Tanya Denise Jackson, Gulf War veteran from Alabama, and her 2-year-old daughter ID'd as 1997 homicide victims

Human remains long associated with the Gilgo Beach homicide investigation have been identified as a 26-year-old Army veteran from Alabama and her 2-year-old daughter, Nassau police said Wednesday.

Tanya Denise Jackson, a Persian Gulf War veteran from Mobile, is the woman previously known as Gilgo Beach homicide victim Jane Doe No. 3, or "Peaches," whose mutilated torso was discovered in a wooded area at Hempstead Lake State Park in Lakeview on June 28, 1997, officials said at a news conference in Mineola. Toddler Tatiana Marie Dykes was dumped along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach around the same time, though her skeletal remains would not be found until April 2011, the homicide squad’s commanding officer said.

On Wednesday, officials suggested for the first time the case may not be connected to the Gilgo Beach killings.

"We are not discounting that her killing may have been unrelated to [the Gilgo Beach] investigation," said Det. Capt. Stephen Fitzpatrick, commanding officer of the homicide squad.

No arrests have been made in the "Peaches" case.

Fitzpatrick described Jackson as a single mother who drove a black 1991 Geo Storm and is believed to have worked as a medical assistant. 

The FBI made a rough identification of the mother and daughter in 2022, Fitzpatrick said. In 2023, they began to obtain additional DNA information and notified the family last year. The delay in announcing the names served both an investigative purpose and allowed for survivors to grieve, he said.

"A peace came to them," Fitzpatrick said of the family upon learning that Jackson and Tatiana were identified.

Fitzpatrick said the father of the child, identified in birth records as Andrew Dykes, 66, of Ruskin, Florida, has been questioned by detectives and is cooperating with the investigation. Fitzpatrick declined to say if the father, who did not live with Jackson, is a suspect in the slayings.

Dykes moved from Brooklyn in May 2000, according to property records. He did not respond to a message seeking comment Wednesday.

Fitzpatrick said because mother and child lived alone and she had a transient background in the Army, a long time passed without her being reported missing.

Nassau Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder said the department is offering a $25,000 reward to anyone with information leading to an arrest.

"Knowing the identities of the mom and the little baby is just a first step," Nassau District Attorney Anne Donnelly said at the news conference, asking the public for more information about the victims. "We will pull at every thread until we can get justice for this mother and this child."

Donnelly said investigators want to learn more about who the victims were and where they were coming from.

FBI Assistant Director in Charge for New York Christopher Raia credited cutting edge investigative genetic genealogy techniques used by the agency with helping Nassau get to this point in their investigation.

"The IGG team combines crime scene DNA with traditional genealogy research and historical records to generate leads to identify unknown DNA," Raia said of the process. "This is what happened in this particular case."

The remains of the mother and daughter, who were living in Brooklyn at the time they were killed, were recently buried at Alabama State Veterans Memorial Cemetery at Spanish Fort near Mobile, records show.

Nassau police said they had "no clue" who Jackson was when her body, identifiable only by an abdominal scar believed to be from a Caesarean birth and the tattoo of a bitten peach on her chest, was found in a green Rubbermaid container discarded in a wooded area of the park by a man attending a fishing clinic with his young daughter and her friends on June 28, 1997, Newsday reported at the time.

Jackson had been dismembered and decapitated when the former Lynbrook resident discovered the unclothed remains in a bag inside the container on the west side of Lake Drive, about 200 yards north of Peninsula Boulevard. A day later police said they believed the remains belonged to an 18- to 30-year-old woman.

Shel Basch, now 72 and living near Pittsburgh, said he has tried not to dwell on the discovery he made that summer day nearly 28 years ago, but he described it, saying it's still fresh in his mind, when told Wednesday morning that an identification had been made.

"It’s more sad than anything else, that a human could do that to another human," Basch said of the killings.

Jackson's status as an Army veteran makes it even more difficult to comprehend, he added.

Basch said it was the odor of the remains that led him to find the container, as he told the children to stay behind while he looked. He then notified police of what he had found, Newsday reported at the time.

Suffolk prosecutors working on the Gilgo Beach homicide investigation announced in 2016 that DNA testing done by Nassau police previously established the woman was the mother of the toddler found more than 20 miles away in Suffolk County, closer to where additional skeletal remains of the mom would be found near Jones Beach. Fitzpatrick said that work was done in 2015.

Two gold bracelets were found with Peaches' extremities at Jones Beach, according to a case report shared in a public database, and a 16-inch gold-colored chain and two gold-colored hoop earrings were on her daughter's remains.

The peach tattoo was possibly made at a studio in Connecticut, police previously said. Sheets found along with the body were likely purchased at an Abraham & Strauss department store, which had locations in Brooklyn and Hempstead that became Macy’s stores shortly before the killings, police said at the time.

The FBI announced in 2022 the mother and daughter were possibly related to a man who died decades earlier in Mobile, Alabama, where police now say Jackson was raised. 

Jackson and Tatiana were among three sets of human remains long associated with the Gilgo Beach case who had never been publicly identified.

Texas Department of Health records show Tatiana was born there on March 17, 1995.

Law enforcement in Suffolk have said they still do not know the identity of the third person, an Asian male, and have made recent pleas to the public for help in learning his identity.

Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney declined to comment on the announcement being made in the neighboring county Wednesday, citing a policy not to comment on anything related to the Gilgo Beach case during an ongoing hearing involving DNA found in six of seven killings charged to Massapequa Park architect Rex A. Heuermann.

"I'll have more comments once the hearing concludes," Tierney said. "I'm not going to speak on any topics even tangentially related to the Gilgo Beach investigation until our hearings are concluded."

Heuermann, 61, has pleaded not guilty in Suffolk County Criminal Court to seven killings of women, including six whose remains were found off Ocean Parkway.

No arrests have been announced in connection with the three previously unidentified sets of remains or in the killing of Karen Vergata, whose remains were found both off Ocean Parkway in 2011 and on Fire Island in 1996. Vergata was publicly identified in 2023.

Tierney has declined to say if he believed Heuermann was involved in any of the other killings or to rule him out as a suspect since his July 2023 arrest, saying his office "speaks in indictments." The seven killings he has been charged with date back to between 1993 and 2010.

Heuermann's attorney, Michael J. Brown, declined to comment.

By Grant Parpan

grant.parpan@newsday.com@GrantParpan

Grant Parpan covers Suffolk County courts and federal courts for Newsday. A Long Island native, he joined Newsday in 2022.