Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney creates cold case unit to solve homicides, review death investigations

The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office has formed its first Cold Case Unit to work with the county's police department to review hundreds of unsolved homicides, the county's top law enforcement official told Newsday.

The new unit will have 15 employees working with Suffolk homicide investigators to look at roughly 300 death investigations dating to 1965, Suffolk District Attorney Ray Tierney said.

"This is the way to go," Tierney said. "To do it in a comprehensive, systematic way. That guarantees the best success."

The district attorney said the new investigative unit will examine cases over a 55-year stretch to 2020 using the same methodology as the Gilgo Beach Task Force. That unit, a multiagency group formed around the time Tierney took office in 2022, has to date brought murder charges in six killings against Rex A. Heuermann, 60, of Massapequa Park, in a massive serial killer investigation that stretched 13 years before he was arrested in July 2023.

Plans for the new unit include hiring a genetic genealogist to work directly on those cases. Former NYPD Deputy Chief of Forensics Brian McGee was hired this spring to help lead the efforts, Tierney said.

"He has unbelievable breadth of experience in this area," the district attorney said of McGee, who he noted brings with him not only three decades worth of law enforcement experience but valuable contacts in other jurisdictions and with forensics labs.

The cold case unit also has dedicated investigators, analysts, a discovery expediter and paralegals working with prosecutors. 

Funding for the unit was included in this year’s county budget, and the district attorney’s office has also applied for $1 million in additional grants to help fund the work.

Nassau County also has a Cold Case Unit within its district attorney's office, and is directed by the chief of the Homicide/Major Offense Bureau, a spokesperson said.

Tierney said his office is centering its cold case efforts around cases involving "bodies," meaning homicides and other unsolved investigations where the cause of death might be determined to be a drug overdose or other factors.

Since his office has brought three separate indictments against Heuermann in an ongoing investigation, Tierney has made ambitious statements about plans to close "every unsolved homicide in Suffolk County."

"We’re not going to confine ourselves to Gilgo," the district attorney told Newsday in May.

Tierney said the new unit will operate similar to how the Gilgo Beach Task Force has worked.

"Smaller, but essentially the same thing," Tierney said of the two ongoing cold case efforts. "It’s an offshoot of Gilgo."

"You start with the body and the crime scene," he said. "These are bodies where we’re not necessarily looking at it from the context of [the Heuermann] case."

Tierney said advancements in science can help, especially with some of the older cases.

The district attorney pointed to the 1980 killing of Eve Wilkowitz, a Bay Shore rape and strangulation case investigators closed in 2022, as an example of the type of work the new unit can do. Her death was ultimately pinned on Herbert Rice, a Bay Shore man who died of cancer in 1991.

"Even if the perpetrator is no longer with us, at least we get closure to the family," Tierney said.

The family of homicide victim Danie Philistin — a resident of South Plainfield, New Jersey, who was 29 years old when he was fatally shot in the head at a pool party in West Babylon on July 17, 2021 — said they have been frustrated by the lack of movement in the investigation, but they welcome the creation of the unit.

"I know the detectives have other cases," said longtime family friend Khadijah Shakur. "I don’t know if they just can’t tell us certain things, but nothing is moving on this case."

There have been no arrests or charges in the case.

Shakur said the family would appreciate updates from the authorities, even if there are no breaks.

"Danie’s life mattered also. He was loved by his community, his football team and his family," Shakur said.

Prosecutors have said the arrest of Heuermann, a New York City architect, followed an 18-month renewed focus on the case by the Gilgo Beach Task Force, which also includes resources from the New York State Police and FBI. A witness description of a green Chevrolet Avalanche that picked up one of the alleged victims in the case and cellphone evidence led investigators to focus on Heuermann as a suspect. He was ultimately arrested after DNA evidence obtained during the investigation linked him to hair found at the crime scenes, prosecutors said. 

Heuermann was arrested outside the Fifth Avenue office of his midtown Manhattan architectural firm on July 13 last year and charged with first- and second-degree murder in the killings of Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Lynn Costello. He was then called "the prime suspect" in the killing of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, who along with Barthelemy, Waterman and Costello are known as the Gilgo Four, whose deaths spanned from 2007 to 2010.

In January, Heuermann was indicted by a special grand jury working on the case for second-degree murder in Brainard-Barnes' killing. The same grand jury brought second-degree murder charges against Heuermann in June for the killing of Jessica Taylor, whose mutilated remains were found both near Gilgo Beach and in Manorville in 2003, and the 1993 slaying of Sandra Costilla, whose remains were found in North Sea.

Heuermann, who has pleaded not guilty to all six killings, is due back in court Oct. 16. Tierney said he remains a suspect in additional cases, including the 2000 killing of Valerie Mack, whose remains were also found in Manorville and near Gilgo Beach. 

With Michael O'Keeffe and Nicole Fuller

By Grant Parpan

grant.parpan@newsday.com@GrantParpan

Grant Parpan covers Suffolk County courts and federal courts for Newsday. A Long Island native, he joined Newsday in 2022.