Next witness in DNA hearing of Rex Heuermann, accused Gilgo Beach killer, announced

Richard Green, the co-founder of Astrea Forensics, will take the stand on April 15, to speak about the testing procedures conducted by his lab that the defense of Rex Heuermann, the accused Gilgo Beach killer, has been trying to get thrown out before his trial.

This was after the second day of testimony and cross examination of Nicole Novroski, the associate director at the Center for Human Identification for the University of North Texas.

Heuermann, who stands accused of seven murders, returned in front of State Supreme Court Timothy Mazzei for the third time in a week. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges and has maintained his innocence since his arrest.

Michael Brown, Heuermann’s defense attorney, resumed his cross-examination of Novroski. He asked her about the Center for Human Identification’s evaluation of Astrea’s hair removal process, questions about the 1,000 genomes project, and further questioning of Astrea’s credibility in the field of forensic science.

Brown argued that the scientific research Novroski cited regarding nuclear DNA testing was not sufficiently tested with enough people. He compared it to experimental medicine, asking the professor “would you take a drug that was tested on five people?” Novroski said no.

After Brown’s cross examination, Assistant District Attorney Nicholas Santomartino returned to question Novroski. Throughout Santomartino’s questioning Novroski continued to insist the techniques used by Green and Astrea Labs are valid science and “commonly accepted."

Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney and his team did not speak to reporters after the hearing.

“I’ll wait until the end (to comment), like you should,” Tierney said to reporters outside of the courtroom. “Like you’re ethically supposed to.”

Brown, however, did speak to reporters outside of the courtroom.

“I think when I brought it down to a very basic level about taking a medicine that’s only been tested on eight people, she finally would agree with me that she’s not taking that medicine,” he said. “That’s in essence what we’re doing in this case. They are asking the court to believe the science based on a sampling of eight people.”

Brown added that although he felt Novroski was combative at times, he felt like the hearing went well. He said that they were taking the case “one step at a time” and added that his client was “looking forward to getting to the point where we can try this case.”

No trial date has been set for the case, which spans decades of killings on Long Island, and has been the subject of a three-episode documentary on Netflix titled "Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer.”

The current hearing, a Frye hearing, is a legal procedure used to determine the admissibility of scientific evidence in court. The standard for proof in these hearings specifically focuses on whether the science used to generate the evidence is "generally accepted" by the relevant scientific community.

At the first hearing on March 28, the prosecution called Kelley Harris, a University of Washington professor and population geneticist, as their first witness.