The site where Tanya Denise Jackson was found
Crime Scene Location in Lakeview, New York
This is the location where Tanya Denise Jackson was found.
It is situated at Hempstead Lake State Park in Lakeview, New York.
Jackson was a murder victim whose torso was discovered on Saturday, June 28th, 1997. She was nicknamed "Peaches Doe" until the Nassau County Police Department publicly identified her in April 2025.

Jackson's killer placed her dismembered remains in a green Rubbermaid tote container and partially covered it with a black plastic bag. He then pulled over to the side of Lake Drive and dumped it in this wooded area.

Long Island serial killer
Jackson (26) is long believed to be the third victim of the Long Island serial killer (LISK). However, Nassau officials have yet to rule out the possibility that she is unconnected to the Gilgo Beach case.
She was nicknamed "Peaches" because she had a tattoo of a peach on her left breast.
Prior to her identification, the authorities estimated that she was an African-American or mixed-race woman who was between the ages of 16 and 30. She had a 6-inch scar on her abdomen that may have been caused by a C-section or another surgical procedure.
The medical examiner estimated that the victim died approximately three days before the discovery, which would have been Wednesday, June 25th.

Jackson had a young daughter
In December 2010, the authorities uncovered the skeletal remains of four sex workers near Gilgo Beach on Jones Beach Island.
This discovery led to a large-scale search of the bushes along Ocean Parkway.
On April 4th, 2011, the body of an infant female was discovered near Overlook Beach. The toddler, who was recently identified as 2-year-old Tatiana Marie Dykes, was commonly referred to as "Baby Doe".
Seven days after Tatiana was found, Jackson's arms and legs were discovered inside a plastic bag near Jones Beach State Park.
The two sites are situated along the same stretch of highway, just eight miles apart.

DNA testing linked the arms and legs to the torso that had been dumped at Hempstead Lake State Park in 1997. It also proved that Jackson was Tatiana's mother.
The killer went to great lengths to hide Jackson's identity
The killer went to great lengths to hinder Jackson's identification.
Not only did he dismember her body and dump it at two different sites that were 14 miles apart, he also went out of his way to separate the young mother from her child's remains.
Furthermore, the victim's skull is still missing. This suggests that the killer used a fourth location following the murder.
Sex worker
The police have expressed their belief that "Peaches" may have been a sex worker who brought her toddler with her while she was meeting clients.
During one interview, former Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer said that investigators spoke to many escorts, all of whom agreed that the practice was very common.

In April 2025, Nassau officials said that Jackson was living in Brooklyn at the time of her disappearance and that she was "possibly" working at a doctor's office. However, it remains unclear whether they have tracked down the office in question or established a clear timeline of her employment.
Unfortunately, little is known about her movements in the weeks and months leading up to her murder. At the time, she was a single mother who was estranged from her family in Alabama.
Identification
On October 7th, 2022, the FBI made a public appeal in which they included a photograph of Peaches' tattoo and asked relatives of a man named Elijah "Lige" Howard to come forward.

Following the appeal, the authorities identified Jackson and her daughter, Tatiana, as a possible match. The following year, they confirmed their identifications by carrying out further DNA tests with their relatives.
Jackson was born on October 22nd, 1970, in Mobile, Alabama. She served in the U.S. army between 1993 and 1995. In 1994, she fell pregnant with her daughter, Tatiana. Tatiana was born on March 17th, 1995, in Texas. The child's biological father, Andrew Dykes, has been contacted and is being "cooperative".
Tanya Denise Jackson crime scene
The address and the GPS coordinates for this location are as follows:
Address
Lake Drive, Lakeview, New York, NY 11552, USA
GPS coordinates
The latitude and longitude coordinates for the site are:
40.672848, -73.647728
Directions
The site is known as Hempstead Lake State Park. The torso was dumped in a wooded area that is 200 feet north of McDonald Pond.
Details about the general area
Lakeview is situated in Hempstead, Nassau County.
Photos
Photos of the site and other related images.
Crime scene

This police photograph of the crime scene was taken in 1997. The photographer was standing on Lake Drive, facing southward towards Peninsula Boulevard.
The Google Street View image at the bottom was captured in August 2022.
As you can see, the treeline at the side of Hempstead Lake State Park has been trimmed back.
Notably, the street lights that exist today were not present back in 1997. This means that this particular stretch of road would have been pretty dark at night.
It is unknown whether the tire tracks in the crime scene photo belong to the serial killer.
Hempstead Lake State Park

The killer dumped the container in a wooded area that was roughly 200 yards north of Peninsula Boulevard.
Using Street View and the Google Maps measurement tool, we were able to narrow down the dump site to this general area.
The authorities estimated that Jackson was murdered less than three days before her body was discovered. This means that she probably went missing at some point between June 25th (Wednesday) and June 27th, 1997 (Friday).
Aerial image

This is an aerial image of the wooded area at Hempstead Lake State Park in Lakeview. McDonald Pond is visible in the top-left corner. In the bottom-right corner, we've added a crime scene photograph of the green container that was used to conceal the victim's torso.
On June 28th, 1997, the Department of Environmental Conservation held a fishing clinic for children at McDonald Pond.
In attendance that Saturday were Lynbrook resident Shel Basch, his daughter, a family friend, and his friend's kids.
After some time passed and the group failed to catch anything, the children became bored and restless.
At around 1 p.m., they decided to wander away from the fishing clinic and walk northbound along the trail beside Lake Drive. However, as they were walking along the trail, Basch smelled a strong odor coming from the wooded area on his left.
After venturing into the woods to investigate, he saw a green container that had been partially covered by a black plastic bag. At the time, the area was swarming with flies.
Upon realizing that something dead was inside the container, he decided to return to McDonald Pond and fetch one of the DEC officers from the fishing clinic.
When they returned to the scene, the DEC officer ripped a section of the plastic bag and saw the left side of a bloated human torso.
Tatiana Marie Dykes' jewelry

Tatiana Marie Dykes (Baby Doe) was wearing two gold hoop earrings and a 16-inch chain.
Map

This map shows the various locations where the killer dumped the remains of Tanya Denise Jackson (Peaches) and Tatiana Marie Dykes (Baby Doe). We have included the Gilgo Four site as a reference.
As you can see, he used three different dump sites during the crime. He may have also used a fourth site, as the victim's skull has never been recovered.
Jackson's jewelry

The gold-colored bracelets above were found on Jackson's legs and arms. This jewelry was extremely common, making it impossible to trace.
Bracelet

The bracelet was a gold "XO" link bracelet (top-left corner). Judging by similar bracelets that we found on jewelry websites, this "X and O" design was extremely popular during the 1990s.
Evidence photos

The victim had a tattoo of a heart-shaped peach with a bite taken out of it. Two green leaves can be seen on either side. The killer placed her torso inside a green Rubbermaid Keepers "rough tote" container and then covered it with plastic bags.
Rough tote containers are used to store bulky items such as household items and tools. They are marketed for heavy-duty use. A pillowcase and a red towel were also found inside the container. The design of the pillowcase looks similar to a vintage Wamsutta "Supercale Coordinates" "80s pattern" fabric.
Jones Beach State Park

On April 11th, 2011, a search team discovered Jackson's legs and arms at this roadside in Jones Beach State Park. The remains were found about 1.5 miles east of the Jones Beach tower.
Her killer had wrapped her extremities in a plastic bag and thrown them into the bushes, roughly 30 feet north of Ocean Parkway.
Baby Doe

The skeletal remains of Tatiana (Baby Doe) were discovered at a site that is roughly 575 feet (175 meters) east of the entrance to Overlook Beach. There were no visible signs of trauma.
The infant's body was wrapped in a blanket. It is unclear whether this blanket was part of the same set as the pillowcase in the Rubbermaid container.
Tatiana was found just 250 feet away from the partial remains of a sex worker named Valerie Mack. However, markers on the roadside indicate that the killer, or killers, stopped within 180 feet of each other.
The killer, or killers, had dumped their remains in the same general area—roughly three years apart.
Vernon Geberth

Retired NYPD Lieutenant-Commander and author, Vernon Geberth, spoke about Peaches' case in the documentary The Killing Season:
"If you get called to do a trick and you have nobody to watch the baby, it's not unlikely that you will take the baby with you. Or maybe you'll have a significant other come with you to watch the baby while you do the trick, and then you go home.
With a serial killer... no one's going home."
As of yet, there is no evidence linking Jackson to the sex trade. However, very little is known about her activities in Brooklyn.
Lakeview

This Google Street View image of Lake Drive was taken in April 2023.
Back in 1997, the treeline was much closer to the road. There were also no streetlights.
The killer pulled his vehicle over onto the shoulder and then tossed the container into the bushes.
Jackson and her daughter are the only known Black Gilgo Beach victims. Furthermore, Jackson's torso was dumped markedly further west than the rest of the victims, in an area that doesn't seem to have any other connections to the Gilgo case. This is the only known dump site outside of Gilgo or Manorville.
Interestingly, Lakeview is predominantly African American (84.95% in the 2000 US Census). In fact, it has the highest percentage of Black residents on Long Island.
During an interview with the Daily Blu in December 2013, former SCPD Commissioner Richard Dormer said that the Long Island serial killer (LISK) is methodical and puts effort into covering his tracks.
This raises the possibility that he purposely selected this location in an effort to mislead the investigation. In other words, he may have wanted them to believe that this unidentifiable Black female was from Lakeview or that she had been killed by someone who lived there.
Tattoo

Image source: Newsday
Judging by newspaper archives, Peaches Doe's murder didn't garner a huge amount of attention at the time (this was long before it became apparent that Long Island had an unidentified serial killer).
A few newspaper articles were published in the days following the killing. However, they were nowhere near the front page.
For example, the clipping above appeared on page 39 in the July 1st, 1997, edition of Newsday.
The police published a photograph of the victim's tattoo in the local newspaper in the hope that someone would recognize it.
Following this development, LISK started concealing his victims' tattoos—a sign that he may have read this article and learned from his mistake. If this is true, then he was paying close enough attention to see the public appeal.
This location belongs to the following categories:
Crime ScenesSerial KillersLong Island Serial Killer LocationsUnsolved CasesClosest Locations
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