The widow of chauffeur Stanley Rabinowitz, who was killed by a drunken driver alongside 7-year-old flower girl Katie Flynn, slammed the “liberalism” of the New York parole board that cut the convict loose.
“This liberalism is a bullet into the back of the families who suffer the loss of their loved ones,” Joyce Rabinowitz-Schuster, widow of Stanley, said in an email to The Post on Sunday.
Martin Heidgen, 43, who served 19 years behind bars for second-degree murder in the July 2, 2005, wrong-way horror on the Meadowbrook Parkway in Freeport, walked out of prison Wednesday after being granted parole, the state Department of Correction and Community Supervision confirmed Sunday.
“Shame on the parole board who released a murderer,” Rabinowitz-Schuster said.
“There is no accountability in New York State anymore. Murder should be 25 years minimum. Crime is rising in NYS because of these dismissive attitudes and it must stop,” she wrote.
Heidgen, who was 24 at the time of the crash, drove his pickup truck the wrong way for nearly 3 miles before slamming head-on into a limo on its way back from a beach-front family wedding in Bayville.
In the limousine were Stanley, Katie, her sister Grace, 5, their parents, Neil and Jennifer Flynn, and Jennifer’s parents, Denise and Chris Tangney, a retired Nassau County cop.
Katie was beheaded as a result of the crash.
Heidgen’s blood-alcohol content was over three times the legal limit when he crashed, authorities said.
“My family and the Flynns and Tangney families [Katie’s maternal grandparents] realize this crime every day and the hundreds of other friends and family members of the victims involved in this murder,” Rabinowitz Schuster said.
Heidgen was sentenced to 19 years to life after being convicted on two counts of murder, three counts of first-degree assault, and tampering with physical evidence, state officials said.
The convict tried to appeal the verdict after being imprisoned but was shot down.
A spokesman for the state DOCCS said Sunday that a parole board granted Heidgen conditional release Aug. 13 and that he was released Wednesday.
The terms of his release include remaining in the state unless asks for permission to leave.
In a statement to Newsday, which first reported Heidgen‘s release, Katie’s parents also said the parole board’s decision to release their young daughter’s killer has had a “profound impact” on their family.
“We asked that the public may know our sadness and feel our pain,” Jennifer Flynn told the outlet. “Katie was murdered as a 7-year-old girl; where her murderer lives, imprisoned or paroled, makes no difference in our lives.”
“We realize that our news cycle is over, but it is our hope that your readers think of us and that we influence their choices,” the Flynns said.
