The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office is running out of cash to keep going after accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann — and is begging the feds to free up $13 million in “frozen” funds.
DA Ray Tierney said Wednesday that he desperately needs the money to keep up with the cost of the prosecution, including court-imposed deadlines to turn over reams of evidence to the defense.
“It’s a budgetary issue,” Tierney said after the suspected killer made his latest court appearance.
“I would love to have that money and be able to use it and bring this case to a resolution,” he said.
Tierney called on the Department of Justice to release some of the millions tied up in an investigation into the office under his predecessor.
“I would love to have that money and take that money which I don’t have for no reason for any contact on the part of my administration,” he said.
“So I am going to go to the Department of Justice once again, hat in hand. I will beg them, ‘Please give me this money so that I can litigate this very significant serial killer case,’” he said. “And we’ll see what our federal government tells me.”
Heuermann, 60, a Massapequa Park architect with offices in Midtown Manhattan, is charged in the grisly slayings of six sex workers whose remains were among a total of 11 bodies found dumped along a desolate stretch of Ocean Parkway since 1993.
The deaths of the victims — Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Lynn Costello, Jessica Taylor and Sandra Costilla — remained unsolved until 2022, when Heuermann was identified as a suspect and charged with three initial murders.
Tierney’s office has since tied the three other bodies to Heuermann, prosecutors said.
More recently, prosecutors launched a campaign to identify another body found in 2011 — “Asian Doe,” who is believed to have been a cross-dressing Asian man killed prior to 2006.
The case has relied heavily on DNA and expert analysis of the evidence, which, along with three decades of police reports and other documents, has jacked up the cost of the prosecution, Tierney said.
“We have to turn over every single piece of paper that was generated in a case that started in 1993,” he said, adding, “I can’t ask people to work for free.”
It is not clear how much the Gilgo Beach case is costing taxpayers, but it is undoubtedly plenty.
In addition to Tierney’s expenses, Heuermann’s lawyer, Michael Brown, is representing the hulking architect under a public defender statute that not only pays him with tax dollars but also reimburses him for additional expenses like investigators and expert consultants.
“As most people know, we’re assigned by the court to defend this case because we’re on a murder panel and that’s what we’re doing,” Brown said Wednesday.
“It’s subject to court approval. It’s not in the sense of this is how much you get and work with that. When we need something, we asked the judge and if he signs off we can hire an expert.”
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