How LI investigators solved Baby Jane Doe's 1993 killing more than 30 years later

One day after the discovery of an abandoned dead baby during his tenure as Riverhead Town police chief, Joe Grattan called the Suffolk County medical examiner.

Grattan, a licensed funeral director since before he became an officer, wanted to be certain the child would not be discarded a second time.

"I said, 'Do not release the body unless she’s released to me,'" Grattan, now 85 and long retired, recalled of the September 1993 discovery.

Two years later, the baby girl was laid to rest during a funeral service at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Coram held by Grattan and Msgr. John Fagan. She is buried in one of 25 plots donated for dead children by the Catholic cemetery to Little Flower Children and Family Services.

The official burial record states the girl, found in a green garbage bag under a guardrail along Middle Country Road in Calverton, lived for two days. Her name is listed as Baby Jane Doe.

Those scant details were among the few things known about the child before the Suffolk County Cold Case Task Force took up the case last April. Nine months later, investigators had her alleged birth mother in custody.

The case stands as a vivid example of how quickly the newly formed investigative unit, consisting of members of the Suffolk County Police Department and the district attorney’s office, can use modern forensic investigative genetic genealogy to turn a case from red to black.

Court records show how the work of a private laboratory and a genetic genealogist helped detectives narrow down the child’s parents using DNA. Police interviews and a discarded cigarette butt solidified a suspect.

Distinct genetic networks

Baby Jane Doe’s cause of death became clear shortly after her body was discovered on the morning of Sept. 27, 1993, by a New York State Department of Transportation highway cleaning crew working just east of Wading River Manor Road.

Suffolk County investigators called to the scene by Riverhead Town police saw that a wad of paper towels had been stuffed into her mouth, court records show.

Dr. Waldemar Palutke, a pathologist with the Suffolk County Medical Examiner’s Office, removed the paper towels from the child’s mouth. They were unfolded, laid flat and left to dry for examination.

Investigators determined there were two paper towels. Each one stuffed into the 21-inch newborn’s mouth measured 15 inches long and 10 inches wide. Palutke determined her cause of death was suffocation.

"The manner of death was determined to be homicide," Assistant Suffolk County District Attorney Nicholas Santomartino said in a recent court filing.

But investigators in 1993 had little else to work with. They visited local hospitals and shelters, hotels and school districts in hopes of finding someone associated with a recently born child who was abandoned, records show.

While no investigative leads could be developed at the time, a vial of the baby’s blood that was drawn and stored as evidence at the Suffolk County Crime Laboratory would prove key to establishing her identity decades later, prosecutors said.

On April 28,nearly 32 years after the discovery of the child and just 280 days before an arrest in her killing, a DNA sample from the blood was sent by the Cold Case Task Force to Bode Technology, a private Virginia-based laboratory specializing in advanced forensic DNA analysis, court records show.

The lab was able to create a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) DNA profile of the child, a genetic portrait that allows genealogic investigators to build deeper family trees from DNA samples. Similar new technology was recently used by the same team of detectives and prosecutors to bolster DNA evidence against accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex A. Heuermann.

By July 16, the SNP DNA data for Baby Jane Doe was uploaded to public databases in an effort to locate related individuals.

Three weeks later an investigative genealogist with the task force identified genetic networks for both the child’s mother and father, prosecutors said.

"In the months thereafter, [detectives] met with several individuals in the two distinct genetic networks," Santomartino wrote in a bail letter.

Those relatives provided investigators with DNA samples to narrow the pool of potential parents of the child, the prosecutor said.

By November, detectives had trimmed their search to six possible mothers and a father, records show.

Positively identified

On Nov. 21, Cold Case Task Force investigators met with the man identified through DNA as the father. He was unaware of any pregnancy or the birth of Baby Jane Doe, prosecutors said.

The father, who law enforcement officials have not named in an effort to protect his privacy, was given the names of the six women identified as potential mothers.

He recalled having a relationship in late 1992 or early 1993 with a woman named Denise, a colleague at the former Grimaldi’s Meat Market in Riverhead. He did not remember her last name, prosecutors said.

But just 24 hours earlier, detectives had spoken with Denise Reischman Merker, 55, of Riverhead, in a supermarket parking lot, court records show.

Merker denied ever giving birth to anyone other than her two adult children. She said she never miscarried or had an abortion. Asked to provide police with a DNA sample, she refused.

Investigators, now keyed in on a specific female suspect, began surveillance of Merker. On Dec. 22, she was seen smoking a cigarette inside her car in a public parking lot. She tossed the cigarette butt out the driver’s side window, prosecutors said.

The butt was packaged and delivered to the Suffolk County Crime Laboratory for DNA analysis.

On Jan. 5, a crime lab report concluded that when the new sample was compared with the infant's blood, the DNA patterns were 30 million times more likely to be seen if the newborn was Merker's biological child, records show.

"For the first time in over 32 years, Baby Jane Doe was positively identified as the child of the defendant," Assistant District Attorney Andrew Lee said at Merker’s March 2 arraignment on a felony indictment charging her with second-degree murder.

‘I got scared’

The second time investigators approached Merker, outside a gas station in Riverhead Feb. 2, she agreed to an interview at the Suffolk police homicide office in Yaphank.

Merker waived her Miranda rights and admitted giving birth to Baby Jane Doe, prosecutors noted in charging documents.

Lee told state Supreme Court Justice Steven Pilewski at Merker’s arraignment that she concealed her pregnancy from her parents and the child’s father, giving birth inside her grandmother’s empty home in Aquebogue.

"She cried a little bit and I got scared," Merker allegedly said, adding that she placed the paper towels in the baby’s mouth. "It’s my fault. I can’t turn back time."

She said a second person, whom prosecutors have not identified, drove with her to dispose of the body in Calverton. Lee told the judge the baby was tossed away "like garbage."

"At the moment when [the newborn] needed a mother’s nurturing and care, this woman placed towels in the throat of an utterly defenseless infant," the prosecutor said.

Merker has pleaded not guilty to the murder charge and is due back in court April 15. She is facing 25 years to life in state prison if convicted.

Defense attorney Danielle Coysh, of Central Islip, called Merker's case "tragic from every standpoint." She said a review of the initial discovery turned over by police showed her client was both physically and sexually abused by a close family member. 

"We are currently investigating a number of troubling issues regarding the conception of this child," Coysh told Newsday, saying she could not disclose more at this early stage in the case.

After being told she was under arrest Feb. 2, Merker allegedly asked detectives how much time she would have to spend in jail.

"I cannot believe this is happening to me," prosecutors said she told police. "Oh my god, I’m never going home."

Emily

For more than 32 years, a grave marker in Section One at Holy Sepulchre has stood as one of the few reminders of the child’s brief life.

Engraved on the front is a passage from Isaiah: "I have called you by name. You are precious in sight."

Fagan, in a 1991 letter to Catholic Cemeteries, said his "heart was moved" by the donation of the cemetery plots, which came at a time when young children were dying at a greater frequency due to the AIDS epidemic, according to a copy of the letter and contemporary news articles shared by the cemetery.

"Your peaceful resting place for these children will help us all with our grief and renew our hope and faith that the child is now at peace with the Lord," wrote Fagan, who died in 2006.

On the back of the Little Flower marker are 19 names of individuals buried there. "Emily" is the name Fagan gave Baby Jane Doe when she was buried on March 30, 1995.

"He said Emily ... I said ‘OK, very good,’" Grattan, the former Riverhead Town police chief, recalled. "He said some prayers and blessed a grave and that’s where she’s buried."

Former Suffolk Homicide Det. Lt. John Gierasch, who oversaw the early days of the investigation, praised the cold case squad for the arrest.

"I’m reassured when these cold unsolved cases get solved," the retired homicide commanding officer told Newsday. "And I expect more with this new technology."

Newsday TV's Andrew Ehinger contributed to this story.