BREAKING NEWS Gilgo Beach victim 'Peaches' finally identified after 27 years in bombshell serial killer case update

Daily Mail​

23-04-2025

The Gilgo Beach victims known only as 'Peaches' and her toddler daughter 'Baby Doe' have finally been named almost three decades after some of their remains were first found on Long Island.
Mother Tanya Denise Jackson, 26, and her two-year-old daughter Tatiana Marie were identified in a bombshell press briefing held by Nassau County officials Wednesday, marking a huge breakthrough in their 1997 unsolved murders.
Tanya was a 26-year-old single mother and US Army veteran originally from Alabama who was living in Brooklyn, New York, at the time of her murder.
She served honorably up until February 1995, including at Army bases in Georgia and Missouri.
'Today is a bittersweet day. Today after decades we are finally going to be able to tell you the identities of two victims back from 1997,' District Attorney Anne Donnelly said at the briefing.
'The mother's name was Tanya. The baby's name was Tatiana.'
When asked how long investigators had this information about Peaches and toddler, Nassau County Commanding Officer of the Homicide Squad Stephen Fitzpatrick told DailyMail.com before the briefing: 'We had it for a while and been catching up on 27 years of investigation.'
Suspected serial killer Rex Heuermann - who has so far been charged with the murders of seven women between 1993 and 2010 - has not been charged in connection to their deaths.
A $25,000 reward has been offered for information leading to the killer of the mom and daughter.
The dismembered torso of 'Peaches' was discovered by a hiker inside a black plastic bag in a Rubbermaid container dumped in a wooded area of Hempstead Lake State Park, Lakeview, on June 28, 1997.
She was estimated to have been killed around three days earlier.
The woman had a distinctive heart-shaped tattoo of a peach on her left breast, earning her the nickname 'Peaches' or 'Jane Doe 3.'
Inside the container was also a floral patterned pillowcase and a red towel.
Around 14 years later in 2011, some of the victim's other body parts were found off Ocean Parkway, in Jones Beach State Park, during the search for victims in the Gilgo Beach investigation. Her skull has never been found.
The skeletal remains of a toddler girl - dubbed Baby Doe - were also found along Ocean Parkway in April 2011.
DNA testing later determined that the infant was Peaches' young daughter.
Similar gold jewelry was found with both victims' remains.
For decades, both of their identities remained a mystery with local police and the FBI seeking the public's help in identifying them.
Peaches was said to be black, aged 20 to 30 years old and had what appeared to be a Cesarean section scar.
In 2022, there appeared to be a lead in the quest to identify them when authorities in Alabama sought relatives of a dead man - Elijah 'Lige' Howell - in connection to the victims.
Prior to this, a tattoo artist in Connecticut came forward to say they recalled the woman with the distinctive design.
The announcement comes amid a legal battle between Heuermann's defense attorneys and Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney's office over crucial DNA evidence in the case.
The DA's office told Newsday he would not comment on the development while the Frye hearings about the DNA evidence are still ongoing.
'I'm not going to speak on any topics even tangentially related to the Gilgo Beach investigation until our hearings are concluded,' he told Newsday.
Peaches' remains were found in Nassau County, while the other victims were found across the county line in Suffolk County.
With the mom and daughter finally given their names, only one of the 11 victims found along Gilgo Beach is yet to be identified.
Investigators are still seeking the public's help in identifying the victim known as 'Asian Doe.'
The Gilgo Beach serial killer case haunted the Long Island community for more than a decade, ever since the first of multiple bodies were discovered along Ocean Parkway in December 2010.
More than a decade later, in July 2023, Massapequa Park local Heuermann was then dramatically arrested as he left his office in midtown Manhattan.
Heuermann was initially charged with the murders of three women: Amber Costello, Melissa Barthelemy and Megan Waterman.
Since then, he has been charged with the murders of four more victims: Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Sandra Costilla, Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack.
All the victims were working as sex workers when they vanished after going to meet a client.
Their bodies were found dumped along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach and other remote spots on Long Island.
Some of the victims had been bound, others had been dismembered and their remains discarded in multiple locations.
The 61-year-old has pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him.
Heuermann was linked to the murders following a tip about a pickup truck.
Valerie Mack (left) disappeared in 2000 and parts of her body were discovered in Long Island that November. Jessica Taylor (right) vanished in 2003 with some of her remains being found in Manorville that year
According to a witness, Costello had disappeared after going to see a client who drove a green Chevy Avalanche in September 2010.
Following the launch of a new taskforce, investigators learned that Heuermann drove that same type of vehicle at the time of the murders, prosecutors say.
He also matched the description of the client seen by the witness.
As well as the DNA evidence, prosecutors said investigators also found a chilling 'planning document' on a hard drive in the basement of Heuermann's family home in Massapequa Park.
In the haunting document, he allegedly had a section detailed 'PREP' and noted that 'small' women were preferred.
Heuermann has lived his entire life in Massapequa Park and would commute to his architecture job in Midtown Manhattan, where some of the victims worked and were last seen alive.
He was especially familiar with Ocean Parkway, where the victims' bodies were dumped, thanks to a job he had at Jones Beach in his 20s, according to prosecutors.
Fears that a serial killer or killers were at large on Long Island began back in May 2010, when Shannan Gilbert vanished in bizarre circumstances one night.
The 24-year-old, who was working as an escort, had gone to see a client in the Oak Beach Association community when she made a terrifying 911 call, saying that someone was trying to kill her.
During a search for Gilbert in December 2010, officers came across the body of Melissa Barthelemy in the marshes by Gilgo Beach.
Within days, three more bodies - Amber Costello, Maureen Brainard-Barnes and Megan Waterman - had been found.
The four victims, who became known as the Gilgo Four, had been dumped within a quarter mile of each other, some of them bound and wrapped in burlap.
Over the following months, the remains of seven other victims were found.
Gilbert's body was found last. Investigators maintain that she was not a victim, but died by accidental drowning after she fled into the dense thicket that night.
Heuermann has not been charged in connection to the deaths of the other four victims: Karen Vergata and three still-unidentified victims, known only as 'Asian Doe,' 'Peaches,' and Peaches' toddler daughter.
Costilla, meanwhile, had never been linked to the Gilgo Beach serial killer case until Heuermann was hit with charges for her murder in 2024.
Her murder expands the timeline that the accused serial killer is alleged to have been actively preying on victims.