Woman arrested in connection with 1993 cold case involving newborn found dead in Calverton, according to attorney
Police at the time said the baby was full term and was left there.
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A woman was arrested in connection with a 1993 cold case involving a newborn found dead in Calverton, her attorney Edward Burke, Jr. confirms to News 12.
The attorney says Denise Reischman Merker is accused of second-degree murder in a 1993 cold case on the East End.
As News 12 reported in September 1993, police were searching for the mother of the newborn discovered in a field opposite the former Grumman Airport.
Police at the time said the baby was full term and was left there. The dead infant was discovered by highway workers inside a trash bag along Route 25.
Michael Alcazar, a retired NYPD detective and professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, says when cold cases like this come back around, police have to reinvestigate the case from the beginning.
“You're not going to look over what they did before, because whatever they did before didn't work,” Alcazar said. “They gathered evidence back then, even though we didn't have the technology to test it. If they got fingerprints, swabs, DNA that they stored somewhere, now because of all the genealogical technology that we can use and the DNA databases that we have. We can compare that information now. And it looks like it's working, and we're being able to identify suspects and perpetrators from cases 20 or 30 years ago.
Alcazar says if a suspect wasn’t in the database 30 years ago, they could be now. Police can track them down through DNA evidence, image enhancing technology or reinterviewing witnesses.
Investigators have not yet said how they are linking Merker to the case.
Merker was arrested on Feb. 2 and arraigned on Feb. 3.
She pleaded not guilty. She is being held without bail.
Her next court date is Tuesday in Riverhead County Court.
