Riverhead woman charged in cold case of slain newborn

A Riverhead woman was charged with second-degree murder in a decades-old cold case involving a newborn girl, whose body was found stuffed into a garbage bag along a Calverton roadside 33 years ago.

Denise Reischman Merker, 56, was arrested Feb. 2 and arraigned the following day in Riverhead Town Justice Court, where she pleaded not guilty, court records show. She was ordered held without bail and has been in custody since then.

A state Department of Transportation employee found the 7-pound, 4-ounce baby girl dead on Sept. 27, 1993, on the westbound shoulder of Route 25 near Wading River-Manorville Road in Calverton, according to News-Review archives. The infant’s mouth was stuffed with paper wads, and her umbilical cord was still attached.

The Suffolk County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled the baby’s death a homicide by suffocation. At the time, a Suffolk County Homicide Squad lieutenant said she was believed to have been dead for between a few hours and days before she was found, according to the News-Review.

At the time, the News-Review reported two other incidents where newborn babies were found dead in similar circumstances, one in a plastic garbage bag in a Manorhaven trash can and another with toilet paper in the infant’s mouth in a garbage bag.

Ms. Merker’s next court date is scheduled for Tuesday, Feb. 17, before Supreme Court Justice Steven A. Pilewski in Riverhead County Court, according to court records. Another hearing is scheduled for Monday, March 2.

She is being represented by lawyer Edward Burke Jr. of Sag Harbor, who did not respond to requests for comment.

The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office told the Riverhead News-Review they would have no comment until the March 2 hearing.