MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) — A retired Army veteran pleaded not guilty Thursday in the 1997 killing of a young mother that had long been tied to an infamous string of murders near Long Island's Gilgo Beach.
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 26-year-old fellow military veteran whom he’d fathered a child with outside of his marriage, prosecutor Ania Pulaski said in Nassau County court in Mineola on Long Island.
The 66-year-old Florida resident had been a military instructor specializing in anatomy and physiology at the time of the killing, meaning he possessed “both the knowledge of anatomy and the operating room experience” to dismember Jackson’s body with “surgical precision,” she said.
“Tanya didn’t meet her end at the hands of a serial killer,” Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly said after the hearing, alongside members of Jackson’s family who declined to comment. “She was a victim of horrifying violence by a person she trusted.”
Dykes, dressed in a gray sweatsuit, 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,” he said.
Lo Piccolo said he expected to challenge the DNA evidence prosecutors say link his client to the killing.
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.
The two 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 Jackson, 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 then-2-year-old daughter.
The toddler was also 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 killing.
Prosecutors said Tanya Jackson, a 26-year-old Alabama native and veteran of the Gulf War, had been living in Brooklyn with her daughter at the time of her disappearance and was largely estranged from her family.
Jackson’s body was found in a container at Hempstead Lake State Park in 1997, her body dismembered and long unidentifiable beyond a tattoo of a peach.
Her daughter’s body and some more of Jackson’s remains were not found until 2011 when investigators were combing an ocean parkway near Gilgo Beach as part of a sprawling investigation into mostly female sex workers who had disappeared in the area.
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.
Police have long said some of the remains 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 great place to dump a body.”
Rex Heuermann, a married father who lived near Gilgo Beach, was eventually charged in seven of the killings. The Long Island architect has maintained his innocence as he remains in custody awaiting trial.