December 10, 2025 • 44 mins
On June 28, 1997 a dismembered body is discovered by a father and his daughter out for a walk in Hempstead Lake State Park in Lakeview, New York. The torso is found in a rubber-maid container along with a red towel and a floral pillowcase. The head, both arms, both legs below the knee, all severed from the body and have not been found. A unique tattoo is found of a peach with a bite taken out of it that leads Investigators to publish a picture of the tattoo in a national tattoo magazine in hopes of finding an artist who remembered such a tattoo. Tattoo artist Steve Cullen in Connecticutt claimed to remember giving the tattoo to a young black woman, 18 or 19 years old. The body remained unidentified and was given the name "Peaches" and she is listed as one of the possible victims of the Long Island Serial Killer. In 2011 the remains of a toddler are discovered that are identified in 2016 as belonging to "Peaches", but still, no name identification. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack dive into the investigation of "Peaches" and her toddler to determine if they are part of the Gilgo murders or not, and if not, who killed the mother and daughter.
Transcribe Highlights
00:00.76 Introduction - Peaches
02:01.42 Trip to the Hamptons
04:59.61 Gilgo suspect had to be familiar
10:16.22 Shannon Gilbert family
15:01.62 The science and math are complex
20:26.38 Tattoos
25:10.55 Saving for future science growth
30:04.06 Jane Doe #3 identified as part of "Peaches" from 1997
35:21.35 Communication dismemberment
40:00.41 Because of Gilgo investigation, Tanya and Tatiana identified as not part of LISK
43:58.24 Conclusion
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Bodydas, but Joseph's gotten more. There's a term of endearment
that's kind of an older term. Now don't hear a lot,
But I've always thought that it had kind of a
sweetness to it. It's a term that I think my
grandmother's generation would use, and this term of endearment generally
(00:23):
refers to a female. The term is actually a peach,
and it implies that someone is naturally sweet, they're kind,
there's someone that you would want to be around. For me,
that term means a lot. It means a lot because
(00:45):
I've actually gone out with my grandmother when I was little,
up around rust and Louisiana and picked these gigantic peaches.
My grandmother used to make peach ice cream. My wife
loves peaches. But today I'm going to talk about another
kind of peach. I'm going to talk about a peach,
(01:08):
or at least the image of it, that was tattooed
on a woman's body that for years we didn't know
who she was. And oh, by the way, the same
woman I had a child. We didn't know who that
child was either, And now we have identities of both
of them. And guess what, we now have a suspect
(01:34):
that is linked to their murders. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
and this is body backs. A couple of years back, Dave,
I was going up to the Hamptons. I guess it's
(01:54):
the first year that we did Hampton's. Who'd done it?
You didn't get to go with me the first time
you went this pastime though, and we I think you
would agree we had pretty good time, didn't we. It
was a blast, lovely people. I thought they were gonna
hear my accent and kick me out. UH from out
there on Long Island, say no, you have to leave.
But they were just some of the sweetest folks and
have always been very generous with us. And the first
(02:18):
time I went up there, I went up with UH
with Keimmy and Joe. Jack Oline met us at at
the airport. A litle Guardian's He is Joe's ah, former
homicide homicide sergeant and also cold case sergeant with NYPD
and just sweet man. And he to tell you how
(02:41):
what a good guy he is. He actually drove in
to La Guardia and picked Keimmy and I up at
LaGuardia to make the several hour trip. I didn't realize
this as far out to the Hampton's while I've been
up there, and he said, uh, you know in his
in his voice that's stinkily New York. He was like, hey, Joe,
I got a surprise for you guys. I was like, okay,
(03:03):
are we going to go eat like some clam chowder
or something? Because we actually did. He said, yeah, after
the clam chowder, we're gonna go. We're gonna go. I'm
gonna take you someplace special. Well, guess what, he's the
one that took you. Yeah, Joe did. And I didn't
know where I was going.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Everybody else because I know what you're talking about, Okay,
go ahead.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
I didn't know he did.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Yeah, it was Joe, and I had no idea. And like,
I look back over over my shoulder Kimmy in the
back seat. I'm thinking, there's he taking. I said, Well,
as it turns out, we wind up on this beautiful
suburban street with these neat, neat yards and we're looking
at these houses. They're kind of small, and he's like,
oh yeah, he said these houses in here. He says
(03:46):
one point five mili for these houses. And I'm looking
at these houses. I'm thinking they're really nice, they're really neat,
but there ain't nothing special about it. You know, in
Alabama you get a mansion for that. Until we are
in front of one particular house on Long Island and
it looked like, oh my lord, it looked like the
(04:08):
worst shack in the face of the planet, broken down, dirty.
And then all of a sudden, in my mind's I
realized where I was, where I was, and we were
parked in front of Rex Huermann's home, and how this
guy lived in this neighborhood without being physically thrown out
by all these people who apparently really work hard on
(04:29):
their houses. Because there was not a blade of grass
that was higher than anybody else's. It was like very
house proud. Oh boy, very house proud.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
I did not realize it was Joe that took you there.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Oh yeah, yeah, and he takes us he actually takes
us down the coast road, still heading down. Yeah yeah.
We went out to where the Gilga four were actually found.
Took us to go go beach. Because you know, I've
only talked about these things on the news. I didn't
really have a sense about it. And man, I tell
you what, when I got there, I realized that whoever
(05:02):
was doing these these horrible acts had to have very
specific knowledge about the train, about traffic movements, because they say, literally,
one of the hardest places to get around in the
US is down that two lane road headed out to
the Hamptons. During the summertime. It is blocked and locked
(05:23):
down very tight past you'd have to know where you
can turn around and all this stuff. So automatically now
I'm thinking somebody has to be a native that's going
out here. You know, there's some kind of connectivity. But
interestingly enough, Dave, the case that we're going to talk
about today is kind of an out here because for
years and years, this case that we had that we
(05:46):
are going to talk about has always been linked to
the GILG four or whoever the perpetrator was, to all
these other remains, And as it turns out, brother Dave
doesn't seem.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Like this is the case not even closed. And this
is one of the problems with not one of the
problems with this case. But you know, first things first,
there we're talking about Peaches, who was identified as one
of the Gilgo I need to say outliers, but her
name was already in there, as you know, a Doe,
a Jane Doe. We don't know who she is, Yeah,
(06:18):
I thank you, yeah yeah. And there was a toddler
and it didn't fit the mix. It did not that
the toddler did not fit into the idea of who
these other women were that were identified as the gil
Go for and beyond that they're.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Just not there.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
But geographically speaking, we're going to include them because of this. Now,
there are not just four or five or six Gilgo victims.
When you actually look in the general vicinity, I think
there's eleven. There are that many that could be attributed
to one killer. But it also could be that there's
been more than one person using this area as a
(06:58):
dumping ground and this case might just prove part of that.
Just to give you an idea. Peaches has been identified
as Tanya Jackson and baby Doe has been identified as
Tatiana Marie Dykes. Tatiana was only two years old, Tanya
(07:22):
twenty six and from Alabama. Tanya grew up in Alabama
and ended up in the military.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
She at the time of all of this.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Now backing up, you know, her body was discovered in
nineteen ninety seven, Tanya Jackson's body and it wasn't all
in one piece, Joe. And so I'm hoping that I'm
hoping today you can enlighten us as to how is
it from an investigation standpoint where you have somebody like
(07:54):
like Tanya and Tatiana, their bodies are found in this area,
they're deceased, they're tough to identify, but because we don't
have a name or a background or anything else, they
just kind of get lumped together with the others of
the Gilgos story, you know. And as I say that,
at one point, one thing out, you know, the one
(08:16):
of the girls who was her name is escape to
me right now. Her attorney has always been one of
the guys out in the forefront as one of the
Gilgo victims. And I don't think she is. I think
she was, you know, she was out on a call.
She was working in the sex trade, and she was
out there and we've got phone calls with her and
(08:36):
she's leaving and running up and down the street, and
her body is found. But it's nothing like the others.
And anyway, I think that's just a really really sad
death that happened. I don't think she's part of the
Gilgo murder spree here with humor mean.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
No, And that particular case, actually Joe took us to
that location as well. Yeah, where that whole progression took place.
And it's literally right by the beach. Kind of fascinating location.
The beach is immediately, you know, to your right, and
then you've got this I don't know, they'll call it
a tidle basin. I look at it, and I would
(09:15):
use the term probably a slew. It's got a lot
of marsh grass in there. There's all these bushes, it's
really thick. It's an area where this victim, that victim
that you're referring to, was actually found and her remains
were skeletal. Okay, so there's really never been a cause
(09:36):
of death that they've arrived at, you know, with her,
we just got a deceased female skeleton. Well that's kind
of obvious, right, deceased female skeleton. We have skeletonized remains
of a lady that was down there, and also her clothes,
some of her clothes they believe were there.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Shannon Gilbert, that's the name I was trying to think
of as Shannon Gilbert. I don't mean any disrespect.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
No, of course, hey man, and you need, you need
a playbill to keep up with all of these because
there's so many. And that's that goes to the confusion, right.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
I think without Shanning Gilbert's family, I really think that
without Shannon Gilbert's family that the gig story might have
gone away. It was her family that kept bringing it
back up. They kept going because they had the nine
one one. There was so much they had and they
were just and they believed she was part of that.
And I don't believe she was based on investigation. But
(10:28):
without her, I don't think you have human in jail.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Well. The other thing that has kept I think that
this case kind of are has kept the investigators and
the public and everybody else associated with it just wants
to get answers a lot of it. That has kept
things kind of handcuffed and fragmented. There's a lot of
corruption up there, Dave, there were yeah, oh my lord,
you know some of the stories that we heard up
(10:52):
in the Hamptons. You know, because I had no I
had not taken a look at the depth and breadth.
You know, I cover cases from well you and I
cover cases from all over America, all over the world. Okay,
and when we got up into kind of the granular detail.
And I've been on these task force before, all right,
when it comes to cereal serial crimes, and particularly back
(11:17):
in my day, many times the left hand doesn't know
what the right hand's doing. I think probably one of
the best portrayals of this in media is if you
go and you watch the movie Zodiac, where you've got
multiple police departments and this is back in the seventies,
(11:37):
where they're working cases that might have some similarities, and
I still don't I still don't buy into that every
one of those homicides is completely connected. I'm chasing rabbits here,
but I'm just trying to make the point that with
a task force, particularly if you add it's multi jurisdictional,
you've got one group of people that are let's just
say there are morals are dubious at best, that that
(12:03):
that throws such a wrench into an investigation, a series
of investigations that are so very complex day because if
you just look at the remains, you've got remains that
are in various states of decay. You've got remains that
have not just they're not just you're not just dealing
(12:24):
with anti mortem trauma. You're talking about postmartem trauma because
you've got some dismemberment going on, so you've got all
of these layers of complicated and you know, and then
you throw it into this really wet water environment, right,
you know, so how much it's not like you've got
like a it's not like John Wayne Gacy where you've
got all of the bodies buried beneath the house, right,
(12:46):
and you can go there and there's like that one
concentration and you begin to work that. I'm not saying
that was easy for those guys back in the seventies.
How I think you get to just yeah, or my
drift as to where I'm going here.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
And that was I'm glad you did, because with what
we're dealing with today, with Peaches and with Tanya and Tatiana,
a mother and daughter, a twenty six year old mom,
a military veteran and her two year old toddler, they
were lumped together, unidentified, but still lumped as possibly part
(13:19):
of this. And that's why I think of Shannon Gilbert
because I think without the investigation, without her family, none
of the other stuff would have come to the forefront,
because there wouldn't have been any pressure. But because of
Shannon Gilbert's family and the breaking of this case, it
allows for the justification. Now, just spend the money to
(13:41):
identify these other remains and clear them, either get them
as part of this or out of it. And thankfully
I looked over this case. Thankfully, Joe, that the the
technology and the people that wheeled it. It's amazing, I mean,
flat out amazing how they were able to identify Tanya
(14:04):
Jackson and Tatiana and by the way, identify not through
them directly, indirectly. There was actually an ad in a
paper in Mobile, Alabama, Joe when they were breaking it down,
and I'm not kidding you when I tell you that
they came back with a name, but it was somebody
(14:25):
who had died before I was born.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Think about that for a minute.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Yeah, that's how and that's where this science goes. That
they're able to get this piece of genetic you know,
this DNA, and they're able to determine that this is
related to this person that died in nineteen sixty three
and they found it on a body in nineteen ninety seven. Yeah,
(14:51):
and that immediately I'm thinking, now I know why I
didn't spend more time in math and science, because this
blows my mind. I can't figure it out. I can't
even I can't digest it without you know.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Well, yeah, and it does become it enters onto the
exponential plane here of thinking, you know, because it is
quite complex. However, I've got to tell you something. Complexity
in the world that we're living in now is not
(15:24):
quite as daunting as it might have been in the past,
particularly when it goes to our friends at authoring laboratories
(15:50):
many years ago. Dave, I gotta tell you the story
because I've told other people. I just I have to
put it on this public forum right now to give
you an idea about how tattoos help, or how they
used to help. Even More, it seems like, you know,
everyone has a tattoo. Now they're not as sexy as
(16:12):
they used to be. Necessarily, they're not unique, you know.
But I had a case, Dave, you'll appreciate this. I
had a case of a fellow who was a Native
American and he had come to New Orleans with and
I'm not going to mention the motorcycle club, but it
is one that is quite notorious. Had come to New
Orleans and he was in the back of a pickup
(16:35):
truck and he had been dropping acid and they were
traveling down this thoroughfare and in the midst of he's
standing up in the back of the people witness this.
He's standing up in the back of the pickup truck.
And do you remember, like those nineteen seventies pickup trucks
that had the four wheel drives that had those gigantic
(16:58):
roll bars on the back, you know, in the bed
with the big fog lights. That truck had one. This
rocket scientist decides to pitch himself over the side at
fifty five miles per hour. Okay, well he doesn't. He
doesn't pop up like a you know, some kind of
stunt roll that you would have seen on the television
show Man X or something.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
You know.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
He yeah, boy, that's a reference from the past, right Hey,
it does mounts Man. Yeah, Mike connors Man. Well, he's dead.
So we bring him in to do the autopsy. And
he is dressed. And I'm not talking about a Weekend
Warrior biker here. This guy is. This guy is serious.
You know, you can tell. He's got dirty jeans on.
(17:41):
He's got the engineer boots on that you see. You know,
the old engineer boots and black T shirts Harley T shirt.
What else right? And Dave, I took off his boots
in the morgue as I'm undressing his body, take your
socks off, and I noticed something on the dorsum of
(18:02):
his right foot that will stay with me forever and ever.
It was a tattoo. And on the the tattoo itself
was shaped like a toe tag, a full sized totag.
And he even had a string. It had a hole,
(18:22):
a hole that was part of the tattoo, and it
involved a string string went down tied around his big
toe with a bow. Somebody had done a lot. And
what a painful place to get a tattoo right on
top of your foot. And in the in the lines
on the on the top of the you know, on
(18:43):
the on the faux toe tag tattooed on his foot.
It had his full name, his date of birth, and
in big letters below it it said d O A.
That's one of the ways we got that body identified.
All right, My gosh, I want a tattoo.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
I might get that that's brilliant.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
It is kind of brilliant. But yeah, I mean, I've
seen it all with tattoos. But you know, there was
a guy I used to work with, a forensic pathologist
who at the time he was regarded and I know
people don't think this is a thing, but he was
regarded as in the post mortem world, in the forensic
pathology world, as one of the leading experts of tattoos
(19:28):
in our world. And the reason that's important is because
of identification. People don't understand that in the old days,
if you were going to be a tattoo artist, and
this is long before there were tattoo shops on every corner,
you know, you had to sit at the feet of
a master, right and they had, like they have their
(19:51):
own genealogies, Like I trained under this person and this
person and this person and the guy the pathologist that
I'm referring to. It had actually gone to this guy
that was considered a master that worked up in Baltimore,
and he had a gigantic disarticulated skeleton that was tattooed
down one side of his leg from like his ribcage
(20:11):
all the way down to his ankle. And this guy
had to work on it forever and ever. Wow, but
this guy knew his way around tattoos. He could look
at a tattoo and say, okay, this comes from this
particular artist. This is a point of origin. And before
we use things like DNA, we try to use anything
we could to get bodies identified. But Dave, when we
think about this case, yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Yeah, you would have used anything. It was still the
cross section of using DNA. I mean, I'm sure that
you were identifying certain things with DNA, but we're only
what two and a half years after OJ and that's
when most of us learned our basic science on DNA. Yes,
people of our generation anyway, outside of you, you know,
(20:52):
normal people. But anyway, he give me far too much.
Greatit front, I said. June twenty eighth, nineteen ninety seven,
a man and his daughter out for a stroll in
Hempstead Lake State Park in Lakeview, New York, discover the remains.
They don't discover an entire body. We're talking about a head,
both arms, both legs below the knee, all gone, severed, gone.
(21:17):
The torso is found in a rubber made container, along
with a red towel and a floral pillow case. It's
on the west side of Lake Drive. I'm going to
assume since that identifier was included in everything. I saw
that for those of you in that area of Lakeview,
New York, that means something. I know that oftentimes a
(21:38):
west side of this or that means something.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
So there you go.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
But they couldn't identify what they had, and so as
they're investigating, they find this very unique tattoo. It's of
a peach. And it's not just any peach, it's not
just something stamped. It's an actual artist that has done
some seriously good work. And in trying to identify the person,
(22:07):
the woman who they found parts of they run an ad.
Detectives have to run an ad in a national tattoo magazine.
They take a picture of the about and the way
it was explained to me, it was about two inch
square two inches two inches, that's it. And they take
a picture of the tattoo. It's a peach with a
(22:28):
bite taken out of it, some juice drops, and they
post this in this tattoo magazine nationwide, and sure enough,
a tattoo artist in Connecticut by the name of Steve
Cullen breaks the case because not only does he say
that's my work, he remembers the person, he remembers who
(22:53):
they were with. He remembers what they were talking about
and what he was told, and it was all of
that information. Joseph's got Morgan that the woman is in
Connecticut getting this tattoos. She's a young black woman. She's
on the outs with her significant other. They've had an argument.
So she's not in New York where she normally works
(23:15):
and lives. She's in Connecticut with family. I mean, that's
a lot of information from a tattoo guy.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Yeah, it is. It's and listen, that was not unusual.
You could go like both of the offices that I
worked in, we had a big book of unidentified flyers
that would be processed and you would see like certain
police departments would send these things out, you know, and
(23:40):
you would get them periodically, get them over. I think
they called it, what was it, hang on It was
a fact a telefax or whatever it was where you
got these clearer images back then. And they would have
and I know people have seen these. They would have
images of things like identifying marks. You would see scars,
pictures of scars, say, you'd see tattoos. Even I've seen
(24:04):
dental demonstrations before, like teeth that have certain caps or
crowns that are unique posted on there, and it's like
it's almost like a what's it called, you know, be
on the lookout kind of a BOLO for this individual
if they come through your office. And I think that
(24:25):
out of all the years that that I worked, I
think that maybe we found two of those flyers that
turned back, you know, to one to a particular case
that we were working. And it's not that it's not
that they don't work, it's just that they were kind
of taking a shotgun approach and you know, pushing these
things out. But you know, Dave, with that information, that
(24:47):
is monumental because you can take whatever kind of biological
data that you have remaining and you can begin to
source it. Right. You know, we we think about, well,
we want to try to retain this so that we
can go back maybe in the future if technology provides
(25:08):
a way where we can actually begin to understand who
this person might be genetically. Wow, And that's kind of
difficult because you know, beforehand, you know, before we had
you know, before we had a database with sex offenders
and that sort of thing, which is very specific. You know,
it's like, okay, well they're not on the list, you know,
(25:29):
let's dismiss this. But now the world, the world that
we live in now is this huge matrix. You know,
we've gone from zero to one thousand now miles per
hour relative to what you can do with the slightest
bit of biological data. And then you couple that, you know,
a few years later after these remains are found in
(25:52):
this plastic container, which, by the way, the state park
is unlike the other Gilgo Beach cases. Saying that the beach.
Now I'm not saying it's a long ways from the beach.
I remember what I said earlier about geographic familiarity. This
is a place that slightly is still on Long Island,
is slightly Inland, Okay, And it is a state park.
(26:14):
And there was a pond there, Okay, within the boundaries
of the state park. And that's where this thing was found,
this tub containing her remains and this pillow case and
what was it? It was pillow case and it.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Was well it said there was a red towel, blanket,
and then there was the floral pillow case. I always
found that fascinating that. Okay, if you're a criminal, why
would you leave something that is so specific? You know,
I mean, I'm just kind of curious a floral pillow case.
I wouldn't know what that means. But I most of
the women I've ever met or had a conversation with
(26:50):
in my life that were born women, they would know it.
They would recognize them. Oh yeah, you get that at
you know whatever store. I mean, they know that stuff.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
Well, you look at just the floor pattern on that
pillow case, and if it's got a tag inside of it,
that's something that can in fact be tracked down. And
there are a lot of people out there that work
in fabrics and textiles in forensics. They that's you know,
that's their residential you know, they make their money doing
those sorts of things. FBI has got an incredible database
for that sort of thing. Yeah, it's it's mind blowing
(27:20):
when you think about it, and you think about those
tags that are specific identifiers, and it seems like an
odd thing to leave behind because when you think pillow case. Now,
there have been times in my life where I have
had a mess at the house. I'm thinking dogs right
now or children throwing up, and I'm going to grab
the first thing that I can put my hands on.
If you got a linen closet where the towels are
(27:42):
all dirty. Oh, here's a pillow case. I grab it
and I clean up with that. I think the thing
here is to try to understand perhaps what was the
utility of the pillow case. If it's floral in pattern,
I can't imagine that that would be something that would
be used in a hotel or a motel. You know,
you would think they'd either be white or beige. They're
not going to have a pattern to them. And then
(28:03):
you go to this other item that's contained in there,
and what's contained on within the fabric of these things
as well? Is there not just potentially the victims DNA?
Is there some kind of other DNA that's there that
belongs to someone else? You know? Because look, she's been
down for a while, Dave, and she's inside the torso,
(28:25):
is inside of this container, you're going to have a
body that is greatly degraded. And one of the things
that you and I talk about many times is not
only do you have blood that results as a result
of either kind of seepage or maybe even trauma, but
you also get decompositional fluid as well. And it's kind
of complex. There's not a lot that you can derive
(28:48):
from it. Many times, So I know the inquiring minds
want to know. I'd want to know if there were
any kind of stained patterns, perhaps on the pillar case
in particular, it's harder to pick that up on a towel.
But let's just say, for instance, if somebody had been shot,
for instance, or maybe the pill case was used to
facilitate a suffocation you know, who knows, or maybe to
(29:11):
kind of blind this person as they were being kidnapped
as well. But why would the pill case be separated
from the head, Because it's weird. We only have a
torso we do not have a head. We don't have
any of the appendages. I think below the knee, right
miss at this point.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
Yeah, below the knee, you're missing, and you're missing the arms. Head.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
And here's the other part of this. Okay. That discovery
is in June of ninety seven, and it stops there
until April eleventh of twenty eleven. That's when police discovered dismembered,
skeletal human remains inside a plastic bag near Jones Beach
(29:54):
State Park. The victim was dubbed Jane Doe number three.
You mentioned the numbers a little bit ago because they
had so many things going on in this area.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
It's just what a job.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
In December twenty sixteen, Peaches and Jane Don number three
were positively identified through DNA analysis as being the same person.
Now they didn't identify the person, they merely had Okay,
we know that Peaches found in ninety seven. This is
(30:30):
the rest, this is more of her. Which again, now
I there are certain aspects to investigations that go beyond
the normal reach. And I think about this and I'm
thinking there are people who are laying awake at night
to this day because of what they've had to learn.
And tying those two together, separated by fourteen years, and
(30:53):
then add in the fact that now we also have
DNA analysis that led to the identification of Peaches as
the mother of baby Dough. She was found wearing gold
jewelry similar to that of her daughter. You've got a
(31:14):
body with no head, no arms, no legs from the
knees down, but you've got jewelry that ties Peaches to
baby Dough found fourteen years later.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Yikes, what a tie back. And look to you know,
to jump ahead slightly, we have these remains that are
found and here's where the rub is. I think, what
are the odds, Dave, what are the odds that you're
going to find disarticulated remains and we're talking these extremities,
(31:50):
these missing extremities, and a baby that are geographically adjacent
to some of these cases that are actually tied back
to Huremann allegedly. You know, what are the odds? You know,
people think that, you know, Long Island is like it's
(32:10):
an island. It's no, it's not. It's a it's kind
of a vast area. You know, when you get out there.
The idea that you would have remains that are connected
obviously to the torso found in the tupperware Inland, you
would find these remains immediately adjacent to the remains that
(32:32):
have been tied back to the Gilgo homicides is absolutely mondoid,
(32:54):
you know, Dave, Again, we're back on this topic of dismemberment,
which I don't think that we'll ever get away from.
But there are are multiple types of dismemberment and I
think that with Peaches, her case could either fall into
one or two categories. There is a category that is
(33:15):
actually referred to as defensive dismemberment, and what that means
is that you have a human remain that is unmanageable. Okay,
so you're going to take take the human remains apart,
and most of the time it's characterized by taking the
head off, the arms, and the legs, and then you
(33:36):
package separately, okay, because it makes the body manageable. Then
there is kind of a and that's called defensive dismemberment,
and there's a second one that arises from a type
of sexual gratification and it's referred to as offensive dismemberment.
(33:57):
Now there's like, I don't know, there's about six of
the things that are out there.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
But with those remains, the remains are kind of sexualized,
and you know, I think back to to the case again,
you know, I know I talked about it a lot,
but the mother up in the mother up in Seattle
that was dismembered by the tender date and she was
deposited in multiple trash trash receptacles. Thinking about that, and
(34:26):
I still to this day believed that was a sexualized dismemberment,
you know, that took those in that case.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
I think of the Black Dahlia when you think about
that type of dismemberment where she was killed and her
body was positioned in such a way to cause the
most shock, which did you know.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
What that's referred to as that's called a communication dismemberment.
And let me give you an example of that. That's
uh and I think that there's probably some sexualization with that,
but that's if you think about if you've ever seen
these images, and I hope that you haven't exposed yourself
to it. I've had to look at them. But these
images quite famously down in Mexico where they will almost
(35:06):
trust up a human being, tie them off of a
bridge and you might have so all of them hanging
in one place and the heads are gone. That's sending
a message. That's called communication dismemberment. Okay, so you've got
these these different little nuanced things. I hate using the term,
but these kind of and I don't know, you know,
you look at you look at the case with Peaches.
(35:30):
Her body is the body that was uh defiled if
you will, post mortem, all right, because you're talking about
the abuse of a corpse at this point in time.
But yet this little angel seemingly she's intact and she
has found adjacent Oh god, this is so horrible. As
(35:53):
it turns out, she's found adjacent to her mother's appendages. Okay,
along with these other bodies. And again that's you know,
it's just one of these weird little twists that comes
comes along every now and then, I think.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
October eighth, twenty twenty two, the Mobile, Alabama Police Department
announced on its official Facebook page that the FBI was
seeking relatives and friends of Elijah Liije Howell or Howard,
who was alive between nineteen twenty seven and nineteen sixty three.
(36:32):
All Right, a guy that lived in Pritchard, Alabama with
his wife Carrie, but died in Mobile, Alabama in nineteen
sixty three while living with Mss Lily May Wiggins Packer.
The FBI has been able to break this guy's entire
life down. But again, they put this out in twenty
twenty two. Joe, at that point, he'd already been dead
(36:56):
fifty years, yeah, I mean sixty years.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
Yeah. So that's that, I guess is what is the
most shocking to me.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
That they're looking for relatives of a man that died
before I was born. That's the part that this investigation
goes that deep.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Yeah. Let me put it to you this way. Do
you think they were on the scent at that point
in time.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Yeah, buddy, this is not a shot in the dark.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
That's the thing.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
It's like they knew, Okay, we've got this. We've just
got to tie the rest of it together.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
You know.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
It's you know what what the Coburger thing where they
knew that the DNA that they found on that the
knife sheath button snap, yeah, yeah, the buttons that this
that that didn't belong to the sun. You know, this
is they didn't tie it directly to Coburger. They tried
(37:54):
to do his dad and then had to go and
get Coburger's own stuff. So it's that's the part that
gets me, you know, so befuddled sometimes. And that's where
this one comes in again. You're talking about we want
the relatives of somebody that was dead in nineteen sixty
three to help us solve a crime that didn't happen
until nineteen ninety seven, and we didn't even have an
(38:18):
idea about it until twenty twenty two. Again, so that's
the part that gives me from the science, I guess yeah, it.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Does, and we have to think about you know, as
it turns out, when the identifications are done, both on
Tanya and Tatiana, you know, once they got the genetics back,
and you know, Dave, that they were able to determine
(38:46):
that Tatiana had actually been born March seventeenth, nineteen ninety five,
in Texas. Well, guess what. Guess what mama was doing
in nineteen ninety five. That was her last year of
enlistment in the Army and she was stationed in Texas
(39:06):
at that particular time. She had done hitches I think
in Georgia and South Carolina during her time period there,
so you get that tied back. I found an article
on and I recommend anybody, particularly veterans out there, if
you don't read military dot Com, you're doing yourself a disservice.
You need to read it. They did a great write
up on this case because you know, this victim, she
(39:30):
is an Army veteran, and you know, they kind of
did a deep dive there, so a big shout out
to them. But you know, interestingly enough, Tatiana was born
in Texas, and Dave, the most revelatory moment in this
whole case actually leads us back to Texas and back
to our friends at othrom in the Woodlands in Texas,
(39:52):
just north of Houston, and they were able to put
names not just with one, but with two.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Now Dave, it's again, Joe. I'm dumbfounded by what they're
capable of doing now because now because of again now
going back to Gilga, because the investigation that was going
on up there, trying to eliminate or put in the
(40:22):
you know, to we're bringing this. We've got a mom
and daughter team here. We've got to identify them. Do
they belong in this group or not? They do not,
And after they get identifications done, they're able to track
this down to a man, Andrew Dikes, and he's in Florida.
(40:44):
Andrew Dikes is actually the biological father of Tatiana Marie Dikes,
the two year old little girl found in twenty eleven,
the daughter of Tanya Jackson.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
You think about this and Diykes, I think that when
Tanya went missing, I think that Dikes was roughly in
his thirties. Well, I'm happy to say at this point
in Tom Dykes is now in custody. That's one of
the reasons, you know, we wanted to present this case today.
(41:23):
He's now in custody. He's waiting to be extradited back
up to New York because they've tied this in and
you really said it. I mean, you hit it right
on the head. This is going to be a domestic
related event. There's no doubt in my former military mind
about this. I think that that is that is going
to be the case. And we still don't have all
(41:47):
of the piece as yet, we don't know everything. We
still don't have a cause of death at this point, Tom,
and I don't know that we necessarily ever will because
once the defense attorneys get involved in this, if this
guy pleads not guilty, I think that that could be
(42:09):
a gigantic mystery. You know that leads who knows where.
But I can tell you this, one of the biggest
mysteries of all has been solved because now, just like
I always say, if you want answers, find out who
the dead are, because that bit of data will lead
(42:31):
you back to where you need to be. And if
you're really interested, I mean truly, truly interested. You know
a lot of people say they want to help. I
urge each and every person within the sound of my
voice to reach out to our friends at AUTHORM. And
this is how you do it. You go to DNA
(42:53):
solves dot com and they have an entire list of
cases that they are currently working. They could be cases
that you feel some kind of affinity for. Maybe geographically
you're located near where one of these remains were found.
You never know. One of the people that is unidentified
(43:17):
could possibly be somebody that you know, or somebody that
some of the relatives might live in proximity to you.
If you want to help out with this, all you
got to do is check out DNA Solves, because if
you do that, they offer you an opportunity give as
much as you can. They're not asking for huge chunks
of money. You'd be great if you had some, but
(43:39):
just a few bucks to push toward a specific case,
and you can do that. I think. In the words
of retired homicide detective Lieutenant Vernon Gebreth, he has an
opening in his book called Practical Homicide Investigations, and it's
this little stamp that's inside of it. And anybody that's
(44:01):
ever been through any training and death investigation has read
this book. It's very simple. It says we do God's
work and that's the case here. You want to help out,
you want to help out, think about it. I'm Joseph
Scott Morgan, and this is bodybags,
Bodydas, but Joseph's gotten more. There's a term of endearment
that's kind of an older term. Now don't hear a lot,
But I've always thought that it had kind of a
sweetness to it. It's a term that I think my
grandmother's generation would use, and this term of endearment generally
(00:23):
refers to a female. The term is actually a peach,
and it implies that someone is naturally sweet, they're kind,
there's someone that you would want to be around. For me,
that term means a lot. It means a lot because
(00:45):
I've actually gone out with my grandmother when I was little,
up around rust and Louisiana and picked these gigantic peaches.
My grandmother used to make peach ice cream. My wife
loves peaches. But today I'm going to talk about another
kind of peach. I'm going to talk about a peach,
(01:08):
or at least the image of it, that was tattooed
on a woman's body that for years we didn't know
who she was. And oh, by the way, the same
woman I had a child. We didn't know who that
child was either, And now we have identities of both
of them. And guess what, we now have a suspect
(01:34):
that is linked to their murders. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
and this is body backs. A couple of years back, Dave,
I was going up to the Hamptons. I guess it's
(01:54):
the first year that we did Hampton's. Who'd done it?
You didn't get to go with me the first time
you went this pastime though, and we I think you
would agree we had pretty good time, didn't we. It
was a blast, lovely people. I thought they were gonna
hear my accent and kick me out. UH from out
there on Long Island, say no, you have to leave.
But they were just some of the sweetest folks and
have always been very generous with us. And the first
(02:18):
time I went up there, I went up with UH
with Keimmy and Joe. Jack Oline met us at at
the airport. A litle Guardian's He is Joe's ah, former
homicide homicide sergeant and also cold case sergeant with NYPD
and just sweet man. And he to tell you how
(02:41):
what a good guy he is. He actually drove in
to La Guardia and picked Keimmy and I up at
LaGuardia to make the several hour trip. I didn't realize
this as far out to the Hampton's while I've been
up there, and he said, uh, you know in his
in his voice that's stinkily New York. He was like, hey, Joe,
I got a surprise for you guys. I was like, okay,
(03:03):
are we going to go eat like some clam chowder
or something? Because we actually did. He said, yeah, after
the clam chowder, we're gonna go. We're gonna go. I'm
gonna take you someplace special. Well, guess what, he's the
one that took you. Yeah, Joe did. And I didn't
know where I was going.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Everybody else because I know what you're talking about, Okay,
go ahead.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
I didn't know he did.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Yeah, it was Joe, and I had no idea. And like,
I look back over over my shoulder Kimmy in the
back seat. I'm thinking, there's he taking. I said, Well,
as it turns out, we wind up on this beautiful
suburban street with these neat, neat yards and we're looking
at these houses. They're kind of small, and he's like,
oh yeah, he said these houses in here. He says
(03:46):
one point five mili for these houses. And I'm looking
at these houses. I'm thinking they're really nice, they're really neat,
but there ain't nothing special about it. You know, in
Alabama you get a mansion for that. Until we are
in front of one particular house on Long Island and
it looked like, oh my lord, it looked like the
(04:08):
worst shack in the face of the planet, broken down, dirty.
And then all of a sudden, in my mind's I
realized where I was, where I was, and we were
parked in front of Rex Huermann's home, and how this
guy lived in this neighborhood without being physically thrown out
by all these people who apparently really work hard on
(04:29):
their houses. Because there was not a blade of grass
that was higher than anybody else's. It was like very
house proud. Oh boy, very house proud.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
I did not realize it was Joe that took you there.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Oh yeah, yeah, and he takes us he actually takes
us down the coast road, still heading down. Yeah yeah.
We went out to where the Gilga four were actually found.
Took us to go go beach. Because you know, I've
only talked about these things on the news. I didn't
really have a sense about it. And man, I tell
you what, when I got there, I realized that whoever
(05:02):
was doing these these horrible acts had to have very
specific knowledge about the train, about traffic movements, because they say, literally,
one of the hardest places to get around in the
US is down that two lane road headed out to
the Hamptons. During the summertime. It is blocked and locked
(05:23):
down very tight past you'd have to know where you
can turn around and all this stuff. So automatically now
I'm thinking somebody has to be a native that's going
out here. You know, there's some kind of connectivity. But
interestingly enough, Dave, the case that we're going to talk
about today is kind of an out here because for
years and years, this case that we had that we
(05:46):
are going to talk about has always been linked to
the GILG four or whoever the perpetrator was, to all
these other remains, And as it turns out, brother Dave
doesn't seem.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Like this is the case not even closed. And this
is one of the problems with not one of the
problems with this case. But you know, first things first,
there we're talking about Peaches, who was identified as one
of the Gilgo I need to say outliers, but her
name was already in there, as you know, a Doe,
a Jane Doe. We don't know who she is, Yeah,
(06:18):
I thank you, yeah yeah. And there was a toddler
and it didn't fit the mix. It did not that
the toddler did not fit into the idea of who
these other women were that were identified as the gil
Go for and beyond that they're.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Just not there.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
But geographically speaking, we're going to include them because of this. Now,
there are not just four or five or six Gilgo victims.
When you actually look in the general vicinity, I think
there's eleven. There are that many that could be attributed
to one killer. But it also could be that there's
been more than one person using this area as a
(06:58):
dumping ground and this case might just prove part of that.
Just to give you an idea. Peaches has been identified
as Tanya Jackson and baby Doe has been identified as
Tatiana Marie Dykes. Tatiana was only two years old, Tanya
(07:22):
twenty six and from Alabama. Tanya grew up in Alabama
and ended up in the military.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
She at the time of all of this.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Now backing up, you know, her body was discovered in
nineteen ninety seven, Tanya Jackson's body and it wasn't all
in one piece, Joe. And so I'm hoping that I'm
hoping today you can enlighten us as to how is
it from an investigation standpoint where you have somebody like
(07:54):
like Tanya and Tatiana, their bodies are found in this area,
they're deceased, they're tough to identify, but because we don't
have a name or a background or anything else, they
just kind of get lumped together with the others of
the Gilgos story, you know. And as I say that,
at one point, one thing out, you know, the one
(08:16):
of the girls who was her name is escape to
me right now. Her attorney has always been one of
the guys out in the forefront as one of the
Gilgo victims. And I don't think she is. I think
she was, you know, she was out on a call.
She was working in the sex trade, and she was
out there and we've got phone calls with her and
(08:36):
she's leaving and running up and down the street, and
her body is found. But it's nothing like the others.
And anyway, I think that's just a really really sad
death that happened. I don't think she's part of the
Gilgo murder spree here with humor mean.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
No, And that particular case, actually Joe took us to
that location as well. Yeah, where that whole progression took place.
And it's literally right by the beach. Kind of fascinating location.
The beach is immediately, you know, to your right, and
then you've got this I don't know, they'll call it
a tidle basin. I look at it, and I would
(09:15):
use the term probably a slew. It's got a lot
of marsh grass in there. There's all these bushes, it's
really thick. It's an area where this victim, that victim
that you're referring to, was actually found and her remains
were skeletal. Okay, so there's really never been a cause
(09:36):
of death that they've arrived at, you know, with her,
we just got a deceased female skeleton. Well that's kind
of obvious, right, deceased female skeleton. We have skeletonized remains
of a lady that was down there, and also her clothes,
some of her clothes they believe were there.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Shannon Gilbert, that's the name I was trying to think
of as Shannon Gilbert. I don't mean any disrespect.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
No, of course, hey man, and you need, you need
a playbill to keep up with all of these because
there's so many. And that's that goes to the confusion, right.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
I think without Shanning Gilbert's family, I really think that
without Shannon Gilbert's family that the gig story might have
gone away. It was her family that kept bringing it
back up. They kept going because they had the nine
one one. There was so much they had and they
were just and they believed she was part of that.
And I don't believe she was based on investigation. But
(10:28):
without her, I don't think you have human in jail.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Well. The other thing that has kept I think that
this case kind of are has kept the investigators and
the public and everybody else associated with it just wants
to get answers a lot of it. That has kept
things kind of handcuffed and fragmented. There's a lot of
corruption up there, Dave, there were yeah, oh my lord,
you know some of the stories that we heard up
(10:52):
in the Hamptons. You know, because I had no I
had not taken a look at the depth and breadth.
You know, I cover cases from well you and I
cover cases from all over America, all over the world. Okay,
and when we got up into kind of the granular detail.
And I've been on these task force before, all right,
when it comes to cereal serial crimes, and particularly back
(11:17):
in my day, many times the left hand doesn't know
what the right hand's doing. I think probably one of
the best portrayals of this in media is if you
go and you watch the movie Zodiac, where you've got
multiple police departments and this is back in the seventies,
(11:37):
where they're working cases that might have some similarities, and
I still don't I still don't buy into that every
one of those homicides is completely connected. I'm chasing rabbits here,
but I'm just trying to make the point that with
a task force, particularly if you add it's multi jurisdictional,
you've got one group of people that are let's just
say there are morals are dubious at best, that that
(12:03):
that throws such a wrench into an investigation, a series
of investigations that are so very complex day because if
you just look at the remains, you've got remains that
are in various states of decay. You've got remains that
have not just they're not just you're not just dealing
(12:24):
with anti mortem trauma. You're talking about postmartem trauma because
you've got some dismemberment going on, so you've got all
of these layers of complicated and you know, and then
you throw it into this really wet water environment, right,
you know, so how much it's not like you've got
like a it's not like John Wayne Gacy where you've
got all of the bodies buried beneath the house, right,
(12:46):
and you can go there and there's like that one
concentration and you begin to work that. I'm not saying
that was easy for those guys back in the seventies.
How I think you get to just yeah, or my
drift as to where I'm going here.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
And that was I'm glad you did, because with what
we're dealing with today, with Peaches and with Tanya and Tatiana,
a mother and daughter, a twenty six year old mom,
a military veteran and her two year old toddler, they
were lumped together, unidentified, but still lumped as possibly part
(13:19):
of this. And that's why I think of Shannon Gilbert
because I think without the investigation, without her family, none
of the other stuff would have come to the forefront,
because there wouldn't have been any pressure. But because of
Shannon Gilbert's family and the breaking of this case, it
allows for the justification. Now, just spend the money to
(13:41):
identify these other remains and clear them, either get them
as part of this or out of it. And thankfully
I looked over this case. Thankfully, Joe, that the the
technology and the people that wheeled it. It's amazing, I mean,
flat out amazing how they were able to identify Tanya
(14:04):
Jackson and Tatiana and by the way, identify not through
them directly, indirectly. There was actually an ad in a
paper in Mobile, Alabama, Joe when they were breaking it down,
and I'm not kidding you when I tell you that
they came back with a name, but it was somebody
(14:25):
who had died before I was born.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Think about that for a minute.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Yeah, that's how and that's where this science goes. That
they're able to get this piece of genetic you know,
this DNA, and they're able to determine that this is
related to this person that died in nineteen sixty three
and they found it on a body in nineteen ninety seven. Yeah,
(14:51):
and that immediately I'm thinking, now I know why I
didn't spend more time in math and science, because this
blows my mind. I can't figure it out. I can't
even I can't digest it without you know.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Well, yeah, and it does become it enters onto the
exponential plane here of thinking, you know, because it is
quite complex. However, I've got to tell you something. Complexity
in the world that we're living in now is not
(15:24):
quite as daunting as it might have been in the past,
particularly when it goes to our friends at authoring laboratories
(15:50):
many years ago. Dave, I gotta tell you the story
because I've told other people. I just I have to
put it on this public forum right now to give
you an idea about how tattoos help, or how they
used to help. Even More, it seems like, you know,
everyone has a tattoo. Now they're not as sexy as
(16:12):
they used to be. Necessarily, they're not unique, you know.
But I had a case, Dave, you'll appreciate this. I
had a case of a fellow who was a Native
American and he had come to New Orleans with and
I'm not going to mention the motorcycle club, but it
is one that is quite notorious. Had come to New
Orleans and he was in the back of a pickup
(16:35):
truck and he had been dropping acid and they were
traveling down this thoroughfare and in the midst of he's
standing up in the back of the people witness this.
He's standing up in the back of the pickup truck.
And do you remember, like those nineteen seventies pickup trucks
that had the four wheel drives that had those gigantic
(16:58):
roll bars on the back, you know, in the bed
with the big fog lights. That truck had one. This
rocket scientist decides to pitch himself over the side at
fifty five miles per hour. Okay, well he doesn't. He
doesn't pop up like a you know, some kind of
stunt roll that you would have seen on the television
show Man X or something.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
You know.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
He yeah, boy, that's a reference from the past, right Hey,
it does mounts Man. Yeah, Mike connors Man. Well, he's dead.
So we bring him in to do the autopsy. And
he is dressed. And I'm not talking about a Weekend
Warrior biker here. This guy is. This guy is serious.
You know, you can tell. He's got dirty jeans on.
(17:41):
He's got the engineer boots on that you see. You know,
the old engineer boots and black T shirts Harley T shirt.
What else right? And Dave, I took off his boots
in the morgue as I'm undressing his body, take your
socks off, and I noticed something on the dorsum of
(18:02):
his right foot that will stay with me forever and ever.
It was a tattoo. And on the the tattoo itself
was shaped like a toe tag, a full sized totag.
And he even had a string. It had a hole,
(18:22):
a hole that was part of the tattoo, and it
involved a string string went down tied around his big
toe with a bow. Somebody had done a lot. And
what a painful place to get a tattoo right on
top of your foot. And in the in the lines
on the on the top of the you know, on
(18:43):
the on the faux toe tag tattooed on his foot.
It had his full name, his date of birth, and
in big letters below it it said d O A.
That's one of the ways we got that body identified.
All right, My gosh, I want a tattoo.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
I might get that that's brilliant.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
It is kind of brilliant. But yeah, I mean, I've
seen it all with tattoos. But you know, there was
a guy I used to work with, a forensic pathologist
who at the time he was regarded and I know
people don't think this is a thing, but he was
regarded as in the post mortem world, in the forensic
pathology world, as one of the leading experts of tattoos
(19:28):
in our world. And the reason that's important is because
of identification. People don't understand that in the old days,
if you were going to be a tattoo artist, and
this is long before there were tattoo shops on every corner,
you know, you had to sit at the feet of
a master, right and they had, like they have their
(19:51):
own genealogies, Like I trained under this person and this
person and this person and the guy the pathologist that
I'm referring to. It had actually gone to this guy
that was considered a master that worked up in Baltimore,
and he had a gigantic disarticulated skeleton that was tattooed
down one side of his leg from like his ribcage
(20:11):
all the way down to his ankle. And this guy
had to work on it forever and ever. Wow, but
this guy knew his way around tattoos. He could look
at a tattoo and say, okay, this comes from this
particular artist. This is a point of origin. And before
we use things like DNA, we try to use anything
we could to get bodies identified. But Dave, when we
think about this case, yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Yeah, you would have used anything. It was still the
cross section of using DNA. I mean, I'm sure that
you were identifying certain things with DNA, but we're only
what two and a half years after OJ and that's
when most of us learned our basic science on DNA. Yes,
people of our generation anyway, outside of you, you know,
(20:52):
normal people. But anyway, he give me far too much.
Greatit front, I said. June twenty eighth, nineteen ninety seven,
a man and his daughter out for a stroll in
Hempstead Lake State Park in Lakeview, New York, discover the remains.
They don't discover an entire body. We're talking about a head,
both arms, both legs below the knee, all gone, severed, gone.
(21:17):
The torso is found in a rubber made container, along
with a red towel and a floral pillow case. It's
on the west side of Lake Drive. I'm going to
assume since that identifier was included in everything. I saw
that for those of you in that area of Lakeview,
New York, that means something. I know that oftentimes a
(21:38):
west side of this or that means something.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
So there you go.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
But they couldn't identify what they had, and so as
they're investigating, they find this very unique tattoo. It's of
a peach. And it's not just any peach, it's not
just something stamped. It's an actual artist that has done
some seriously good work. And in trying to identify the person,
(22:07):
the woman who they found parts of they run an ad.
Detectives have to run an ad in a national tattoo magazine.
They take a picture of the about and the way
it was explained to me, it was about two inch
square two inches two inches, that's it. And they take
a picture of the tattoo. It's a peach with a
(22:28):
bite taken out of it, some juice drops, and they
post this in this tattoo magazine nationwide, and sure enough,
a tattoo artist in Connecticut by the name of Steve
Cullen breaks the case because not only does he say
that's my work, he remembers the person, he remembers who
(22:53):
they were with. He remembers what they were talking about
and what he was told, and it was all of
that information. Joseph's got Morgan that the woman is in
Connecticut getting this tattoos. She's a young black woman. She's
on the outs with her significant other. They've had an argument.
So she's not in New York where she normally works
(23:15):
and lives. She's in Connecticut with family. I mean, that's
a lot of information from a tattoo guy.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Yeah, it is. It's and listen, that was not unusual.
You could go like both of the offices that I
worked in, we had a big book of unidentified flyers
that would be processed and you would see like certain
police departments would send these things out, you know, and
(23:40):
you would get them periodically, get them over. I think
they called it, what was it, hang on It was
a fact a telefax or whatever it was where you
got these clearer images back then. And they would have
and I know people have seen these. They would have
images of things like identifying marks. You would see scars,
pictures of scars, say, you'd see tattoos. Even I've seen
(24:04):
dental demonstrations before, like teeth that have certain caps or
crowns that are unique posted on there, and it's like
it's almost like a what's it called, you know, be
on the lookout kind of a BOLO for this individual
if they come through your office. And I think that
(24:25):
out of all the years that that I worked, I
think that maybe we found two of those flyers that
turned back, you know, to one to a particular case
that we were working. And it's not that it's not
that they don't work, it's just that they were kind
of taking a shotgun approach and you know, pushing these
things out. But you know, Dave, with that information, that
(24:47):
is monumental because you can take whatever kind of biological
data that you have remaining and you can begin to
source it. Right. You know, we we think about, well,
we want to try to retain this so that we
can go back maybe in the future if technology provides
(25:08):
a way where we can actually begin to understand who
this person might be genetically. Wow, And that's kind of
difficult because you know, beforehand, you know, before we had
you know, before we had a database with sex offenders
and that sort of thing, which is very specific. You know,
it's like, okay, well they're not on the list, you know,
(25:29):
let's dismiss this. But now the world, the world that
we live in now is this huge matrix. You know,
we've gone from zero to one thousand now miles per
hour relative to what you can do with the slightest
bit of biological data. And then you couple that, you know,
a few years later after these remains are found in
(25:52):
this plastic container, which, by the way, the state park
is unlike the other Gilgo Beach cases. Saying that the beach.
Now I'm not saying it's a long ways from the beach.
I remember what I said earlier about geographic familiarity. This
is a place that slightly is still on Long Island,
is slightly Inland, Okay, And it is a state park.
(26:14):
And there was a pond there, Okay, within the boundaries
of the state park. And that's where this thing was found,
this tub containing her remains and this pillow case and
what was it? It was pillow case and it.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Was well it said there was a red towel, blanket,
and then there was the floral pillow case. I always
found that fascinating that. Okay, if you're a criminal, why
would you leave something that is so specific? You know,
I mean, I'm just kind of curious a floral pillow case.
I wouldn't know what that means. But I most of
the women I've ever met or had a conversation with
(26:50):
in my life that were born women, they would know it.
They would recognize them. Oh yeah, you get that at
you know whatever store. I mean, they know that stuff.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
Well, you look at just the floor pattern on that
pillow case, and if it's got a tag inside of it,
that's something that can in fact be tracked down. And
there are a lot of people out there that work
in fabrics and textiles in forensics. They that's you know,
that's their residential you know, they make their money doing
those sorts of things. FBI has got an incredible database
for that sort of thing. Yeah, it's it's mind blowing
(27:20):
when you think about it, and you think about those
tags that are specific identifiers, and it seems like an
odd thing to leave behind because when you think pillow case. Now,
there have been times in my life where I have
had a mess at the house. I'm thinking dogs right
now or children throwing up, and I'm going to grab
the first thing that I can put my hands on.
If you got a linen closet where the towels are
(27:42):
all dirty. Oh, here's a pillow case. I grab it
and I clean up with that. I think the thing
here is to try to understand perhaps what was the
utility of the pillow case. If it's floral in pattern,
I can't imagine that that would be something that would
be used in a hotel or a motel. You know,
you would think they'd either be white or beige. They're
not going to have a pattern to them. And then
(28:03):
you go to this other item that's contained in there,
and what's contained on within the fabric of these things
as well? Is there not just potentially the victims DNA?
Is there some kind of other DNA that's there that
belongs to someone else? You know? Because look, she's been
down for a while, Dave, and she's inside the torso,
(28:25):
is inside of this container, you're going to have a
body that is greatly degraded. And one of the things
that you and I talk about many times is not
only do you have blood that results as a result
of either kind of seepage or maybe even trauma, but
you also get decompositional fluid as well. And it's kind
of complex. There's not a lot that you can derive
(28:48):
from it. Many times, So I know the inquiring minds
want to know. I'd want to know if there were
any kind of stained patterns, perhaps on the pillar case
in particular, it's harder to pick that up on a towel.
But let's just say, for instance, if somebody had been shot,
for instance, or maybe the pill case was used to
facilitate a suffocation you know, who knows, or maybe to
(29:11):
kind of blind this person as they were being kidnapped
as well. But why would the pill case be separated
from the head, Because it's weird. We only have a
torso we do not have a head. We don't have
any of the appendages. I think below the knee, right
miss at this point.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
Yeah, below the knee, you're missing, and you're missing the arms. Head.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
And here's the other part of this. Okay. That discovery
is in June of ninety seven, and it stops there
until April eleventh of twenty eleven. That's when police discovered dismembered,
skeletal human remains inside a plastic bag near Jones Beach
(29:54):
State Park. The victim was dubbed Jane Doe number three.
You mentioned the numbers a little bit ago because they
had so many things going on in this area.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
It's just what a job.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
In December twenty sixteen, Peaches and Jane Don number three
were positively identified through DNA analysis as being the same person.
Now they didn't identify the person, they merely had Okay,
we know that Peaches found in ninety seven. This is
(30:30):
the rest, this is more of her. Which again, now
I there are certain aspects to investigations that go beyond
the normal reach. And I think about this and I'm
thinking there are people who are laying awake at night
to this day because of what they've had to learn.
And tying those two together, separated by fourteen years, and
(30:53):
then add in the fact that now we also have
DNA analysis that led to the identification of Peaches as
the mother of baby Dough. She was found wearing gold
jewelry similar to that of her daughter. You've got a
(31:14):
body with no head, no arms, no legs from the
knees down, but you've got jewelry that ties Peaches to
baby Dough found fourteen years later.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Yikes, what a tie back. And look to you know,
to jump ahead slightly, we have these remains that are
found and here's where the rub is. I think, what
are the odds, Dave, what are the odds that you're
going to find disarticulated remains and we're talking these extremities,
(31:50):
these missing extremities, and a baby that are geographically adjacent
to some of these cases that are actually tied back
to Huremann allegedly. You know, what are the odds? You know,
people think that, you know, Long Island is like it's
(32:10):
an island. It's no, it's not. It's a it's kind
of a vast area. You know, when you get out there.
The idea that you would have remains that are connected
obviously to the torso found in the tupperware Inland, you
would find these remains immediately adjacent to the remains that
(32:32):
have been tied back to the Gilgo homicides is absolutely mondoid,
(32:54):
you know, Dave, Again, we're back on this topic of dismemberment,
which I don't think that we'll ever get away from.
But there are are multiple types of dismemberment and I
think that with Peaches, her case could either fall into
one or two categories. There is a category that is
(33:15):
actually referred to as defensive dismemberment, and what that means
is that you have a human remain that is unmanageable. Okay,
so you're going to take take the human remains apart,
and most of the time it's characterized by taking the
head off, the arms, and the legs, and then you
(33:36):
package separately, okay, because it makes the body manageable. Then
there is kind of a and that's called defensive dismemberment,
and there's a second one that arises from a type
of sexual gratification and it's referred to as offensive dismemberment.
(33:57):
Now there's like, I don't know, there's about six of
the things that are out there.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
But with those remains, the remains are kind of sexualized,
and you know, I think back to to the case again,
you know, I know I talked about it a lot,
but the mother up in the mother up in Seattle
that was dismembered by the tender date and she was
deposited in multiple trash trash receptacles. Thinking about that, and
(34:26):
I still to this day believed that was a sexualized dismemberment,
you know, that took those in that case.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
I think of the Black Dahlia when you think about
that type of dismemberment where she was killed and her
body was positioned in such a way to cause the
most shock, which did you know.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
What that's referred to as that's called a communication dismemberment.
And let me give you an example of that. That's
uh and I think that there's probably some sexualization with that,
but that's if you think about if you've ever seen
these images, and I hope that you haven't exposed yourself
to it. I've had to look at them. But these
images quite famously down in Mexico where they will almost
(35:06):
trust up a human being, tie them off of a
bridge and you might have so all of them hanging
in one place and the heads are gone. That's sending
a message. That's called communication dismemberment. Okay, so you've got
these these different little nuanced things. I hate using the term,
but these kind of and I don't know, you know,
you look at you look at the case with Peaches.
(35:30):
Her body is the body that was uh defiled if
you will, post mortem, all right, because you're talking about
the abuse of a corpse at this point in time.
But yet this little angel seemingly she's intact and she
has found adjacent Oh god, this is so horrible. As
(35:53):
it turns out, she's found adjacent to her mother's appendages. Okay,
along with these other bodies. And again that's you know,
it's just one of these weird little twists that comes
comes along every now and then, I think.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
October eighth, twenty twenty two, the Mobile, Alabama Police Department
announced on its official Facebook page that the FBI was
seeking relatives and friends of Elijah Liije Howell or Howard,
who was alive between nineteen twenty seven and nineteen sixty three.
(36:32):
All Right, a guy that lived in Pritchard, Alabama with
his wife Carrie, but died in Mobile, Alabama in nineteen
sixty three while living with Mss Lily May Wiggins Packer.
The FBI has been able to break this guy's entire
life down. But again, they put this out in twenty
twenty two. Joe, at that point, he'd already been dead
(36:56):
fifty years, yeah, I mean sixty years.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
Yeah. So that's that, I guess is what is the
most shocking to me.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
That they're looking for relatives of a man that died
before I was born. That's the part that this investigation
goes that deep.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Yeah. Let me put it to you this way. Do
you think they were on the scent at that point
in time.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Yeah, buddy, this is not a shot in the dark.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
That's the thing.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
It's like they knew, Okay, we've got this. We've just
got to tie the rest of it together.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
You know.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
It's you know what what the Coburger thing where they
knew that the DNA that they found on that the
knife sheath button snap, yeah, yeah, the buttons that this
that that didn't belong to the sun. You know, this
is they didn't tie it directly to Coburger. They tried
(37:54):
to do his dad and then had to go and
get Coburger's own stuff. So it's that's the part that
gets me, you know, so befuddled sometimes. And that's where
this one comes in again. You're talking about we want
the relatives of somebody that was dead in nineteen sixty
three to help us solve a crime that didn't happen
until nineteen ninety seven, and we didn't even have an
(38:18):
idea about it until twenty twenty two. Again, so that's
the part that gives me from the science, I guess yeah, it.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Does, and we have to think about you know, as
it turns out, when the identifications are done, both on
Tanya and Tatiana, you know, once they got the genetics back,
and you know, Dave, that they were able to determine
(38:46):
that Tatiana had actually been born March seventeenth, nineteen ninety five,
in Texas. Well, guess what. Guess what mama was doing
in nineteen ninety five. That was her last year of
enlistment in the Army and she was stationed in Texas
(39:06):
at that particular time. She had done hitches I think
in Georgia and South Carolina during her time period there,
so you get that tied back. I found an article
on and I recommend anybody, particularly veterans out there, if
you don't read military dot Com, you're doing yourself a disservice.
You need to read it. They did a great write
up on this case because you know, this victim, she
(39:30):
is an Army veteran, and you know, they kind of
did a deep dive there, so a big shout out
to them. But you know, interestingly enough, Tatiana was born
in Texas, and Dave, the most revelatory moment in this
whole case actually leads us back to Texas and back
to our friends at othrom in the Woodlands in Texas,
(39:52):
just north of Houston, and they were able to put
names not just with one, but with two.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Now Dave, it's again, Joe. I'm dumbfounded by what they're
capable of doing now because now because of again now
going back to Gilga, because the investigation that was going
on up there, trying to eliminate or put in the
(40:22):
you know, to we're bringing this. We've got a mom
and daughter team here. We've got to identify them. Do
they belong in this group or not? They do not,
And after they get identifications done, they're able to track
this down to a man, Andrew Dikes, and he's in Florida.
(40:44):
Andrew Dikes is actually the biological father of Tatiana Marie Dikes,
the two year old little girl found in twenty eleven,
the daughter of Tanya Jackson.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
You think about this and Diykes, I think that when
Tanya went missing, I think that Dikes was roughly in
his thirties. Well, I'm happy to say at this point
in Tom Dykes is now in custody. That's one of
the reasons, you know, we wanted to present this case today.
(41:23):
He's now in custody. He's waiting to be extradited back
up to New York because they've tied this in and
you really said it. I mean, you hit it right
on the head. This is going to be a domestic
related event. There's no doubt in my former military mind
about this. I think that that is that is going
to be the case. And we still don't have all
(41:47):
of the piece as yet, we don't know everything. We
still don't have a cause of death at this point, Tom,
and I don't know that we necessarily ever will because
once the defense attorneys get involved in this, if this
guy pleads not guilty, I think that that could be
(42:09):
a gigantic mystery. You know that leads who knows where.
But I can tell you this, one of the biggest
mysteries of all has been solved because now, just like
I always say, if you want answers, find out who
the dead are, because that bit of data will lead
(42:31):
you back to where you need to be. And if
you're really interested, I mean truly, truly interested. You know
a lot of people say they want to help. I
urge each and every person within the sound of my
voice to reach out to our friends at AUTHORM. And
this is how you do it. You go to DNA
(42:53):
solves dot com and they have an entire list of
cases that they are currently working. They could be cases
that you feel some kind of affinity for. Maybe geographically
you're located near where one of these remains were found.
You never know. One of the people that is unidentified
(43:17):
could possibly be somebody that you know, or somebody that
some of the relatives might live in proximity to you.
If you want to help out with this, all you
got to do is check out DNA Solves, because if
you do that, they offer you an opportunity give as
much as you can. They're not asking for huge chunks
of money. You'd be great if you had some, but
(43:39):
just a few bucks to push toward a specific case,
and you can do that. I think. In the words
of retired homicide detective Lieutenant Vernon Gebreth, he has an
opening in his book called Practical Homicide Investigations, and it's
this little stamp that's inside of it. And anybody that's
(44:01):
ever been through any training and death investigation has read
this book. It's very simple. It says we do God's
work and that's the case here. You want to help out,
you want to help out, think about it. I'm Joseph
Scott Morgan, and this is bodybags,
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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