Defense strategy in the Gilgo Beach murder case: Police corruption is to blame

After Rex Heuermann was arrested last summer and then charged with the murders of four women whose bodies were found on Long Island’s Gilgo Beach in 2010, prosecutors revealed a torrent of details that bolstered their case, including genetic evidence and sadistic porn sites, he said Mr. Heuermann visited.

Now, with the trial still months away, the defense’s strategy is beginning to take shape. Mr. Heuermann’s lawyer, Michael J. Brown, has begun to put forward an alternative theory to the case: that the investigation into the killings years ago was marred by the involvement of a now-disgraced Long Island police chief.

The chief, James Burke, who led the investigation as head of the Suffolk County Police Department from 2012 to 2015, later became a symbol of police corruption and spent time in federal prison.

At a hearing last month that followed a court appearance by Mr. Heuermann, Mr. Brown repeated his client’s protestations of innocence. He also suggested that the real killer may have evaded arrest years ago when Mr. Burke was leading the investigation.

Mr. Brown, a charismatic figure who arrives in court in a shiny pickup truck, even suggested that Mr. Burke himself might have been involved in the four Gilgo murders, alluding to a fringe theory among some supporters of the case. Among the hundreds of clues presented to him by prosecutors, Brown said there were “numerous” points to Mr. Burke’s involvement. Mr. Brown did not elaborate, and Mr. Burke is not a suspect in the case.

Mr. Brown, who avoids giving interviews, has largely limited his public statements to damage control after court appearances.

After the hearing, Brown referenced a Washington Post report from last year that said that in 2021, before focusing on Heuermann, investigators had focused on another suspect, a retired police officer who lived near Heuermann, and planned to arrest the man. Tim Sini, then-Suffolk County District Attorney, denies that.

By offering these different scenarios, Mr. Brown is “planting a seed to the extent that people follow the media and hear these comments,” said Fred B. Klein, a former chief of staff in the Nassau County district attorney’s office.

Burke’s difficult tenure leading the Gilgo case was one of numerous problems during the first decade of the investigation. These repeatedly stalled because they became entangled in county politics, corruption and criticism from victims’ families who said the case was neglected because the slain women worked as escorts.

Revealing all this may raise questions about how the evidence in the case, including genetic material, was obtained and handled by Mr. Brown, said Bruce Barket, a prominent Long Island defense attorney.

“By bringing up Burke, you’re calling the whole case into question,” Barket said, adding, “Anytime you bring up James Burke’s name in Suffolk County, you can score points because everyone knows how corrupt he was.”

Mr. Burke’s lawyer, James O’Rourke, said that Mr. Brown was exploiting a “huge conspiracy theory” that falsely linked Mr. Burke to the Gilgo murders, when in reality there was “not a shred of evidence linking Jimmy Burke.” associated with any of these crimes.”

“Jimmy Burke is many things, and some of them are far from admirable, but he is not a killer,” O’Rourke said, adding that as police chief, Burke was too far removed from direct oversight of the Gilgo investigation to have any influence on it.

As Mr. Brown defends Mr. Heuermann, 60, on the four murder charges, investigators are working to determine whether six other bodies found in the Gilgo Beach area in 2011 are also linked to him.

Last month, investigators used cadaver dogs to search a remote wooded section of the Long Island town of Manorville, near the site where partial remains were found more than 20 years ago that matched the partial remains of two victims discovered near Gilgo Beach in 2011, none of which were linked to Mr. Heuermann. Officials would not say what the reason for the search was.

On Monday, investigators who thoroughly searched Heuermann’s Massapequa Park home last July returned to search it again. The search warrant was likely based on new information, said Robert Macedonio, an attorney for Heuermann’s wife, Asa Ellerup.

At the April court hearing, prosecutors updated the judge in the case, Timothy Mazzei, on their recent progress in turning over evidence to Mr. Brown. The amount of information is immense, including terabytes of autopsy reports, transcripts and exhibits from a previous grand jury presentation, as well as nuclear DNA findings that prosecutors are confident will secure Mr. Heuermann’s conviction.

Mr Brown complained about the lack of evidence he had been given regarding Mr Burke’s problematic handling of the investigation, during which the chief became embroiled in a scandal that resulted in a conviction and prison sentence in 2016 for attacking a handcuffed suspect at a police station and attempting to cover it up.

After Mr. Burke was released from prison in 2019, he was arrested again last year for exposing himself and soliciting sex from an undercover ranger in a Long Island park.

After the hearing, Brown called for the release of materials collected by the FBI about Burke’s involvement in the Gilgo investigation. He hoped this information would support his claim that the investigation was manipulated by the former police chief’s blockade of the FBI and his history of hiring prostitutes.

Mr Brown said it was “problematic for us that the police chief who led the investigation had a very checkered past and was involved in criminal activities.”

He also did not rule out the possibility of calling Mr Burke as a witness during the trial.

At the hearing, Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said that Mr. Brown’s requests for the FBI materials were outside his office’s jurisdiction. A spokeswoman for Mr. Tierney declined to comment on the allegations regarding Mr. Burke.

Mr. Barket said Mr. Brown would also likely seek to challenge the prosecution’s reliance on genetic evidence. Mr. Brown, Mr. Barket said, would argue that DNA can be transferred between people, objects and places and that the genetic material collected in the case does not point to Mr. Heuermann.

Mr. Brown has already disparaged the case as hanging on a “string of hair,” referring to the prosecution’s claim that the DNA profile obtained from a male hair found on one of the four victims matched his client.

According to the public prosecutor’s office, Mr. Heuermann is also incriminated by strands of hair that belonged to his wife and daughter and were found on the victims. No charges were brought against Mr. Heuermann’s wife and daughter.

When asked about the genetic evidence last month, Brown said: “You’re talking about a single hair. If someone kills another person, is there only a single hair left?”

Still, Mr. Barket said, the DNA material is just one of numerous pieces of evidence that prosecutors are trying to piece together to create a convincing picture of Mr. Heuermann as a killer.

“The defense may be able to eliminate some of them, but it’s difficult to eliminate them to the point where there’s reasonable doubt,” Mr. Barket said. “You can’t disprove everything and say it’s all wrong.”

A recent development in Mr Brown’s favour is the return of Mrs Ellerup to her husband’s corner.

A few days after his arrest, she appeared to withdraw her support for him and filed for divorce. But in March, Macedonio issued a statement saying her husband was “not capable” of murdering the four women and that she was giving him “the benefit of the doubt.”

She now regularly visits Mr. Heuermann in his Suffolk County jail and attends his hearings, often with a camera crew in tow for the lucrative documentary deal she secured. Mr. Macedonio said she plans to attend the trial.

“It’s a very circumstantial case with no eyewitnesses and over 3,000 tips over the years,” he said. “With everything out there, she wants to wait and see what comes out during the trial.”