A Long Island DWI murder defendant who allegedly killed a limo driver and 7-year-old flower girl while driving the wrong way on the Meadowbrook Parkway gazed impassively at his handiwork – the two decimated cars – which were displayed outside the courthouse yesterday.
But Martin Heidgen’s defense lawyer, Stephen LaMagna, said his client was “devastated, just like we all were,” at the sight of the twisted metal.
Heidgen is charged with depraved indifference murder and other charges.
The judge in the case ordered the wrecked limousine and Heidgen’s crumpled pickup truck brought to the Mineola courthouse so the jury could view it.
Some jurors crouched to peer inside the rear of the black limo – where little Katie Flynn lost her life July 2, 2005. She was returning home from a wedding with her sister, Grace, 5, her parents, Neil and Jennifer, and her grandparents Chris and Denise Tangey.
Jurors could see a hairbrush left behind. In the front compartment was a road map, cooler and umbrella that belonged to the slain driver, Stanley Rabinowitz, 59, of Farmingdale.
“I have to look at everything,” said Katie’s tearful great-aunt Liz Hudak, who had come upon the crash scene and comforted Katie’s mom.
“It’s the last of Katie I’m going to see.”
Hudak said she felt it was necessary for the jury to see the wreckage.
“I think it’s really important, because I don’t think you can understand how bad it was unless you see it,” Hudak said.
“My family is wrecked forever.”
But most of Katie’s family chose not to view the wreckage.
“That’s where Katie died,” her grandfather Chris Tangey said. “We lived it. We don’t have to see it.”
“He rammed us. That’s what those cars show,” said Katie’s dad, Neil Flynn, outside the courtroom.
Jurors also viewed Heidgen’s smashed Chevy Silverado, with its demolished front end.
Rabinowitz’s family requested private access to the destroyed limo.
“I shed a tear or two, because I know that’s the final spot,” said Rabinowitz’s son, Keith.
Widow Rita Rabinowitz sobbed and caressed a gold ring suspended around her neck – her dead husband’s wedding ring, bent by the force of the terrible crash.
She described her reaction as “horror, absolute horror.”
“I can’t believe somebody could do that to somebody else,” she said.
Ironically, she said her husband often volunteered to give free limo rides to people who were too drunk to drive.
“He would have given [Heidgen] a ride, but he never called, of course,” Rita Rabinowitz said.