Home » Long Island Serial Killer Locations » This Location

The site where Peaches' body was dumped

Crime Scene Location in Lakeview, New York, United States

On June 28th, 1997, the torso of an unidentified woman called Peaches was discovered at this section of Hempstead Lake State Park in Lakeview, New York.

Her killer had put her remains into a green Rubbermaid "rough tote" container and partially covered it with a black plastic bag. He then pulled over to the side of Lake Drive and dumped the container in this wooded area.

Long Island serial killer

The unidentified woman is believed to be a victim of the Long Island serial killer (LISK).

She was nicknamed Peaches because she had a tattoo of a peach on her left breast.

The authorities estimated that the victim 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.

Peaches also had a young child

In December of 2010, the authorities discovered the remains of four sex workers at Gilgo Beach.

This shocking find led to a large-scale search of the surrounding area.

On April 4th, 2011, the body of a young girl was discovered near Overlook Beach. The toddler, who remains unidentified to this day, was given the nickname Baby Doe.

Seven days after Baby Doe was found, Peaches' arms and legs were discovered inside of a plastic bag near Jones Beach State Park.

The two sites are 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 Peaches was the mother of Baby Doe.

He went to great lengths to hide her identity

The Long Island serial killer went to great lengths to hinder Peaches' 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 "LISK" may have dumped it at a third, unknown location.

Sex worker

The police believe that Peaches may have been a sex worker who brought her toddler with her while she was meeting clients.

In one interview, former Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer stated that they spoke to many escorts, most of whom agreed that the practice was very common.

If she did bring her toddler with her, then it suggests that she was desperate and living by herself, with no partner or family to help her. For example, she might have been estranged from her family or living far away from her hometown.

If this is true, then her relatives might have been completely unaware that she had given birth to a child.

This would explain how a young woman and her daughter were able to vanish without anyone reporting them missing.

Relatives of some of the other victims recalled how the police were very hesitant to file a missing person report. This was most likely due to the fact that sex workers have a tendency to drift from one city to the next.

If one of Peaches' relatives did attempt to report her missing, then it is possible that they were also met with similar foot-dragging and assurances that she would eventually show up again.

She has DNA relatives in Alabama

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.

"His relatives may be able to assist in the case of a woman and child found in another state."

Elijah used the surnames "Howell" and "Howard". He was born on June 13th, 1927, in Frankville, Alabama. However, it seems as though he spent most of his adult life in Prichard, Alabama.

In 1950, he was living with his wife, Carrie, in the Whistler neighborhood of Prichard. During the 1960s, he lived at 616 Garrison Avenue.

When he passed away in 1963, he was in the company of a neighbor named Lillie Mae Packer (nee Wiggins), who lived at 624 Garrison Avenue.

Elijah and Lillie Mae died on October 31st, 1963. Their bodies were found in a car off Highway 45, near Atmore Street in Mobile. The pair died from the combined effects of ethanol (alcohol) and carbon monoxide poisoning.

At the time of his death, Elijah was working as a construction worker for Sullivan Concrete Company.

According to ancestry records, his mother, Lueanna, and his brother, Sid Howell, lived in Millry, Alabama.

Anyone with information about Elijah "Lige" is being asked to call 1-800-call-FBI or visit the FBI's tip website.

Peaches crime scene

Below, you will find the address and the GPS coordinates for this location.

GPS coordinates

The latitude and longitude coordinates for the site are:

40.672704, -73.647794

Map

To view directions on how to get there, you can use the Google Maps shortcut below:

Google Maps Link

Address

The full address for this location is:

Hempstead Lake State Park
Lake Drive
Lakeview
New York
NY 11552
United States

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.

Photos

Photos of the site and other related images.

Peaches crime scene

This is a police photograph of the crime scene from 1997. The photographer was standing on Lake Drive, facing southward towards Peninsula Boulevard.

The Google Street View image at the bottom was taken in August of 2022.

As you can see, the treeline 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 tire tracks in the crime scene photo belong to the Long Island serial killer.

Hempstead Lake State Park

LISK 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.

In the bottom right-hand corner, you can see a photograph of two detectives at the crime scene. This was taken by a photographer who was standing outside the police perimeter.

The authorities believe that Peaches 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. McDonald Pond is visible in the top-left corner.

Inset is a crime scene photo of the green container that Peaches' torso was dumped in.

On June 28th, 1997, a local Lynbrook resident named Shel Basch was fishing at this pond with his daughter, a family friend, and the friend's kids. That Saturday, the Department of Environmental Conservation was holding a fishing clinic for children at McDonald Pond.

After some time passed and they failed to catch anything, the kids started to become bored and restless.

At around 1 p.m., the group decided to wander off and walk northbound along one of the park trails. However, as they were walking along the trail, Basch smelled a rotten odor coming from the wooded area beside them.

After venturing off the trail to investigate, he spotted a green "recycling can" that was partially covered by a black plastic bag. According to Basch, the area was swarming with flies.

After realizing that it probably contained something that was dead, he went back to McDonald Pond to 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.

Map

This map shows the various locations where the Long Island serial killer dumped the remains of Peaches and her child. We have also included the Gilgo Four site as a reference.

As you can see, he used three different dump sites during the crime.

Baby Doe's jewelry

Baby Doe was wearing two gold hoop earrings and one 16-inch chain.

Peaches' jewelry

The gold bracelets above were found on Peaches' legs and arms.

Bracelet

The bracelet was a gold "XO" link bracelet (top-left corner).

Judging by similar bracelets that we found on other jewelry websites, this X and O design seems to have been extremely popular during the 1990s.

According to former Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer, this design was so common that it was virtually impossible to track down.

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.

LISK placed her torso inside a green Rubbermaid container that had the words "Keepers" and "Rough Tote" written on it.

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 Peaches' legs and arms inside of a plastic bag at this roadside in Jones Beach State Park. The bag was found 1.5 miles east of the Jones Beach tower. It was less than 30 feet away from Ocean Parkway.

Note that the Ocean Parkway Coastal Greenway did not exist in 1997.

Coordinates: 40.600665, -73.478311

Google Maps Link

Baby Doe

The remains of Baby Doe were discovered at a site that is roughly 575 feet (175 meters) east of the entrance to Overlook Beach. The young girl's body was wrapped in a blanket. There were no visible signs of trauma.

Baby Doe was found just 250 feet away from the remains of a sex worker named Valerie Mack.

The Long Island serial killer dumped their remains in the same general area—roughly three years apart.

Coordinates: 40.637552, -73.332874

Google Maps Link

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."

This location belongs to the following categories:

Crime Scenes Serial Killers Long Island Serial Killer Locations Unsolved Cases