Gilgo Beach suspect Rex Heuermann to stand trial shortly after Labor Day
Alleged Gilgo serial killer Rex Heuermann (R) appears for a hearing in front of Judge Tim Mazzei alongside his attorney Michael J. Brown (L) at Suffolk County Court, on Jan. 13, 2026, in Riverhead, New York. Pool via Getty Images
The trial date comes as Heuermann requests to suppress certain evidence and dismiss one of the charges.
Among the statements the defense is trying to exclude is when Heuermann was arrested outside his Midtown Manhattan office in 2023, prosecutors quoted him saying, “What is this about?” and “It’s a mistake.” Prosecutors also quoted him asking the officers and agents, “What did I do?” according to the defense filing.
Also, when court officers reviewed Heuermann’s property after his arrest, he allegedly said of his $6,000 watch, “I guess I won’t be needing that,” according to the court filing.
Defense attorney Danielle Coysh wrote that the statements “were involuntarily made and may not be used in evidence against the defendant.”
The defense is also seeking to suppress evidence seized from Heuermann’s home, office, cars and a rented storage unit, along with DNA evidence. The judge has already denied an attempt by Heuermann to exclude DNA, but now the defense argued the DNA evidence was obtained through an unreasonable search of a Manhattan garbage can, where investigators said they discovered discarded pizza crust that links Heuermann to the murders.
In the same filing, Heuermann’s attorneys are seeking to dismiss the murder charge for the 1993 death of Sandra Costilla.
Prosecutors linked Heuermann to a hair lifted from Costilla’s shirt, but the defense calls that insufficient.
“This evidence, even if accepted as true, does not establish that Mr. Heuermann killed Sandra Costilla, nor that he acted with the intent to cause her death,” Coysh said. “The prosecution presented no eyewitness testimony, surveillance footage, digital evidence, phone records, fingerprint impressions, confession, or murder weapon linking Rex A. Heuermann to this crime.”’
The judge gave the Suffolk County district attorney’s office until March to respond to the defense’s requests.
Luigi Mangione appears for the second day of a suppression of evidence hearing in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on December 02, 2025 in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — A police officer who responded last Dec. 9 to a McDonald’s where witnesses said they may have spotted the man accused of killing a health care CEO testified Tuesday that he knew right away it was the suspect.
“I knew it was him immediately,” Altoona, Pennsylvania, police officer Joseph Detwiler testified about Luigi Mangione, who is accused of killing United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City last year.
Mangione, 27, is in court Tuesday for the second day of a high-stakes hearing in his state criminal case, where his lawyers are fighting to bar prosecutors from using key evidence against him — including the alleged murder weapon and writings that prosecutors say amount to a confession — by arguing it was unlawfully seized when his backpack was searched without a warrant.
The backpack was searched by law enforcement as they arrested Mangione in Pennsylvania, five days after the fatal shooting of Thompson on a sidewalk in midtown Manhattan. Mangione has pleaded not guilty to killing Thompson.
Defense attorneys have alleged that Detwiler violated Mangione’s rights by questioning him for nearly twenty minutes without reading him his Miranda rights. They argue that mistake should justify barring prosecutors from introducing any testimony about the statements Mangione made to police that morning.
Recollecting the events of Dec. 9, Detwiler testified that he responded sarcastically when he got the dispatch call that a local McDonald’s manager reported a “male who looks like the NYC shooter.” He said he didn’t even turn on his police sirens when he drove to the McDonald’s because he “did not think it was going to be him.”
“I did not think it was going to be the person they thought it was,” he testified, though he noted his supervisor promised to buy him a “hoagie” if he “got the NYC shooter.”
“I said consider it done,” Detwiler testified.
An avid watcher of Fox News, Detwiler testified he saw the images of the murder suspect “a lot” and was familiar with the ongoing coverage of the high-profile assassination. Prosecutor Joel Seidemann walked through each of the photos of the suspect that circulated after the shooting; each time, Detwiler responded in a monotone voice that said he saw the pictures in the same place — Fox News.
“I saw a lot of Fox News and saw a lot of video and articles on the shooter. I saw the person’s picture many, many times prior to those five days — many times,” he said.
During Detwiler’s testimony, prosecutors for the first time played his body-camera footage from the morning of Dec. 9. The footage showed Detwiler and his partner casually entering the McDonald’s before turning right to the rear of the restaurant, where they found Mangione sitting at a table.
“What’s your name?” Detwiler asked in the footage.
“Mark,” Mangione said.
“Mark what?” Detwiler asked.
“Mark Rosario,” Mangione said.
“Someone called and said you were suspicious,” Detwiler said in the video. “Thought you looked like someone.”
Prosecutors on the first day of the hearing on Monday played for the first time security camera footage from inside the McDonald’s where Mangione was arrested, the 911 call placed by the store manager who expressed alarm that he “looked like the CEO shooter in New York,” and the minute-to-minute dispatch audio leading to his arrest.
“There’s a male in the store that looks like the NYC shooter,” a dispatcher said in a recording played in court.
The crux of Mangione’s argument is that his constitutional rights were violated when Pennsylvania police interrogated him before reading him his rights and searching his backpack without a warrant.
Defense lawyers allege that officers waited nearly 20 minutes after first approaching Mangione, extensively questioning him about his whereabouts without informing him of his right to remain silent.
They also allege that officers searched through his backpack — which allegedly contained a handgun, magazine, and his journal — without having a warrant.
Citing police body camera footage, they argue that officers searched Mangione’s backpack as early as 9:58 a.m. but waited until after 5 p.m. to seek a warrant. They have asked the judge to limit prosecutors from using the evidence because it was the “fruit” of an illegal search.
Prosecutors argue the arrest and search were conducted lawfully, and that the evidence overwhelmingly proves Mangione’s guilt.
If defense attorneys succeed in limiting the evidence seized from Mangione’s backpack and statements made during his arrests, they could severely undercut the prosecution’s case against the alleged murderer.
A person plays Mega millions lottery at a gas stations on July 11, 2023. (Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — The estimated $900 million Mega Millions jackpot is up for grabs in Tuesday night’s drawing after no winners were selected on Friday.
The numbers drawn Friday were: 16, 21, 23, 48 and 70, plus the gold Mega Ball 5.
The jackpot was last won on June 27.
The prize has a cash value of $415.3 million which can be offered as a one-time lump sum payment or an immediate payment followed by 29 annual payments.
The odds of winning the jackpot at 1 in 290,472,336, according to Mega Millions.
Mega Millions is played in 45 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Tickets are $5 for one play.
The largest Mega Millions jackpot prize ever won was $1.6 billion prize won on Aug. 8, 2023.
The 2025 Doomsday Clock time is displayed after the time reveal held by The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at the United States Institute of Peace on January 28, 2025 in Washington, DC. Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The “Doomsday Clock” — a symbolic clock that represents how close humanity is to global catastrophe — has moved closer to midnight.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced Tuesday that the clock is now 85 seconds to midnight, with midnight representing the apocalypse.
The organization cited nuclear weapons, climate change and biological threats as the three biggest concerns to humanity and the motivation to move the clock closer to midnight.
The new time is four seconds closer to midnight than the 2025 Doomsday Clock.
The clock, set by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a nonprofit media organization comprised of world leaders and Nobel laureates.
It is “a design that warns the public about how close we are to destroying our world with dangerous technologies of our own making,” according to the group.
Intended to be a metaphor and graphic reminder of the perils humans must address, the Doomsday Clock was established in 1947 by Albert Einstein, Manhattan Project director J. Robert Oppenheimer and University of Chicago scientists who helped develop the first atomic weapons as part of the Manhattan Project.
When it was introduced — two years after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan — it was set to seven minutes before midnight.
Since then, the clock has been adjusted both forward and backward multiple times.
The farthest the clock has been adjusted from midnight was at 17 minutes in 1991, after then-President George H.W. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev announced reductions in the nuclear arsenals of their respective countries and the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty was revived.
In 2025, the clock moved to 89 seconds before midnight. The 2024 and 2023 Doomsday Clock was set to 90 seconds before midnight.
ABC News’ Bill Hutchinson contributed to this report.
