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Gilgo Beach suspect Rex Heuermann loses bid to toss DNA evidence at upcoming murder trial

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Gilgo Beach suspect Rex Heuermann loses bid to toss DNA evidence at upcoming murder trial

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Suspected Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann lost a long shot bid to have damning DNA evidence thrown out Wednesday, after a New York judge ruled that prosecutors can use the evidence against him at trial in a decision police expect to impact far more cases.

Heuermann’s shocking arrest came more than a decade after the death of his last known alleged victim. At the time, he was a New York City architect who commuted daily from his home in the suburban village of Massapequa Park. Prosecutors have alleged he tortured and killed his victims in the basement while his wife and children took vacations. 

The sides had been tangling over the evidence since March, when the judge held a Frye hearing to determine whether a new type of DNA testing should be admissible. Heuermann’s attorney, Michael Brown, questioned the validity of new testing on rootless hair samples, which he likened to “magic” and said had not been used in New York state before.

Prosecutors allege that the state-of-the-art technology linked hairs found on six of the seven murder victims to Heuermann. Brown said it’s “a little weird” that each of the bodies is linked to his client by just one hair apiece. The hairs themselves do not all belong to Heuermann. Some were linked to his wife and daughter, whom authorities do not believe were involved in the crimes but whose hairs were allegedly transferred to the victims by Heuermann.

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KOHBERGER PROSECUTOR REVEALS CRUCIAL MOMENT: ‘EVERYTHING HINGED ON THAT ARGUMENT’

Alleged serial killer Rex A. Heuermann is escorted into Judge Tim Mazzei’s courtroom at Suffolk County Court in Riverhead for a Frye hearing in Riverhead, N.Y.  July 17, 2025. (James Carbone/Pool/Getty Images)

Judge Timothy Mazzei ruled that the new testing is accepted by the scientific community and therefore valid as evidence.

“This case was very aggressively and effectively litigated by both sides,” Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney told reporters after the hearing. “I think that the reason why we were able to prevail was one simple reason: The science was on our side.”

Tierney called it a “significant step” in forensic DNA analysis and said it looks at hundreds of thousands more points of data than traditional DNA testing, and he said the new method is already being rolled out to county cold case detectives, like any other new law enforcement technology.

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“When you look at old cases that happened that have remained unsolved for whatever reason, one of the first things you do, whether it’s phone evidence, whether it’s DNA evidence, whether it’s anything else, you know, new technology [can] help us to gather more information,” he said.

John Ramsey, the father of 1996 cold case murder victim JonBenet Ramsey, weighed in on the Gilgo case and the new DNA method in Denver at CrimeCon’s 2025 conference Saturday. He said he had already asked police handling his daughter’s case to try the new method.

“This is 21st century technology that should be used, and I expressed that strongly,” he said.

Joseph Giacalone, a retired NYPD cold case investigator and a professor of criminal justice at Penn State Lehigh Valley, called the judge’s decision in the Gilgo case “awesome news.”

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“This DNA is leading the way to closing more cases,” he told Fox News Digital. Although he expects an appeal if Heuermann is convicted.

REX HEUERMANN’S FAMILY KEPT GRUESOME PIECE OF EVIDENCE, SOURCE SAYS

Crime scene investigators use metal detectors to search a marsh for the remains of Shannan Gilbert, Dec. 12, 2011 in Oak Beach, N.Y. Her disappearance led to the discovery of 11 bodies and kicked off the investigation into the so-called Gilgo Beach serial killings. (James Carbone/Newsday via AP, Pool, File)

The hearing

Heuermann entered the courtroom at 9:54 a.m. wearing a black suit, blue shirt and a green tie, looming over his attorney as the judge rendered his decision.

His ex-wife, Asa Ellerup, who divorced him after the charges but has publicly maintained she doesn’t believe he could’ve committed the crimes, sat quietly in the gallery. Their daughter, Victoria Heuermann, did not attend Wednesday’s hearing.

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Prosecutors said Heuermann killed seven women over a period of at least two decades, dumping most of their remains on a remote parkway near Long Island’s Gilgo Beach. Some victims were dismembered, with parts of their bodies recovered from wooded areas about 50 miles to the east.

EX-WIFE OF ALLEGED GILGO BEACH KILLER STILL DEFENDS HIM, BUT DAUGHTER SAYS HE ‘MOST LIKELY’ DID IT

Rex A. Heuermann appears in Judge Tim Mazzei’s courtroom with his lawyer Michael Brown for a conference in Riverhead, N.Y., Oct. 16, 2024. (Newsday/James Carbone)

The oldest case in which he’s been charged was a cold case murder stretching back to 1993. The alleged crimes include torture and mutilation, and Heuermann allegedly took notes on the crimes, the targets and measures to avoid detection.

The victims were all described as “petite” women, most of them around 5 feet tall and barely over 100 pounds. An eyewitness in the case, who was the last to see one of them alive, described Heuermann, whose identity was unknown at the time, as an “ogre” driving a Chevrolet Avalanche.

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The Gilgo Four, clockwise from top left: Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello. The background shows a wooden cross in the marsh next to Gilgo Beach, N.Y., where their remains were found in the brush just yards from Ocean Parkway. (Suffolk County Police Department/Mega for Fox News Digital)

On July 13, 2023, Suffolk County police arrested Heuermann, who is 61, outside his Manhattan office in three cold case murders — the deaths of Melissa Barthelemy, 24, Megan Waterman, 22, and Amber Costello, 27, in 2010.

SUSPECTED SERIAL KILLER REX HEUERMANN CHARGED WITH SEVENTH SLAYING

Jessica Taylor, left, and Valerie Mack, right, were both murdered and dismembered. Suffolk County police discovered partial remains of each victim in both Manorville, N.Y., and along a stretch of Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach. (Suffolk County Police Department/Handout)

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Over the next 12 months, they tacked on charges in four additional slayings. First, they charged him with killing Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, whose remains were near the other three. They filed charges for the alleged murders of Jessica Taylor in 2003 and Sandra Costilla in 1993. Then they added charges in the 2000 murder of Valerie Mack, a 24-year-old from Philadelphia.

Heuermann pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

But Tierney said his office has a lot of evidence prosecutors are ready to introduce at trial.

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“So, we now have nuclear DNA. We have mitochondrial DNA. We have phone records. We have witness statements. We have financial records. We have internet searches. We have phone activity. And we have other [evidence],” he told reporters. “When you look at the interaction of all of that evidence, it’s, we would submit, compelling.” 

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Next up for Heuermann is a hearing on whether he should be tried on all the cases together. His lawyer wants them split up, but Tierney said he believes they are all “intertwined” and should be tried at the same time.

It was the disappearance of another woman that set off the whole case and surprised the residents of Long Island, which includes the two easternmost boroughs of New York City and a pair of suburban counties.

In 2010, Shannan Gilbert placed a frantic and incoherent 911 call, begging for help and claiming someone was after her. The search for her went on for months. And before police found her remains, they found 10 other bodies along Ocean Parkway. Her death is the only one that police have said they believe was accidental.



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Northeast

Brown University shooting videos show awareness and planning, experts say

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Brown University shooting videos show awareness and planning, experts say

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Federal investigators are continuing to piece together the December shootings that killed two Brown University students and an MIT professor, leaving nine others wounded, authorities said.

Authorities on Tuesday released transcripts of videos they say were recorded by Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, the man responsible for the Brown University mass shooting and the killing of an MIT physicist.

Two Brown students, Ella Cook, 19, and Muhammad Aziz Umurzokov, 18, were killed in the Dec. 13 shooting on the Providence, Rhode Island, campus, and nine other people were wounded, authorities said. Just two days later, Nuno Loureiro, a professor at MIT, was killed in Brookline, Mass.

As of the latest update, eight of the students injured at Brown had been released from the hospital, while one person remained hospitalized.

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Federal prosecutors in Massachusetts released this image showing the man identified in the deadly shootings of Brown University students in Rhode Island and a professor from MIT. (Justice Department)

BROWN UNIVERSITY SHOOTER CONFESSED IN VIDEOS TO PLANNING ATTACK FOR LONG TIME, SHOWED NO REMORSE: DOJ

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts, investigators executed a federal search warrant on Dec. 18 at a storage facility used by Neves Valente, a Portuguese national. The FBI recovered an electronic device containing several short videos recorded after the shootings. Transcripts of those videos, translated from Portuguese to English, were released Tuesday.

In the recordings, prosecutors said Neves Valente admitted he had been planning the Brown shooting for a long time and said Brown was his intended target. Authorities said he did not provide a motive for targeting Brown students or the MIT professor.

Investigators said the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives traced the gun used in the shootings as part of the investigation.

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Officials have not publicly released details about the weapon’s origin or purchase history. Fox News Digital has reached out to the FBI for comment.

Split image showing Brown University victims Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, alongside MIT professor Nuno Loureiro, who was killed. (Instagram/elinacoutlakis/GoFundMe/Jake Belcher for MIT)

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Josh Schirard, a former tactical emergency response director at the 2018 Santa Fe High School shooting and director of Byrna Law Enforcement, said the transcripts confirm responsibility for the attack but offer little clarity about why it occurred.

“He understood what he did. He understood that he had a why behind it,” Schirard said. “He just didn’t opine on why that was.”

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Schirard said the shooter rejected ideological explanations and denied being mentally ill.

Investigators tow away the Nissan Sentra used by Brown University shooter Claudio Manuel Neves-Valente, Salem, N.H., Thursday, Dec. 19, 2025. (David McGlynn for Fox News Digital)

EVIDENCE SHOWS DEADLY BROWN, MIT SHOOTINGS MAY BE LINKED, SOURCES SAY: REPORT

“He even says, ‘I’m not mentally ill. I am very sane, and I did this knowing what I was doing,’” Schirard said.

“He talks about how killing those people was hard,” Schirard said, adding that the shooter said he envied people who could do so “without difficulty.”

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A split image shows Claudio Neves-Valente, identified as the Brown University gunman, wearing the same jacket as a man identified earlier as a person of interest in the case. (Providence Police Department)

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An autopsy previously found Neves Valente died by suicide two days before his body was discovered in a storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire.

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Authorities said they do not believe there is any ongoing public safety threat associated with the shootings and that additional updates will be provided.

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Boston, MA

Boston woman flummoxed after rat makes a home in stroller she left on porch

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Boston woman flummoxed after rat makes a home in stroller she left on porch


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Boston Reddit did not mince words when it came to the best way of evicting this brazen stroller squatter.

A Boston woman is dealing with an unwelcome tenant on her front porch — a rat that has turned a baby stroller into a cozy winter hideaway.

The woman shared her ordeal Thursday on the r/Boston subreddit, explaining that she had left her stroller, complete with a muff, on her second-floor porch. When she checked on it later, she discovered a rat had moved in.

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“I stupidly left our stroller with a muff out on the porch,” she wrote. “Today I found a big rat is nested in there. I can’t see clearly, but it seems it has chewed up the muff lining and is using the filling for a nest.”

The woman said she’s called a few pest control companies, but instead of offering immediate removal, they just tried to sell her a long-term bait boxing service. 

“…Which is fine, but I urgently need someone to just safely remove the rat and the nest so I can clean or dispose of the stroller if needed,” she wrote, adding that she couldn’t secure a next-day appointment and felt Monday was too far away.

Turning to Reddit for advice, the woman asked whether she should attempt to remove the rat herself, saying she was worried about being bitten or contracting a disease. “Which professional can I call?” she asked.

Redditors reacted with a mix of humor and practical advice. The top comment began, “Sounds like it’s their porch now,” before offering an elaborate plan involving a bucket trap and joking that the rat could then “go on to be a Michelin star chef at a French restaurant,” a nod to the 2007 film “Ratatouille.”

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Others suggested she evict the rat by vigorously shaking the stroller or whacking it with a broom, while many urged her to cut her losses entirely and throw the stroller out.

“I honestly wouldn’t ever use it for a small child after a rat had been cribbed up there,” one commenter wrote.

Pest control experts generally advise against handling rats without professional help. According to Terminix, rodents can become aggressive and scratch when threatened and may carry diseases such as hantavirus and leptospirosis.

“When it comes to getting rid of a rat’s nest in the house, DIY treatments won’t cut it,” the company warns on its website.

Boston has been grappling with heightened rat activity in recent years, prompting a citywide rodent action plan known as BRAP. City officials urge residents to “see something, squeak something!” and report rodent activity to 311. Officials said response teams are typically dispatched within one to two days.

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Morgan Rousseau is a freelance writer for Boston.com, where she reports on a variety of local and regional news.





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Pittsburg, PA

Pittsburgh Pirates Swap with A’s That Makes Sense For Both Clubs

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Pittsburgh Pirates Swap with A’s That Makes Sense For Both Clubs


The Pittsburgh Pirates could use some bats, and the A’s are still looking to add some pitching this winter, so how likely is it that these clubs come together on a deal?

According to Colin Beazley of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Pirates are still on the lookout for some help on the left side of the infield. Over at Roster Resource, their starters at short and third as listed as Nick Gonzales (82 wRC+ in 2025) and Jared Triolo (86).

While the A’s are having a little showdown of their own at third base this spring, they have a number of players in the mix. Perhaps they could move one of them in a deal with Pittsburgh in order to land a relief pitcher with some upside.

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The proposed deal that we have in mind is the A’s sending third baseman Brett Harris, who may be starting as the third option at the hot corner this spring. Harris has a tremendous glove at third, and statistically it appears to be at least on par with the glove what Triolo provided last season.

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In just 183 2/3 innings with the A’s in 2025, Harris put up a +5 DRS, and +2 in both OAA and FRV. Triolo, in roughly 80 extra innings finished with a +7 DRS and +4 in both OAA and FRV. Both players are solid defensively.

Triolo has had more experience in the big leagues, which does account for something, but if you’re the Pirates, do you consider making a change and taking a chance on a similar defender with more upside in the bat? Their current option hit .227 with a .311 OBP and an 86 wRC+ last season in 376 plate appearances. Harris could put together a double-digit home run season at the very least.

Harris played in just 32 games (84 plate appearances) and hit .274 with a .349 OBP and a 96 wRC+. While he certainly looked like an improved player over his initial stint in the big leagues with the A’s in 2024, there was also some luck involved in his improvement—mainly his .377 BABIP. The risk for the Pirates would be taking the chance on that bat being for real.

In exchange, the proposed piece that the Pirates would send back in 30-year-old Yohan Ramírez. The right-hander ranks in the 94th percentile in extension on top of sitting at 96.4 miles per hour with his heater, which is quite appealing. He also held a 5.40 ERA (3.80 FIP) last season, so he’s far from a finished product, and given his age, he’s a flier himself.

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This is the type of pitcher that the A’s have had success with in recent seasons—guys that can collect strikeouts but also tend to issue free passes. In 2025 with the Pirates, he struck out 29% of the batters he faced and walked 10.3%.

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There are two interesting tidbits in his profile that could cause a little worry. The first is that he’s bounced around quite a bit in recent seasons, including spending time with the Dodgers, Mets, Orioles and Red Sox in 2024. Those are all teams that love to pull extra value from guys, and if they all gave up on him, then that’s not the greatest track record.

All of those teams seemed to view him as a guy that could provide a few innings when their bullpens were gassed, which led to him having short stints with each club, totaling a 6.20 ERA (4.26 FIP) across 45 innings.

The other interesting piece here is that when he has been with the Pirates, in both 2025 and back in 2022, his velocity has ticked up considerably. In 2022, he also spent time with the Mariners, and he was sitting 94.2. But with Pittsburgh, that went up to 96.5. In 2024, he topped out at 95.3 mph with the O’s and Mets.

This past season he was back to 96.2 mph. Is there something special for him about pitching in Pittsburgh? Do their radar guns run a little hot? Is this more of a time of year situation that gets hammered out over longer stints (like with the Pirates)? It’s unclear.

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But if he’s truly a 96-mile-per-hour reliever that the A’s could add to their ‘pen, then this trade may be worth some heavy consideration.

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Of course, Ramírez is out of options which would make this a little tricky, and Harris has roughly double the amount of team control, so the value may have to be squared away by adding another piece or two to the ledger. But these two players, Harris and Ramírez, could do a lot of good for the opposite clubs.

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