Charges against Brianna Kuchar, of Bellport, dismissed after prosecutors say it wasn't her discussing killing

A Suffolk County judge on Thursday dismissed conspiracy charges against a Bellport woman after prosecutors said new evidence revealed that a different woman with a similar-sounding voice was captured on recorded jail calls discussing a 2021 killing.

Acting State Supreme Court Justice Anthony Senft dismissed the charges against 31-year-old Brianna Kuchar "in the interest of justice," following a request from the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office. Kuchar had faced the possibility of 15 years to life in prison if convicted.

"Upon the development of new information and a follow-up investigation, and pursuant to continuing ethical responsibilities, my office determined we could no longer pursue charges against this defendant," Suffolk District Attorney Ray Tierney said in a statement to Newsday.

Prosecutors had accused Kuchar during a Jan. 22 news conference of conspiring with an alleged leader of the Lowndes Block Gang in Huntington Station to order a 14-year-old aspiring member to kill an associate who refused to take responsibility for a Nassau County drug case.

She was one of nine defendants named in a 53-count indictment that alleged gang members were responsible for two killings and 10 shootings.

But Assistant District Attorney Donald Barclay told Senft on Thursday that prosecutors reexamined the evidence after Kuchar’s defense attorney challenged the identification of his client’s voice on several jail calls.

After reviewing the recordings, investigators concluded the voice did not belong to Kuchar.

"We were able to determine that the various jail calls attributed to Ms. Kuchar in the overt action in the indictment are not Ms. Kuchar speaking, but a person that sounds extremely similar," Barclay said during the brief court appearance.

Barclay noted that Kuchar had communicated with some of the defendants in the case, but those calls were not part of the indictment.

Kuchar’s attorney, Steven Politi of Central Islip, said he appreciated the district attorney’s office for revisiting the evidence.

"I do not believe that there was any bad faith in any way," Politi told the judge. "I did listen to the calls, the voices were eerily similar."

Prosecutors did not identify the woman whose voice was heard on the calls with alleged gang leader Marques Scott, nor did they say whether she could face charges.

Scott, 31, of Huntington Station, is accused of ordering the Aug. 9, 2021, killing of Luis Cameron Rimmer-Hernandez with help from the unidentified woman and two other men. Prosecutors say the group persuaded 14-year-old Ramon Lyons to carry out the shooting as a way for him to advance within the gang.

Lyons pleaded guilty to the murder in 2023 and is serving a sentence of 12 years to life in prison. Before the January indictment, he was the only person charged in connection with the killing.

The January indictment charged Scott, Kuchar and co-defendants Shakur May, 22, of Lindenhurst, and Kevin Donaghy, 33, of Huntington Station.

Donaghy also faces murder charges in the 2016 killing of 18-year-old Antoine Butts-Miller of Huntington Station. Tierney previously described Butts-Miller as an innocent bystander who was shot outside a house party in an attack targeting a rival gang member.

Both cases were investigated by the district attorney’s Cold Case Gang Homicide Unit.

Tierney said in January that the indictment aimed to dismantle the gang by targeting its leadership, which allegedly sought to control the Lowndes Avenue corridor north of the Huntington Long Island Rail Road station and east of New York Avenue.

One of the nonfatal shootings cited in the indictment occurred in broad daylight at Heckscher Park, while others targeted rival gang members, prosecutors said.

Court records show Kuchar was not charged in connection with any incidents other than the Rimmer-Hernandez killing.

Politi said his client is eager to move forward with her life.

"Obviously we wish the mistake never happened," he said outside the courtroom. "If there was a way for it to not have happened so that my client wouldn't have had to go through all this — having her name dragged through the mud and brought up on press conferences with people accused of murder — that would have been great. But this is the second-best thing that we could have hoped for." 

By Grant Parpan

grant.parpan@newsday.com@GrantParpan

Grant Parpan covers Suffolk County courts and federal courts for Newsday. A Long Island native, he joined Newsday in 2022.