A DNA expert has laid out the critical evidence that threatens to make or break the case against the Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect.
Rex Heuermann, a 61-year-old architect, returned to a courtroom in Riverhead, Long Island, on Tuesday for the latest in a series of hearings about whether bombshell evidence tying him to the murders of seven women can be presented at his trial.
Heuermann has been tied to the killings in part through advanced DNA testing which identified hairs on several of the victims as belonging to his now ex-wife Asa Ellerup, daughter Victoria Heuermann and another individual connected to him.
The man behind this crucial DNA testing – Astrea Forensics founder Dr Richard Green – was flown in from California for Tuesday’s hearing as the prosecution fights to keep this evidence in the trial.
Dressed in a dark suit and yellow tie, Heuermann was led into court in ankle shackles and with his hands cuffed behind his back.
Ellerup and Victoria Heuermann – dressed head to toe in a vibrant, multicolored outfit – looked on from the fourth row of the courtroom.
The mother and daughter were flanked by their attorneys who hours earlier exclusively told DailyMail.com that Ellerup believed her husband may have been framed for the serial killings – after she watched the new Netflix docuseries Gone Girls about the case.
The show documented the corruption that plagued the case in the early days, with the then-Suffolk County Police Commissioner James Burke botching the investigation and forcing the FBI off the case. He was then sentenced to 46 months in prison for 2012 beating of a man who stole sex toys and paraphernalia out of his vehicle. The then-Suffolk County DA Tom Spota was also convicted for corruption, obstruction and witness tampering in connection to Burke.
Attorney Bob Macedonio told reporters outside the courthouse that after watching the Netflix series ‘it raises more concerns and questions about how this investigation was conducted and procedures that were used to extract that DNA.’
‘Asa has said from the beginning that Rex Heuermann, the man she married and had two children with was not capable of committing these crimes,’ Macedonio said, while Ellerup stood next to him nodding in agreement.
Inside the courtroom, the family members did not appear to make eye contact with the man who they once lived with before he was unmasked as a suspected serial killer who preyed on multiple women. They looked on as he was carted in and out of court, before he was cuffed and led back to jail at the end of the day.
Heuermann is currently charged with the murders of seven women over a two-decade reign of horror running from 1993 to 2011.
The Gilgo Beach serial killer case had haunted the Long Island community for more than a decade, ever since the first of multiple bodies were discovered along Ocean Parkway in December 2010.
More than a decade later, in July 2023, the Massapequa Park local was then dramatically arrested as he left his office in midtown Manhattan.
Heuermann was initially charged with the murders of three women: Amber Costello, Melissa Barthelemy and Megan Waterman.
Since then, he has been charged with the murders of four more victims: Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Sandra Costilla, Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack.
All the victims were working as sex workers when they vanished after going to meet a client.
Their bodies were found dumped along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach and other remote spots on Long Island.
Some of the victims had been bound, others had been dismembered and their remains discarded in multiple locations.
The 61-year-old has pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him.
On Tuesday, key prosecution witness Dr Green took the stand to deliver his hotly-anticipated testimony which could play a key role in shaping what evidence will be seen at trial.
Green – who has worked as a professor in biomolecular engineering at University of California in Santa Cruz since 2010 – laid out his expertise and experience in the field of genetics and testified how his company Astrea Forensics has become the ‘go to’ for the specific DNA testing used in the Gilgo Beach serial killer case.
He told the court how his research largely focuses on developing technology which can extract DNA from old or difficult samples – such as ancient bones that are tens of thousands of years old or rootless hairs.
Through his research, he went on to found the lab Astrea Forensics in 2019 – the lab that carried out the DNA testing in the case against Heuermann.
Green explained that the company was born out of his work on a case where a girl’s body was found in a casket buried underneath a home in San Francisco.
He was sent a lock of the girl’s hair and was asked to use it to try to identify her.
Ultimately, he was able to use the hair to identify the girl as Edith Howard Cook.
After that, Green said he kept being sent cold cases to work on, leading him to eventually launch the lab.
Green testified that Astrea Forensics is now the ‘go-to lab’ for identifying DNA from rootless hairs and ancient bones.
The lab is regularly sent cases to work on from the FBI, local law enforcement agencies as well as other forensic labs. In total, he estimated the company has analyzed hundreds or thousands of samples for law enforcement.
Astrea, he testified, specializes in getting DNA from rootless hairs and very old or ancient bones.
‘Everybody knows we are the go-to lab for this kind of thing,’ he testified.
Green explained how the technology developed by his lab is able to develop a DNA profile from a rootless hair – like the hairs found on the bodies of several of the Gilgo Beach victims.
A hair, he explained, has small amounts of DNA that are fragmented – making it more difficult to obtain a profile from.
But, he said that DNA is ‘easily recoverable’ from rootless hairs using his lab’s technology.
It is then compared to a DNA sample taken from a known individual using a buccal swab, to see if matches.
Green laid out his lengthy experience of working on DNA and genetics, including his post-doctoral training where he worked on technology to sequence the genes of Neanderthals. His boss on this project went on to win a Nobel Prize.
Green also testified that he had received $1.5 million in grants for work on forensics and DNA evaluation of rootless hairs.
Astrea has been paid around $190,000 from Suffolk County for work on cases – $130,000 of which for the work on the Gilgo Beach serial killer case, he said.
Heuermann’s defense attorney Michael Brown is seeking to sow doubts in the DNA technology used in the case – branding it ‘magic’ that has never been used before in a criminal case in New York.
He is asking the judge to throw out the DNA evidence allegedly tying Heuermann to the murders.
Prosecutors are fighting back, arguing the method is well-regarded in the scientific community.
Brown will cross-examine Green when the hearing resumes Wednesday morning.
It is not clear when Judge Mazzei will rule on whether or not the DNA evidence can be presented at trial.
Heuermann was linked to the murders following a tip about a pickup truck.
According to a witness, Costello had disappeared after going to see a client who drove a green Chevy Avalanche in September 2010.
Following the launch of a new taskforce, investigators learned that Heuermann drove that same type of vehicle at the time of the murders, prosecutors say.
He also matched the description of the client seen by the witness.
As well as the DNA evidence, prosecutors said investigators also found a chilling ‘planning document’ on a hard drive in the basement of Heuermann’s family home in Massapequa Park.
In the haunting document, he allegedly had a section detailed ‘PREP’ and noted that ‘small’ women were preferred.
Heuermann has lived his entire life in Massapequa Park and would commute to his architecture job in Midtown Manhattan, where some of the victims worked and were last seen alive.
He was especially familiar with Ocean Parkway, where the victims’ bodies were dumped, thanks to a job he had at Jones Beach in his 20s, according to prosecutors.
Fears that a serial killer or killers were at large on Long Island began back in May 2010, when Shannan Gilbert vanished in bizarre circumstances one night.
The 24-year-old, who was working as an escort, had gone to see a client in the Oak Beach Association community when she made a terrifying 911 call, saying that someone was trying to kill her.
During a search for Gilbert in December 2010, officers came across the body of Barthelemy in the marshes by Gilgo Beach.
Within days, three more bodies – Costello, Brainard-Barnes and Waterman – had been found.
The four victims, who became known as the Gilgo Four, had been dumped within a quarter mile of each other, some of them bound and wrapped in burlap.
Over the following months, the remains of seven other victims were found.
Gilbert’s body was found last. Investigators maintain that she was not a victim, but died by accidental drowning after she fled into the dense thicket that night.
Heuermann has not been charged in connection to the deaths of the other four victims: Karen Vergata and three still-unidentified victims, known only as ‘Asian Doe,’ ‘Peaches,’ and Peaches’ toddler daughter.
Costilla, meanwhile, had never been linked to the Gilgo Beach serial killer case until Heuermann was hit with charges for her murder in 2024.
Her murder expands the timeline that the accused serial killer is alleged to have been actively preying on victims.
Heuermann has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.