Bittrolff, convicted in double murder, seeks exoneration

John Bittrolff, the 51-year-old Manorville carpenter who was found guilty of murdering two women and dumping their bodies in the woods more than 20 years ago, is requesting his case be reviewed after the alleged Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann was charged for a third homicide that Mr. Bittrolff had been suspected of being linked to, according to a Newsday report.

Mr. Bittrolff was sentenced in 2017 and is currently serving a 50-years-to-life prison sentence for the murders of Rita Tangredi, 31, of East Patchogue and Colleen McNamee, 20, of Holbrook, which took place in the early 1990s. Both cases went unsolved for years until Mr. Bittrolff’s brother, Timothy, was arrested on an unrelated charge and was required to give a DNA sample to the state’s DNA database.

When he came up as a “partial match” for the murders of the two women, police then followed members of the Bittrolff family to collect DNA samples and eventually found a cup with Mr. Bittrolff’s DNA on it, leading to his arrest on July 21, 2014.

At the time of Mr. Bittrolff’s arrest, police were still investigating the unsolved killings of 10 victims, including those whose remains were found near Gilgo Beach. Mr. Heuermann, 60, of Massapequa Park, has been charged for the deaths of six alleged victims — charges to which he has pleaded not guilty — over a timeline of nearly 17 years.

This includes the June 6 indictment for the July 2003 killing of Jessica Taylor, whose partial remains were found in Manorville, and the death of Sandra Costilla, whose body was found in Southampton more than 30 years ago.

Law enforcement originally suspected Ms. Costilla’s death to be related to the murders of Ms. McNamee and Ms. Tangredi, but Mr. Bittrolff was never charged for her death. A recent DNA analysis of a male hair found on Ms. Costilla’s body excluded 99.96% of North America’s population, but not Mr. Heuermann. A similar analysis in 2014 excluded Mr. Bittrolff as the source of the DNA evidence.

Given the similar timeframes of the murders of Ms. Costilla, Ms. Tangredi and Ms. McNamee, Mr. Bittrolff and his legal defense team are pushing for exoneration and the same DNA testing that was used to charge Mr. Heuermann for Ms. Costilla’s death on untested hairs found at the crime scenes of the two other women, according to court documents obtained by Newsday.