Prosecutors turn over thousands of pages of documents, evidence at accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann's court appearance

Suffolk County prosecutors handed over a trove of discovery material including crime scene photographs, autopsy photos and DNA evidence to the defense team representing accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex A. Heuermann as he appeared in a Riverhead court on murder charges Tuesday. 

More than 2,500 documents were provided to the defense, which includes anthropological and DNA evidence, notes from the offices of the medical examiners in New York City and Suffolk County and photographs from the crime scenes where the remains of the three women Heuermann is accused of killing were located off Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach in 2010, Assistant District Attorney Nicholas Santomartino said in Suffolk County Court.

The discovery material also includes hundreds of hours of surveillance footage from around Heuermann’s Massapequa Park home, a storage facility where he kept belongings, outside Heuermann’s Manhattan office and video connected to victim Megan Waterman, said Santomartino, who was joined at the prosecution's table by Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney.

“It’s quite voluminous,” Santomartino said of the list of evidence provided in the form of a 2-terabyte hard drive and six disks to Heuermann's lead defense attorney, Michael J. Brown.

Heuermann, 59, dressed in a dark blue blazer over a light blue shirt and tan pants, did not speak during his brief courtroom appearance. Before the public proceeding began, the lawyers met for 32 minutes in the chambers of State Supreme Court Justice Timothy Mazzei, the judge presiding over Heuermann's prosecution.

Heumermann, who has pleaded not guilty to first- and second-degree murder charges in the killings of three women — Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy and Amber Lynn Costello — was arrested on July 13 and has been held without bail in the Suffolk County Jail in Riverhead. 

Authorities have also named Heuermann as the “prime suspect” in the killing of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, whose remains were found with the other three women — collectively known as the "Gilgo Beach four."  All of the victims were sex workers.

Santomartino said the lawyers also agreed to a protective order to prevent distribution of that evidence to anyone beyond the attorneys working on the case.

Brown said he has met with his client "numerous times" in the nearly three weeks since his arrest.

"He's a man who's never been arrested before," said Brown. "He's maintained his innocence from the inception of this case. So he's doing the best he can at this point in time. And looking forward to having his day in court."

Brown did not seek bail for his client Tuesday, but said "if certain things come to fruition" …"that I think would warrant a change in his custody status, we will certainly make that application to the judge." 

Asked if he might seek to move the case to another jurisdiction, Brown said it was a possibility and expressed concern over how the case has been reported in the news media.

"The press is reporting things to the public, sometimes it's accurate, sometimes it's skewed," the attorney said. "So now you have the people in Suffolk County who are going to be sitting on a jury, we only hope that they will be fair and impartial and that they won't be influenced by the members of the press. And that they can listen to the evidence and decide for themselves." 

Brown said Heuermann has been in contact with his estranged wife since his arrest, though she did not attend Tuesday's court proceeding. He said his client is not suicidal despite the jail placing him on suicide watch.

Tierney, speaking to reporters after the proceeding, said prosecutors will continue providing the discovery to defense counsel "on a rolling basis."

“We are talking about 13 years of investigation," said Tierney. "I’m not going to talk for defense counsel, but suffice to say, it is a massive amount of material. And don’t forget that it is continuing, because the investigation is continuing."

Several family members of Heuermann's alleged victims came to court, but declined to comment afterward.

In court papers, prosecutors have said investigators first linked Heuermann to the killings last year through a witness statement identifying the driver of a Chevrolet Avalanche who had visited Costello’s home the day before she was last seen alive.

The witness' description of the driver matched that of Heuermann, who is 6-4 and weighs more than 240 pounds and was described as appearing like “an ogre.” Investigators also used cellphone site data and linked him through DNA to the victims using hair found on the victims’ remains that matched Heuermann’s DNA as recovered by authorities from a discarded pizza crust outside his Manhattan office, prosecutors said.

Heuermann is due back in court Sept. 27.

With Anthony M. DeStefano