The DNA evidence against Heuerman, who has pleaded not guilty and professed his innocence in meetings with his lawyers, amounts to “a prosecutor’s dream,” said former Suffolk County prosecutor Steven Wilutis.
“It could have been somebody else picked up the hair someplace else, but on three different bodies?” Wilutis said. “I’d just put that DNA in and I’d rest [the case.]”
Fred Klein, the former chief of the major offense bureau for the Nassau County District Attorney’s office and a visiting professor of law at Hofstra University, said he likes circumstantial evidence like DNA and cellphone records because it “doesn’t lie” or “make mistakes.”
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Prosecutors have also said they linked Heuermann to the remains of Waterman and Costello through his wife, Asa Ellerup, who “cannot be excluded” as the owner of the female hairs found on one of the bodies. Prosecutors have said they don’t believe she had any knowledge of Heuermann’s alleged crimes and her hairs, according to the bail letter, were likely transferred from Heuermann’s clothing.
“You've got his hair and his wife's hair with the bodies where they were disposed, but how did it get there? When did it get there?” said Klein, who referred to DNA as after-the-fact evidence. “It's very strong evidence connecting him and his wife to the bodies, but it's not a slam dunk, because there's always questions about how it got there.”
The legal experts and former law enforcement officials interviewed for this story also cautioned that nobody outside of the probe currently knows the full breadth of the evidence gathered by the Gilgo Beach Homicide Task Force.
“You could have the pope and three nuns as witnesses and they still want more,” said Giacalone, the author of “The Cold Case Handbook,” published in May.
The DNA, coupled with phone records connecting Rex A. Heuermann to the women and the similarities in the way the bodies were disposed of, is the type of evidence expected to be central to their case, law enforcement and legal experts told Newsday.
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