The unidentified Gilgo Beach homicide victims known as Asian male, Peaches, and Peaches’ about 2-year-old daughter are the three left for investigators to name following the identification of another victim, Fire Island Jane Doe.
Fire Island Jane Doe was the moniker given to Karen Vergata, the 34-year-old mother of two and Glen Head native whose severed legs found in a plastic bag about a mile west of Davis Park on April 20, 1996 and whose skull was found at Tobay Beach on April 12, 2011, authorities revealed on Aug. 4, but her torso has yet to be found.
Her case was the oldest among the 11 sets of human remains found near Gilgo Beach a decade ago, eight of whom have since been identified — the trio now the remaining nameless few who are tied to the case.
“I think it’s important that we remember and honor not only Ms. Vergata, but all the victims on Gilgo Beach,” Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney told reporters during the news conference confirming her identity; he said that who killed her remains a mystery.
Police were searching for missing New Jersey woman Shannan Gilbert, 24, when they found four women dead at Gilgo Beach in December 2010, another six sets of remains nearby the following spring, and Gilbert remains in Oak Beach a year later.
In July 2023, 59-year-old Massapequa Park architect Rex Heuermann pleaded not guilty to charges of killing three of the first women found — Melissa Barthelemy, 24, Megan Waterman, 22, and Amber Lynn Costello, 27 — and he is considered the prime suspect in the fourth, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25.
He has not been charged in the other seven Ocean Parkway deaths, which remain unsolved, but authorities have secured his DNA for comparison to evidence in other cold cases.
Besides the Gilgo four, Vergata, and Gilbert — who authorities say may have accidentally drowned in a marsh, although her family maintains she was murdered — the other two identified victims are Valerie Mack, 24, and Jessica Taylor, 20, whose body parts were found a mile from each other in Manorville in 2000 and 2003, respectively, and skulls were discovered near Cedar Beach in 2011.
Each of the eight identified victims had been sex workers at the time of their death, authorities said.
Unidentified Victims: Peaches And Her Daughter
The remains of Peaches — a nickname given to her for the peach tattoo on her breast — were scattered in a fashion similar to Taylor, Mack and Vergata. Peaches’ dismembered torso was found in a bin at Hempstead Lake State Park on June 28, 1997.
Her skeletonized partial extremities were recovered near Jones Beach on April 11, 2011 — a week after the remains of her daughter and those of an Asian male were found the same day farther down the parkway.
The Press first reported in 2016 that investigators used DNA evidence to determine that Peaches was the mother of Baby Doe, the lone child found dead, in what’s known as the Long Island Serial Killer case.
Peaches and her child were placed at opposite ends of the dumping grounds, making them the two victims who were farthest apart from one another on Ocean Parkway.
The unidentified child, found wrapped in a blanket, was between 16 and 32 months of age. She was wearing a set of hoop earrings and a rope necklace. Peaches was wearing a snake chain bracelet and an X-O style bracelet.
Investigators appeared to be one step closer to identifying Peaches and Baby Doe when, in October 2022, the Mobile Police Department in Alabama posted on Facebook that the FBI is seeking friends and family of Elijah “Lige” Howell/Howard, who lived in Prichard, Alabama, with his wife Carrie, and died in Mobile in 1963 with Lillie Mae Wiggins Packer.
The agency included in the post a photo of Peaches’ tattoo.
“His relatives may be able to assist in the case of a woman and child found in another state,” authorities said in the post. “Does this tattoo look familiar?”
Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison said at the time: “Investigators are following a lead to potentially identify a victim.”
The FBI’s request suggests that the investigators have been using genetic genealogy to help identify Peaches, experts say.
Police similarly used databases in which members of the public shared DNA to find family members to identify Mack in 2020 — two decades after she was found dead — and Vergata, nearly three decades after she was killed.
Howard’s potential connection to Peaches remains unclear.
Although it’s uncertain if he had children, records show he had three siblings that have since died, but who did have children.
That means there may be surviving nieces and nephews who could help investigators put a name to Peaches, advance the case, and help find her killer.
“I would assume the FBI ran the DNA through a genealogy site and got the hit, then passed along [the info] to the local PD in Mobile,” said Joshua Zeman, who investigated the case in the 2016 A&E docuseries The Killing Season. “The dead end is interesting. Hence why there might not be a missing persons report on a missing adult and toddler.”
The apparent lead wouldn’t be the first that gave investigators hope that they were close to identifying Peaches.
A tattoo artist in Connecticut previously told police that he was the one who gave Peaches her ink, but he did not have her name on file.
“It’s good that we’re putting names to the faces because maybe we get lucky and somebody down in Alabama knows something,” Joseph Giacalone, a retired NYPD sergeant who commanded a squad that investigated cold cases, told the Press.
Unidentified Victim: Asian Male Doe
As for the Asian male, he is believed to be between 17 and 23 years of age, approximately 5 feet 6 inches tall, and, authorities have said, was missing his top and bottom molars and one front tooth for some time before he was killed.
He was also found wearing women’s clothing, according to investigators.
In 2011, police released a composite sketch of what he might have looked like, to no avail.
Details are scant for the lone male victim found in the Ocean Parkway brush.
But the revelation surrounding Vergata suggests that the Gilgo Beach Homicide Investigation Task Force may have gotten additional breaks in the case following Heuermann’s arrest.
Recently Identified: Karen Vergata
Vergata was an unidentified murder victim for 26 years, nearly as long as she’d been alive.
Her father Dominic Vergata last heard from her when she called him on his birthday, Feb. 14, 1996 — Valentine’s Day, two months before her legs were found.
At the time of her disappearance, she had lived on West 45th Street in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen.
She had a troubled life before it was tragically cut short.
Her mother died when she was 16.
The last call Vergata made to her father was from prison.
Scars that were among the few clues authorities shared from the discovery of her legs are now believed to have been the result of a vehicle crash she was in while pregnant.
She had not been in contact with her sons since they went into foster care in 1992.
Her father hired a private investigator to try to find her, but he struggled to get police to let him report her missing since she often fell out of touch with her family; he later asked a court to declare her dead so he could collect her life insurance benefits.
“As the year began to progress, and no one in the family had heard from Karen, nor had been able to make contact with her, I became increasingly worried,” Dominic said in court documents.
Investigators finally gave Dominic closure two months before he died in December. But authorities only alerted Karen’s immediate family. Her younger son learned his biological mother’s fate after it made the news.
“He just thought [his mother] was missing,” his girlfriend told the New York Post.
Vergata’s older son — now the same age as his mother when she died and living in a group home for adults with special needs — reportedly remains unaware of her murder.
As for the larger case, Rex Heuermann is due back in Suffolk County court on Sept. 27. The investigation is continuing.
Anyone with information can call 1-800-call-FBI or visit tips.fbi.gov, Nassau County police Crime Stoppers at 1-800-244-TIPS, or Suffolk County police Crime Stoppers at 1-800-220-TIPS.
