Long Island Woman Arraigned After DNA Links Her to 1993 Infant Death

Denise Reischman Merker, listed in reports as 55 to 56 years old, was arraigned this week on a grand-jury indictment charging her with second-degree murder after prosecutors say genetic genealogy linked her to a newborn found dead in September 1993 in Calverton, Suffolk County. Authorities arrested Merker on Feb. 2 and she pleaded not guilty at arraignment; one report says she was arraigned the next day on Feb. 3 and is being held without bail.

Highway workers with the Department of Transportation discovered the infant along Route 25 in Calverton in September 1993, finding a full-term newborn inside a garbage bag beneath a guardrail in a spot described in contemporary accounts as a field opposite the former Grumman Airport. The medical examiner ruled the death a homicide by suffocation and noted the baby’s mouth had been stuffed with paper towels; at the time no one came forward to claim the child.

A Suffolk County cold-case task force re-examined the evidence from the 1993 investigation and sent preserved material for modern testing, prosecutors say. Investigators reviewed fingerprints, swabs and DNA evidence retained from the original case and used genealogical DNA techniques now available in databases that did not exist three decades ago, producing a familial connection that prosecutors say identified the newborn as Merker’s daughter.

Prosecutors laid out a timeline of the birth and disposal that begins with Merker telling officers she was 22 at the time and that she had hidden the pregnancy. Prosecutors allege Merker gave birth at her grandmother’s house, that the baby was born alive and was breathing and crying, and that Merker then placed paper towels in the infant’s mouth and discarded the child on the roadside. “The baby was born alive and was breathing and crying. Merker put paper towels in her mouth and dumped her on the side of the road, prosecutors said.”

The indictment returned by a grand jury charges Merker with second-degree murder. Reports vary on some details: age is reported as both 55 and 56 in different accounts, and timelines show an arrest on Feb. 2 with arraignment entries listed Feb. 3 in one report and a courtroom appearance in early March in another. A short status note lists Merker as due back in Riverhead court on April 15.

This case joins a growing list of decades-old deaths that investigators have revisited using investigative genetic genealogy and preserved evidence. Court records, the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office and the Riverhead court docket are the next places to watch for the indictment, testing records and formal filings that will clarify the forensic match and the procedural timeline for the coming months.