New York
Suspect in Gilgo Beach serial killings loses bid to separate case into multiple trials
NEW YORK (AP) — The suspect in Long Island’s infamous Gilgo Beach serial killings has lost his bid to separate into multiple trials the sprawling case involving seven brutal killings spanning decades.
New York State Supreme Court Justice Timothy Mazzei ruled Tuesday that the trial against Rex Heuermann, a Manhattan architect who lived on Long Island, would move forward as a single trial.
“We wanted one and that’s what we got,” Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said after the brief hearing in Riverhead court.
Lawyers for Heuermann had argued in court filings that there was no “unique and consistent modus operandi” common to all the murders, as prosecutors claimed. They said the case should be broken up into as many as five trials because the killings involved different time frames, torture and mutilation techniques, and dump sites for the bodies.
Heuermann’s lawyers also contended that jurors would struggle with the “volume and complexity” of the evidence in the case if all seven killings were tried together. They argued the 62-year-old Massapequa resident risked being improperly convicted by the “cumulative effect” of the evidence against him.
Prosecutors, in their own filings, dismissed variances in the killing styles as “minor inconsistencies” that showed Heuermann was either “refining and tinkering” with his methods, or intentionally trying to “confuse or mislead law enforcement” -- an argument that the defense rejected as “untenable.”
They noted the killer chose victims who were all petite women in their 20s involved in the sex trade and that the remains of nearly all of them were found in the same location: an isolated stretch of a shoreline parkway not far from Heuermann’s home.
Prosecutors also maintained that many of the victims are connected by overlapping evidence and witnesses, making a single trial a “judicious and efficient use of time and taxpayer resources.”
On other matters, Mazzei on Tuesday turned down defense lawyers’ second attempt to toss out some of the DNA evidence that prosecutors say overwhelmingly implicates Heuermann.
Heuermann’s lawyers had argued that DNA evidence developed by Astrea Forensics violated state public health law because the California lab does not hold a required permit from New York’s health department. Prosecutors, in court filings, maintained the state health law cited by Heuermann’s lawyers didn’t apply to forensic labs.
Tuesday’s rulings were the latest decision in the case, which still doesn’t have a trial date.
Last month, Mazzei ruled that prosecutors could use Astrea Forensic’s findings in the forthcoming murder trial, marking the first time advanced DNA analysis has been allowed as evidence in a New York court.
Heuermann was arrested more than two years ago and has been charged in the deaths of seven women in a series of killings that prosecutors say stretched back at least to 1993. He has pleaded not guilty.
His next court appearance is in January.
Alabama
Son of woman murdered by man now on death row asks state to stop his execution
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Will Berry was 11 when his mother was murdered. Thirty-three-year-old Margaret Parrish Berry was shot in the head during a robbery at the gas station where she worked.
Geoffrey West was 21 when he pulled the trigger, a decision he says he wishes each day that he could take back.
Berry and West exchanged letters ahead of West’s scheduled execution by nitrogen gas Thursday in Alabama. West expressed his remorse, and Berry offered forgiveness. The two have asked to meet, but prison officials declined the request. Berry sent a letter to Gov. Kay Ivey asking her to halt the execution.
“I forgive this guy, and I don’t want him to die,” Berry said in a telephone interview. “I don’t want the state to take revenge in my name or my family’s name for my mother.”
Family members of murder victims have varied views on the death penalty. Many have sharply criticized the decades it can take for an execution to occur or the legal and media focus on the subject’s potential suffering. But some have spoken out against the death penalty, including Berry and in another Alabama case when family members of a domestic violence victim unsuccessfully urged the governor in 2022 to let the man serve life in prison.
The Associated Press could not immediately locate surviving other members of Margaret Berry’s family.
Margaret Berry, the mother of two sons, was shot dead while lying on the floor behind the counter at Harold’s Chevron in Etowah County on March 28, 1997. Prosecutors said she was murdered to ensure there was no witness left behind. A jury convicted West of capital murder during a robbery and voted 10-2 to recommend a death sentence.
West doesn’t deny he killed Margaret Berry. He and his girlfriend were desperate for cash and went to the store where he once worked to rob it. He said at 50 he struggles to understand what he did at 21.
“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t regret it and wish that I could take that back,” West said in a telephone call from prison.
He said he frequently replays the day in his head, wishing he could make himself turn and walk away.
“I wish I had the opportunity just to swap places and let it be me and not her,” he said.
The prison system denied Berry and West’s request to meet in person, citing security regulation forbidding visits between people in prison and victims.
Berry wrote in his letter to Ivey that West’s death would “weigh heavily on me, and it would not bring my mother back.”
Ivey replied in a letter dated Sept. 11 to Berry that she appreciated his belief, but she said Alabama law “imposes a death sentence for the most egregious form of murder.” She added that it is her duty to carry out the law.
Ivey has commuted one death sentence. The Republican governor said she did so only because of questions about the person’s guilt.
A spokesperson for Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office said in a statement that West has “been on death row for twenty-six years, and his sentence is due.” The office noted the brutality of the killing.
“She gave West the cash on hand, and he executed her,” the statement read.
Berry said his mother’s death derailed his life in many ways. He credits his wife Courtney and the church for getting him through.
West said he wants other young people in desperate situations to know they have a choice to walk away.
“If you don’t have nowhere else to go, go to church, find a priest, and just tell them everything. But just don’t do what I did, man,” he said. “You’ve got an option, even if you don’t feel like you’ve got an option.”
Missouri
Woman gets more than 4 years in prison for trying to sell off Elvis Presley’s Graceland
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — A Missouri woman was sentenced Tuesday to more than four years in federal prison for scheming to defraud Elvis Presley’s family by trying to auction off his Graceland home and property before a judge halted the brazen foreclosure sale.
U.S. District Judge John T. Fowlkes Jr. sentenced Lisa Jeanine Findley in federal court in Memphis to four years and nine months behind bars, plus an additional three years of probation. Findley, 54, declined to speak on her own behalf during the hearing.
Findley pleaded guilty in February to a charge of mail fraud related to the scheme. She also had been indicted on a charge of aggravated identity theft, but that charge was dropped as part of a plea agreement.
Findley, of Kimberling City, falsely claimed Presley’s daughter borrowed $3.8 million from a bogus private lender and had pledged Graceland as collateral for the loan before her death in January 2023, prosecutors said when Findley was charged in August 2024. She then threatened to sell Graceland to the highest bidder if Presley’s family didn’t pay a $2.85 million settlement, according to authorities.
Findley posed as three different people allegedly involved with the fake lender, fabricated loan documents and published a fraudulent foreclosure notice in a Memphis newspaper announcing the auction of Graceland in May 2024, prosecutors said. A judge stopped the sale after Presley’s granddaughter sued.
Experts were baffled by the attempt to sell off one of the most storied pieces of real estate in the country using names, emails and documents that were quickly suspected to be phony.
Graceland opened as a museum and tourist attraction in 1982 and draws hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. A large Presley-themed entertainment complex across the street from the museum is owned by Elvis Presley Enterprises. Presley died in August 1977 at the age of 42.
The public notice for the foreclosure sale of the 13-acre (5-hectare) estate said Promenade Trust, which controls the Graceland museum, owed $3.8 million after failing to repay a 2018 loan. Actor Riley Keough, Presley’s granddaughter, inherited the trust and ownership of the home after the death of her mother, Lisa Marie Presley.
Keough filed a lawsuit claiming fraud, and a judge halted the proposed auction with an injunction. Naussany Investments and Private Lending — the bogus lender authorities say Findley created — said Lisa Marie Presley had used Graceland as collateral for the loan, according to the foreclosure sale notice. Keough’s lawsuit alleged that Naussany presented fraudulent documents regarding the loan in September 2023 and that Lisa Marie Presley never borrowed money from Naussany.
Kimberly Philbrick, the notary whose name is listed on Naussany’s documents, indicated she never met Lisa Marie Presley nor notarized any documents for her, according to the estate’s lawsuit. The judge said the notary’s affidavit brought into question the authenticity of the signature.
In halting the foreclosure sale, the judge said Elvis Presley’s estate could be successful in arguing that a company’s attempt to auction Graceland was fraudulent.
A statement emailed to The Associated Press after the judge stopped the sale said Naussany would not proceed with the sale because a key document in the case and the loan were recorded and obtained in a different state, meaning “legal action would have to be filed in multiple states.” The statement, sent from an email address for Naussany listed in court documents, did not specify the other state.
After the scheme fell apart, Findley, who has a criminal history that includes attempts at passing bad checks, tried to make it look like the person responsible was a Nigerian identity thief, prosecutors said.
An email sent May 25, 2024, to the AP from the same email as the earlier statement said in Spanish that the foreclosure sale attempt was made by a Nigerian fraud ring that targets old and dead people in the U.S. and uses the internet to steal money.
In arguing for a three-year sentence, defense attorney Tyrone Paylor noted that Presley’s estate did not suffer any loss of money and countered the prosecution’s stance that the scheme was executed in a sophisticated manner.
Fowlkes, the judge, said it would have been a “travesty of justice” if the sale had been completed.
“This was a highly sophisticated scheme to defraud,” he said.
Suspect in Gilgo Beach serial killings loses bid to separate case into multiple trials
NEW YORK (AP) — The suspect in Long Island’s infamous Gilgo Beach serial killings has lost his bid to separate into multiple trials the sprawling case involving seven brutal killings spanning decades.
New York State Supreme Court Justice Timothy Mazzei ruled Tuesday that the trial against Rex Heuermann, a Manhattan architect who lived on Long Island, would move forward as a single trial.
“We wanted one and that’s what we got,” Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said after the brief hearing in Riverhead court.
Lawyers for Heuermann had argued in court filings that there was no “unique and consistent modus operandi” common to all the murders, as prosecutors claimed. They said the case should be broken up into as many as five trials because the killings involved different time frames, torture and mutilation techniques, and dump sites for the bodies.
Heuermann’s lawyers also contended that jurors would struggle with the “volume and complexity” of the evidence in the case if all seven killings were tried together. They argued the 62-year-old Massapequa resident risked being improperly convicted by the “cumulative effect” of the evidence against him.
Prosecutors, in their own filings, dismissed variances in the killing styles as “minor inconsistencies” that showed Heuermann was either “refining and tinkering” with his methods, or intentionally trying to “confuse or mislead law enforcement” -- an argument that the defense rejected as “untenable.”
They noted the killer chose victims who were all petite women in their 20s involved in the sex trade and that the remains of nearly all of them were found in the same location: an isolated stretch of a shoreline parkway not far from Heuermann’s home.
Prosecutors also maintained that many of the victims are connected by overlapping evidence and witnesses, making a single trial a “judicious and efficient use of time and taxpayer resources.”
On other matters, Mazzei on Tuesday turned down defense lawyers’ second attempt to toss out some of the DNA evidence that prosecutors say overwhelmingly implicates Heuermann.
Heuermann’s lawyers had argued that DNA evidence developed by Astrea Forensics violated state public health law because the California lab does not hold a required permit from New York’s health department. Prosecutors, in court filings, maintained the state health law cited by Heuermann’s lawyers didn’t apply to forensic labs.
Tuesday’s rulings were the latest decision in the case, which still doesn’t have a trial date.
Last month, Mazzei ruled that prosecutors could use Astrea Forensic’s findings in the forthcoming murder trial, marking the first time advanced DNA analysis has been allowed as evidence in a New York court.
Heuermann was arrested more than two years ago and has been charged in the deaths of seven women in a series of killings that prosecutors say stretched back at least to 1993. He has pleaded not guilty.
His next court appearance is in January.
Alabama
Son of woman murdered by man now on death row asks state to stop his execution
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Will Berry was 11 when his mother was murdered. Thirty-three-year-old Margaret Parrish Berry was shot in the head during a robbery at the gas station where she worked.
Geoffrey West was 21 when he pulled the trigger, a decision he says he wishes each day that he could take back.
Berry and West exchanged letters ahead of West’s scheduled execution by nitrogen gas Thursday in Alabama. West expressed his remorse, and Berry offered forgiveness. The two have asked to meet, but prison officials declined the request. Berry sent a letter to Gov. Kay Ivey asking her to halt the execution.
“I forgive this guy, and I don’t want him to die,” Berry said in a telephone interview. “I don’t want the state to take revenge in my name or my family’s name for my mother.”
Family members of murder victims have varied views on the death penalty. Many have sharply criticized the decades it can take for an execution to occur or the legal and media focus on the subject’s potential suffering. But some have spoken out against the death penalty, including Berry and in another Alabama case when family members of a domestic violence victim unsuccessfully urged the governor in 2022 to let the man serve life in prison.
The Associated Press could not immediately locate surviving other members of Margaret Berry’s family.
Margaret Berry, the mother of two sons, was shot dead while lying on the floor behind the counter at Harold’s Chevron in Etowah County on March 28, 1997. Prosecutors said she was murdered to ensure there was no witness left behind. A jury convicted West of capital murder during a robbery and voted 10-2 to recommend a death sentence.
West doesn’t deny he killed Margaret Berry. He and his girlfriend were desperate for cash and went to the store where he once worked to rob it. He said at 50 he struggles to understand what he did at 21.
“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t regret it and wish that I could take that back,” West said in a telephone call from prison.
He said he frequently replays the day in his head, wishing he could make himself turn and walk away.
“I wish I had the opportunity just to swap places and let it be me and not her,” he said.
The prison system denied Berry and West’s request to meet in person, citing security regulation forbidding visits between people in prison and victims.
Berry wrote in his letter to Ivey that West’s death would “weigh heavily on me, and it would not bring my mother back.”
Ivey replied in a letter dated Sept. 11 to Berry that she appreciated his belief, but she said Alabama law “imposes a death sentence for the most egregious form of murder.” She added that it is her duty to carry out the law.
Ivey has commuted one death sentence. The Republican governor said she did so only because of questions about the person’s guilt.
A spokesperson for Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office said in a statement that West has “been on death row for twenty-six years, and his sentence is due.” The office noted the brutality of the killing.
“She gave West the cash on hand, and he executed her,” the statement read.
Berry said his mother’s death derailed his life in many ways. He credits his wife Courtney and the church for getting him through.
West said he wants other young people in desperate situations to know they have a choice to walk away.
“If you don’t have nowhere else to go, go to church, find a priest, and just tell them everything. But just don’t do what I did, man,” he said. “You’ve got an option, even if you don’t feel like you’ve got an option.”
Missouri
Woman gets more than 4 years in prison for trying to sell off Elvis Presley’s Graceland
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — A Missouri woman was sentenced Tuesday to more than four years in federal prison for scheming to defraud Elvis Presley’s family by trying to auction off his Graceland home and property before a judge halted the brazen foreclosure sale.
U.S. District Judge John T. Fowlkes Jr. sentenced Lisa Jeanine Findley in federal court in Memphis to four years and nine months behind bars, plus an additional three years of probation. Findley, 54, declined to speak on her own behalf during the hearing.
Findley pleaded guilty in February to a charge of mail fraud related to the scheme. She also had been indicted on a charge of aggravated identity theft, but that charge was dropped as part of a plea agreement.
Findley, of Kimberling City, falsely claimed Presley’s daughter borrowed $3.8 million from a bogus private lender and had pledged Graceland as collateral for the loan before her death in January 2023, prosecutors said when Findley was charged in August 2024. She then threatened to sell Graceland to the highest bidder if Presley’s family didn’t pay a $2.85 million settlement, according to authorities.
Findley posed as three different people allegedly involved with the fake lender, fabricated loan documents and published a fraudulent foreclosure notice in a Memphis newspaper announcing the auction of Graceland in May 2024, prosecutors said. A judge stopped the sale after Presley’s granddaughter sued.
Experts were baffled by the attempt to sell off one of the most storied pieces of real estate in the country using names, emails and documents that were quickly suspected to be phony.
Graceland opened as a museum and tourist attraction in 1982 and draws hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. A large Presley-themed entertainment complex across the street from the museum is owned by Elvis Presley Enterprises. Presley died in August 1977 at the age of 42.
The public notice for the foreclosure sale of the 13-acre (5-hectare) estate said Promenade Trust, which controls the Graceland museum, owed $3.8 million after failing to repay a 2018 loan. Actor Riley Keough, Presley’s granddaughter, inherited the trust and ownership of the home after the death of her mother, Lisa Marie Presley.
Keough filed a lawsuit claiming fraud, and a judge halted the proposed auction with an injunction. Naussany Investments and Private Lending — the bogus lender authorities say Findley created — said Lisa Marie Presley had used Graceland as collateral for the loan, according to the foreclosure sale notice. Keough’s lawsuit alleged that Naussany presented fraudulent documents regarding the loan in September 2023 and that Lisa Marie Presley never borrowed money from Naussany.
Kimberly Philbrick, the notary whose name is listed on Naussany’s documents, indicated she never met Lisa Marie Presley nor notarized any documents for her, according to the estate’s lawsuit. The judge said the notary’s affidavit brought into question the authenticity of the signature.
In halting the foreclosure sale, the judge said Elvis Presley’s estate could be successful in arguing that a company’s attempt to auction Graceland was fraudulent.
A statement emailed to The Associated Press after the judge stopped the sale said Naussany would not proceed with the sale because a key document in the case and the loan were recorded and obtained in a different state, meaning “legal action would have to be filed in multiple states.” The statement, sent from an email address for Naussany listed in court documents, did not specify the other state.
After the scheme fell apart, Findley, who has a criminal history that includes attempts at passing bad checks, tried to make it look like the person responsible was a Nigerian identity thief, prosecutors said.
An email sent May 25, 2024, to the AP from the same email as the earlier statement said in Spanish that the foreclosure sale attempt was made by a Nigerian fraud ring that targets old and dead people in the U.S. and uses the internet to steal money.
In arguing for a three-year sentence, defense attorney Tyrone Paylor noted that Presley’s estate did not suffer any loss of money and countered the prosecution’s stance that the scheme was executed in a sophisticated manner.
Fowlkes, the judge, said it would have been a “travesty of justice” if the sale had been completed.
“This was a highly sophisticated scheme to defraud,” he said.
