Prosecutors have handed over a heap of evidence to lawyers against the suspected Long Island serial killer Rex Heuermann — including 2,944 tips that police received from the public.
Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said on Tuesday that the police began tracking the tips 13 years ago when the first of several victims were discovered along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach.
Heuermann, of Massapequa Park, has pleaded not guilty to charges that he murdered four women whose remains were found there: Amber Costello, Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainard-Barnes and Megan Waterman.
"We’ve provided the defense with the sum and substance of those tips,” Tierney said on Tuesday after prosecutors, Heuermann and his defense team attended a court hearing to advise the presiding judge on the progress of exchanging evidence.
An additional three terabytes of data collected from Heuermann’s devices, plus more than 2,500 pages oflab reports and notes, have also been provided to Heuermann's defense team.
Michael Brown, an attorney for Heuermann, said the tips are "important" at a news conference outside the court house in Riverhead.
"Obviously some of those leads aren't going to be significant at all, but some of those leads are going to be extremely significant," Brown said. "They're going to be important for us in the defense of this case. So we want to see those leads and we want to see the credibility of those leads and we want to see what follow-up the police did in regard to those leads."
Brown has said that before Heuermann's arrest in July, police were close to charging a different suspect.
