A retired Army veteran pleaded not guilty Thursday in the 1997 killing of an Alabama woman whose remains were found near the victims of Long Island’s infamous Gilgo Beach killings. Andrew Dykes, who had also served as a Tennessee state trooper and a corrections officer, was charged with second-degree murder in the killing of Tanya Denise Jackson, a fellow military veteran with whom he had a child outside of his marriage, according to prosecutors on Long Island.
Some of Jackson’s remains were found when investigators were combing an ocean parkway near Gilgo Beach in what would become an investigation into women murdered in the area. Another man has been charged in several of those killings, and prosecutors now say Jackson’s death was a different kind of tragedy.
“Tanya didn’t meet her end at the hands of a serial killer,” Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly said after the hearing in Mineola court. “She was a victim of horrifying violence by a person she trusted.”
Members of Jackson’s family stood alongside Donnelly and other law enforcement officials but declined to comment. Dykes, 66, of Florida, barely spoke during the brief arraignment before he was ordered held in custody. His next court date is Jan. 16. Dykes’ lawyer, Joseph Lo Piccolo, described his client after the hearing as a “law-abiding” citizen these past 30 years.
“He’s a father. He led a life that many would respect in law enforcement, in the military,” Lo Piccolo said, adding that he expected to challenge the DNA evidence that prosecutors say link his client to the killing.
Prosecutor Ania Pulaski said in court that Dykes was a military instructor specializing in anatomy and physiology at the time of Jackson’s killing. She said he possessed “both the knowledge of anatomy and the operating room experience” to dismember Jackson’s body with “surgical precision.”
Prosecutors say investigators had been surveilling Dykes in Florida last year when they recovered DNA from a plastic cup with a straw that he had discarded. The DNA matched semen found on Jackson’s body. Jackson and Dykes met while stationed at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, and had a relationship while Dykes was still married, according to Donnelly’s office.
They had a child, Tatiana Marie, and Dykes was listed as her father on her birth certificate.
When Dykes was transferred to Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, prosecutors say he helped the Alabama native and veteran of the Gulf War lease an apartment nearby to live with their toddler. The 2-year-old daughter was found killed on Long Island, but Donnelly said prosecutors do not yet have evidence to charge Dykes, who was arrested earlier this month in Tampa, in the death.
Jackson’s body was found in a container in a state park on Long Island in 1997, her body dismembered and unidentifiable beyond a tattoo of a peach. Her daughter’s body and some more of Jackson’s remains were not found until 2011.
Then this past April Nassau County police revealed they had identified Jackson as the mother through advanced DNA and genealogy research. Investigators had for years nicknamed her “Peaches” for her tattoo and her daughter as “Baby Doe.”
A total of 10 sets of human remains were eventually found near Gilgo Beach.
Rex Heuermann, a married father who lived in nearby Massapequa, has been charged in seven of the killings. The Long Island architect has maintained his innocence as he remains in custody awaiting trial.
Police have long suggested that some of the remains found off Gilgo Beach were likely victims of a serial killer but that there was also evidence the remote area had been a dumping ground for more than one murderer.
“It’s a wasteland out there,” Donnelly agreed Thursday. “It’s probably a good place to drop a body.”
