When Maureen Brainard-Barnes’ skeletal remains were discovered in the roadside scrub near Long Island’s Gilgo Beach in the winter of 2010, investigators faced a daunting challenge.
Despite the grim find, there was scant physical evidence to identify her killer, save for a single, degraded strand of hair. At the time, extracting viable DNA from such a sample was beyond the capabilities of forensic science, leaving detectives to search for other clues in their hunt for a suspected serial killer scattering women’s bodies along the coastal parkway.
However, a significant breakthrough emerged approximately seven years ago. Investigators turned to Astrea Forensics, a California-based laboratory pioneering new techniques to analyse old, highly degraded DNA samples, including rootless hairs like the crucial one found alongside Brainard-Barnes’ body.
That lab’s work is the focus of a pivotal decision in the closely watched case. A state judge is weighing whether to allow the DNA evidence generated through Astrea Forensics’ whole genome sequencing into the trial of Rex Heuermann, who is accused of killing 25-year-old Brainard-Barnes and six other women.
If allowed, it would mark the first time such techniques could be admitted in a New York court, and one of just a handful of such instances nationwide, according to prosecutors, defense lawyers and experts.
Prosecutors say Astrea’s findings, combined with other evidence, overwhelmingly implicate Heuermann, 61, as the killer.
But lawyers for the Manhattan architect argue the company’s calculations exaggerate the likelihood that the hairs recovered from the burial sites match their client.
“You can imagine the pressure that’s on this judge because he’s probably more than likely making a ruling that will set the stage for all the cases that come after,” said April Stonehouse, a DNA forensics expert at Arizona State University who is not involved in the case.
DNA analysis is no longer new, but the tests typically used by criminal labs across the country have limitations.
Astrea is one of a small but growing number of private labs that say they are capable of taking extremely short DNA fragments found in very old bones and hair and using them to reconstruct a person’s entire genetic sequence, or genome.
During court testimony, experts called by the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office highlighted how scientists use similar techniques in a wide range of scientific and medical work, such as mapping the genome of the Neanderthal — an effort awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Medicine.
Astrea Forensics’ co-founder, Dr. Richard Green, described in court how his lab’s whole genome sequencing results were allowed as evidence in last year’s trial and conviction of David Allen Dalrymple in the cold-case murder of 9-year-old Daralyn Johnson in Idaho.
Heuermann’s lawyers argue that Astrea’s DNA methods haven’t been subjected to enough scrutiny yet, and warned they needed more evaluation because they had the potential to “dramatically reshape” how forensics is used in criminal trials.
They zeroed in on the statistical analysis Green’s lab conducted on the DNA profiles it generated from the hairs recovered from the victims’ remains, saying it was potentially overstating the likelihood that a mapped genome was a match with any particular person.
