5 'Does' on Suffolk DA Website Draw Questions About Long Island Serial Killer

The circumstances of their murders are still a public mystery.

In late January, five male and female "Does" were specifically chosen for the launch of the new, cold case website created by Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney. A specialized unit is investigating up to 300 cold case homicides dating back to the 1960's. I asked DA Tierney if any of the victims were possibly tied to accused Long Island serial killer, Rex Heuermann, who's been charged in seven murders.

Suffolk County District Attorney responds to question about 5 Cold Cases added to his website and if there are potential links to LISK.

"I think you know what I'm going to say to that," the district attorney started off, when I asked the question at his press briefing Wednesday, shortly after Heuermann's status hearing in Riverhead. The rest of the DA's statement will follow later.

The cold case victims, two men and three women, were killed between 1978 and 2012.

The skull of the earliest victim, Heckscher Park Jane Doe, was discovered in the sand on April 2, 1978, close to the Great South Bay. When the rest of the skeletal remains were dug up, a belt was found tightened around her neck. The victim was 18 to 22 years old when she was killed, likely in 1975 or before. Rex Heuermann would only have been 12 years old in 1975.

Heckscher Park Jane Doe - Case Number 78-105517

Still, the discovery of a tight belt around the victim's neck was of note to followers of the Long Island serial killer case. One of the women Heuermann is accused of murdering in 2007, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, was found with 3 belts around sections of her body.

Two, other cold cases included on the new website stood out to me.

I initially read that Sayville Jane Doe, discovered in a dumpster on March 8, 1992, was around 4'11" tall and likely weighed less than 100 pounds. This description sounded similar to numerous victims in the Gilgo Four group, who were found on Ocean Parkway in 2010. The detail about Sayville Jane Doe’s height was given on the NamUs website.

Joel Rifkin was also an active, serial killer in 1992. His eventual confessions to the murders of 17 women did not include the killing of Sayville Jane Doe.

Sayville Jane Doe - Case Number 92-112782

Prosecutors publicly charged that Heuermann's earliest known victim is Sandra Costilla, a 28 year old woman from Queens who was discovered in Southampton in 1993. The young woman dumped the year before in the Sayville trash container was believed to be in her 20's. She died from ligature strangulation. She was killed during a time when another Long Island serial killer, Robert Shulman, was murdering women, often dismembering them, removing their hands, and placing them in dumpsters. But Sayville Jane Doe's nude body was intact.

Working with Parabon Nanolabs--Danielle Gruttadaurio, a forensic artist with the Suffolk County Police Department--was able to create an image of what the murder victim looked like in 1992. An FBI genetic genealogist believes Sayville Jane Doe was of Brazilian and/or Portuguese background.

At this point, I should point out that the U.S. Department of Justice agreed to a grant of up to $1 million dollars in 2024 to help the Suffolk County District Attorney's office work on the huge number of unsolved homicides in the county. An online release from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance said in September 2024 that the Suffolk task force would "investigate and prosecute violent crime cold cases, where DNA from a suspect has been identified." Does that mean the cold case unit has DNA in all five of these cases? A later BJA document in December 2024 indicated the available funding for the unit was $499,664 at that point.

The third case I want to mention is Manorville John Doe, He was discovered in the woods off North Street on February 17, 2012, about 3:30 p.m. His body was wrapped in a bed sheet and parts of the blanket around him were duct taped. His remains were sent to a forensic anthropologist at New York City's Office of Chief Medical Examiner, who estimated the victim was dead since at least 2007. The Suffolk County Police Department's forensic artist was able to recreate an image of what Manorville John Doe might have looked like.

A genetic genealogist from the FBI said the man was likely Hispanic, specifically of Colombian descent.

Manorville John Doe - Case Number 12-122281

The reason this case resonates with me is this: North Street is a road that links to Mill Road in Manorville, close to where two, alleged Heuermann victims were found in 2000 and 2003 (Valerie Mack and Jessica Taylor). Mill Road is mentioned as a potential dump site on Heuermann's alleged planning document, extracted from his computer in 2024. Also, a male John Doe was found near the south side of the Long Island Expressway in the Manorville area in 2000, within four days of Valerie Mack's body being discovered. Three years later, another John Doe was discovered farther east, south of the Long Island Expressway, within months of Jessica Taylor's discovery.

The DA's office also relied on DNA Phenotyping and forensic reconstruction to come up with an image for Dix Hills Jane Doe, whose dismembered remains were found in 1998 near the Dix Hills golf course. Her skull, hands and part of her vertebrae were inside a black, plastic bag. She was between 20 and 40 years old and about 5'8'. It's possible she was dead as early as 1993. An FBI genetic genealogist believes she was of Croatian, Bosnian, or Yugoslav descent.

Dix Hills Jane Doe - Case Number 98-209244

The fifth and final 'Doe" on the DA's website was a male also discovered in Dix Hills, off the Northern State Parkway in Huntington. His remains were found in the woods east of Wolf Hill Road on March 9, 2000. This was the same year that Valerie Mack and a John Doe in Manorville were discovered. Dix Hills John Doe was wearing a khaki-colored v-neck shirt with black trim, a t-shirt with a New Jersey emblem, a blue bathing suit and jeans. It's believed he was between 25 and 45 years old, with a height of 5'8" to 6'0". He had poor dental hygiene and was apparently missing some teeth.

Dix Hills John Doe - Case Number SJS-3023503

The cold case unit in the Suffolk County District Attorney's office is a new entity that grew out of the work performed by the Gilgo Beach Homicide Task Force.

When I asked District Attorney Tierney if the victims were possibly tied to Heuermann, because some of the crime scene scenarios seemed to match elements of his alleged M.O., here's what DA Tierney said:

"I think you know what I'm going to say to that. I think that the way we've been able to have success...to the extent that we've been successful...that success stems from our approach. And our approach, first and foremost, is to use a task force model, work with our partners, and to look at each crime scene--each area where a body has been discarded and left--and treat that as an individual, separate, distinct case and work all the evidence that proceeds out from that crime scene, until we have a reason to treat it otherwise. So, that's what we're going to do. We don't make any assumptions. We don't say we think this; it doesn't matter what I think or what my investigators, what my partners, or what my ADAs think. What we think doesn't matter. What we need to do is to figure out what we can prove. And if we can prove something to the grand jury and it results in charges, we'll talk about it. But as of right now, there are seven, alleged crimes committed by this defendant."