Riverhead mother pleads not guilty in newborn’s 1993 cold case murder

A Riverhead woman accused of killing her newborn daughter in 1993 and dumping her body in a garbage bag on the side of Route 25 pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in Suffolk County Court Monday morning.

A trembling Denise Reischman Merker, 55, entered the Riverhead courtroom with her hands cuffed behind her back — clad in a loose purple turtleneck sweater and jeans — before entering a plea in the decades-old cold case.

Ms. Merker waived her Miranda rights when she was first brought in for questioning on Feb. 2 and detailed the course of events leading up to the baby’s death, Suffolk County assistant district attorney Andrew Lee told acting Supreme Court Justice Steven Pilewski during Monday’s hearing.

Mr. Lee said the then 21-year-old “hid her pregnancy from her family, friends and the father of the child.”

The unnamed father, who had been sexually intimate with Ms. Merker between 1992 and 1993 and worked with her at Grimaldi’s Meat Market in Riverhead, told police he was never advised of any pregnancy or the birth of the baby, according to a bail letter from the district attorney’s office obtained by the Riverhead News-Review.

Ms. Merker gave birth to the blue-eyed, brown-haired girl while alone at her grandmother’s house in Aquebogue and stuffed paper towels down the baby’s throat as she cried, she allegedly told law enforcement. A Suffolk County medical examiner determined the cause of death as homicide by suffocation.

“She cried a little bit and I got scared,” Ms. Merker told detectives, according to court records. “That’s why I put the paper towel down the throat because she was crying and I got scared … It’s my fault … I can’t turn back time.”

When she realized the baby had died, Ms. Merker asked an unidentified person to drive with her to the Calverton roadside, where she left the baby’s 7-pound, 6-ounce body stuffed in a green garbage bag on the shoulder of Route 25 near Wading River Road. A state Department of Transportation worker found the body Sept. 27, 1993.

“She was thrown away like garbage,” Mr. Lee said during the hearing, asking Judge Pilewski to deny bail.

The handcuffed mother of two adult children needed to be helped to her seat as Mr. Lee recounted the baby’s death. Judge Pilewski ordered her held without bail. Voter registration records show Ms. Merker has lived in Riverhead with her husband and two kids.

The baby was buried in 1995 after her body went unclaimed for nearly two years. In March of that year, then-Riverhead police chief Joseph Grattan and the late Msgr. John Fagan, longtime director of Little Flower Children and Family Services of New York, arranged a burial service for her. She was given the name “Emily” — which Mr. Lee used to refer to her throughout Monday’s hearing.

The case went unsolved for decades until the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Cold Case Unit, launched in 2024, uploaded Baby Emily’s DNA to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons Systems database in January 2025. Using forensic investigative genetic genealogy, investigators linked the baby to her father — who provided a DNA swab voluntarily — and to Ms. Merker, according to the bail letter.

Police first encountered Ms. Merker in a supermarket parking lot around Nov. 20, 2025, where she denied giving birth to anyone other than her two adult children and refused to provide a voluntary DNA sample, according to the bail letter. On Dec. 22, 2025, members of the Cold Case Task Force collected a discarded cigarette from a public parking lot for DNA analysis. A Jan. 5 genealogical report identified Baby Emily as a possible biological daughter of Ms. Merker.

“The victim’s father has been cooperative in the instant investigation [and] provided a buccal swab on consent,” the bail letter stated. 

On Feb. 2, detectives approached Ms. Merker at a Riverhead gas station. She agreed to meet with them at the Suffolk County Police Department’s homicide office, where she admitted to giving birth to the baby, officials said.

After her arrest, Ms. Merker asked how much time she would spend in jail.

“I cannot believe this is happening to me,” she said. “Oh my god, I’m never going home.”

Ms. Merker was assigned lawyers Danielle Coysh and Sabato Caponi by the Suffolk County Defenders Program.

Ms. Coysh told reporters she and Mr. Caponi had so far been given only “preliminary discovery” and had no comment on the allegations but expect “more discovery will be coming.”

“Everyone is entitled to a defense,” Ms. Coysh said. “It’s an allegation and she’s presumed innocent.”

Ms. Merker is due back in court Wednesday, April 15. If convicted, she face up to 25 years to life in prison.