New Details, Victim Sketches Released in Gilgo Murder Case

Police released new details and composite drawings on Tuesday of the remaining five unidentified victims found near Gilgo Beach, as well as pictures of jewelry found with their bodies.

Calling the identification process “painstakingly time-consuming” Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer said two sets of the unidentified remains are related, possibly mother and daughter and another set of remains is related to a 1996 homicide in Fire Island.

The unidentified child, found wrapped in a blanket is between 16 and 32 months of age and is related to one of the victims found near Jones Beach in Nassau County [she is not related to the woman found within yards of her (Jane Doe #6), who many had speculated could have been the child’s mother, due to the close proximity in which their bodies were found] but both of their identities have yet to be determined, according to Dormer. She is described as “non-caucasian.”  The link was made through DNA analysis, Dormer said.

Long Island Serial Killer Pictures: Police sketches, jewelry, and pictures from Gilgo Beach

John Doe, Asian Male, Composite Sketch

Police released pictures of the jewelry the adult female, possibly the mother, consisting of a snake chain bracelet and an X-O style bracelet. The child, possibly the woman’s daughter was wearing a set of hoop earrings and a rope necklace. They are both believed to have been killed between four and five years ago.

The other partial set of human remains found near Jones Beach in Nassau County, Dormer said is related to a April 20, 1996 unsolved case in which two female leg bones were found on Fire Island on the bay side just west of Davis Park Beach by beach walkers wrapped in a plastic bag. According to the medical examiner’s report, the legs had scars on them, possibly from previous surgery, and the toes had red polish on them. This woman’s identity is still unknown.

The Asian male is believed to be between 17 and 23 years of age, approximately 5’6” according to Dormer, with poor dental health. The man was missing is top and bottom molars and one front tooth, and police believe he had been missing these teeth for some time before he was killed. The man was also found wearing women’s clothing, Dormer said, but would not go into details. Police have released a composite sketch of what the man could have looked like and say he had been dead for at least five years, possibly 10 years. Dormer also confirmed that Yim Yeung (Jimmy) Tsui, a missing Stony Brook student who disappeared in 1998, was officially eliminated as a possibility through DNA analysis. 

Pictures of jewelry found on child victim and related adult, SCPD

The woman whose torso was found in Manorville in 2000 and whose remaining body parts were found on Ocean Parkway in April 2011, whom police are calling “Jane Doe #6”, is also still unidentified but police believe she was a prostitute in the NYC area at the time of her death and they have released a composite sketch of her as well.

“This woman would have been last seen alive in the late summer/fall of 2000,” said Dormer, who added the woman probably had some kind of tattoo or identifying mark on her right ankle since that part of her was cut off by her killer.

Megan Waterman, 22, Melissa Barthelemy, 24, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25 and Amber Costello were the first four victims to be identified. All had worked as online escorts at the time of their disappearance. Jessica Taylor, 20, was the fifth to be identified.

Long Island’s Unidentified Murder Victims

Taylor’s partial, mutilated remains had been found in Manorville along Halsey Manor Road in 2004 and her body was identified shortly thereafter when a police officer in Washington, D.C. recognized her tattoo, which had also been mutilated by her killer. Her head, hands and legs had remained missing until they were found within a half mile of Waterman’s remains on Ocean Parkway.

Linking the Manorville and Gilgo Homicides

Taylor had been working as a prostitute in the Port Authority area of New York City at the time of her disappearance. Just a mile away from the spot Taylor’s body was found in Manorville, the mutilated remains of an unidentified woman (Jane Doe #6 above) were found in 2000. Her case had also gone cold, until her head and remaining parts were also found along Ocean Parkway on March 29, 2011.

According to Suffolk County police reports, Jane Doe #6 was discovered nude on November 19, 2000 at 11 a.m. by hunters in the woods. She is believed to have been left there in September of 2000. She is described as 18 to 35 years old, 5’2”, caucasian, possibly with brown hair. The body had been cut into pieces and left in multiple plastic bags. The woman’s head, hands and leg were also reportedly in a plastic bag when police found them on April 4, 2011 on Ocean Parkway. She has remained unidentified for more than a decade. Now, for the first time in 11 years, she has been given a face.

Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota had said at the time of the discovery that the bodies of the four women at Gilgo were handled in a very different manner from the bodies of Taylor and the Manorville Jane Doe and therefore, the murders of the two  women originally found in Manorville were not believed by police to be related at that time to the murders of Waterman, Brainard-Barnes, Costello and Barthelemy, who are believed to be victims of the same killer.

Today Dormer said any of these murders could be related to each other. Police hope by making this new information public, someone will recognize something that could lead them to the victims’ identities and their killer—or killers.

“We’re hoping someone will recognize this jewelry and make a call,” said Dormer, who added there will be at least one more composite sketch to come and the FBI, New York State Police, Nassau County Police and Suffolk County Police  investigation is extremely active, as well as the search for Shannan Gilbert, the New Jersey woman who disappeared in Oak Beach. “We are asking for the public’s assistance and we’re asking investigators across the country to study and consider the provided details and if they’re related to one of their open cases.”