann, an architect, has pleaded not guilty to five of those killings and is considered a suspect in a sixth, in addition to Costilla's death.

In the new indictment, prosecutors said forensic analyzes of hairs found on Costilla's body determined they were likely Heuermann's. The killing occurred shortly after Heuermann's mother and another person left his home, giving him “plenty of time to carry out his plans,” prosecutors said.

Like the Gilgo Beach murders, those in the early 1990s perplexed investigators for years. Then, in 2014, authorities caught a break: A DNA sample taken from Bittrolff's brother proved a partial genetic match to sperm found on the bodies of Tangredi and McNamee.

That led them to Bittrolff, a carpenter and father of two living in Manorville, Long Island. His DNA was a perfect match.

Shortly after the arrest, Suffolk County Prosecutor Thomas Spota publicly speculated that Bittrolff might also have been responsible for the death of Costilla, who disappeared weeks after Tangredi and two months before McNamee.

Although Bittrolff's DNA was not found on Costilla, all three victims were presented in the same sexual manner and were missing a single shoe, prosecutors said, and wood chips were found at all three scenes. Both Tangredi and McNamee were known to engage in sex work, while Costilla “led a similar lifestyle,” Spota said.

During the 2017 trial, Bittrolff's attorney admitted it was possible his client had sex with both women, but said that did not mean he killed them. Several semen samples were found on the two women.

Prosecutors relied on testimony from Suffolk County medical examiner Dr. Michael Caplan, who said he analyzed sperm density to conclude that Bittrolff had sex with them shortly before their deaths.

Defense attorneys did not call on an expert to refute this claim. But in an appeal, they cited DNA analyst and molecular biologist Dr. Karl Reich, who described sperm density analysis as “pure junk science.”

“Dr. Caplan's testimony about a timeline since sexual intercourse is based on no scientific basis,” Reich wrote in an affidavit, adding that such methods have “no precedent in forensic practice.” 'DNA'.

Jurors deliberated for seven days, repeatedly telling the judge they were deadlocked before finally convicting Bittrolff. Afterward, one said Caplan's testimony was key to swaying undecided jurors, according to trial attorney Jonathan Manley.

Spota credited the “miracle of DNA evidence” for catching and convicting Bittrolff.

Less than six months after his conviction, Spota was arrested for obstructing an investigation into the Suffolk County police chief, who was accused of beating a prisoner. Both men were ultimately convicted and sentenced to prison.

As with the Gilgo Beach investigation, the case against Bittrolff was marred by allegations of errors and misconduct by police and prosecutors. During the trial, Suffolk County police admitted to accidentally destroying wood chips found on the body of one of the women and, separately, wood chips found in a car used by a police sergeant who was a potential suspect.

Police were also accused of prematurely destroying the sergeant's investigative file. In their appeal, defense attorneys said prosecutors failed to turn over another internal file containing allegations from another officer's wife that her husband killed one of the women. Prosecutors argue that they actually handed over this document; a judge has not yet ruled.

John Ray, an attorney who represented the families of some of the Gilgo Beach victims, said he was concerned about the Bittrolff case from the start.

“There were huge flaws in the presentation of the evidence, there was an issue of incompetent counsel and the handling of the evidence was disgraceful,” he said. “Given what is now known, prosecutors have an ethical duty to review and reexamine the Bittrolff case. »

Suffolk County Legislator Rob Trotta, a former detective with the FBI's Violent Crimes Task Force, agrees. “It’s worth taking another look,” he said. “Nothing would surprise me in this county.”

A spokesperson for the prosecutor's office did not respond to a request for comment. In court Thursday, Heuermann's attorney, Michael Brown, said his client was “obviously in a bad place in terms of the new charges.”

In the months leading up to his arrest, court records show, Heuermann may have taken an interest in the man whose high-profile murder charges were his. Among the hundreds of online searches prosecutors say they found on his computer was one query that read: “John Bitroff.”