On June 28, 1997, a hiker walking through Hempstead Lake State Park in Lakeview, Nassau County, New York, discovered the dismembered torso of a young woman inside a green plastic Rubbermaid storage container. On her left breast was a distinctive, professionally rendered tattoo: a reddish-yellow peach with a bite taken out of it, accompanied by two leaves and two dripping droplets. Fourteen years later, the discovery of a female toddler along Ocean Parkway tied "Peaches" irrevocably to the Long Island Serial Killer.
Discovery, Tattoo Morphology & The Ocean Parkway Toddler
The torso had been decapitated and the arms and legs severed at the joints. The victim was an African American female between 16 and 30 years old, 5 feet 5 inches tall, who had given birth to a child during her lifetime.
On April 11, 2011, during the expanding search of brush along Ocean Parkway in Nassau County, searchers recovered the skeletal remains of an unidentified Black female toddler, aged 16 to 24 months, wrapped in a blanket. Subsequent DNA testing conducted by the New York State Police Forensic Investigation Center established that the toddler was the biological daughter of Peaches. Mother and child had both been murdered and dumped miles apart.
| Date / Period | Jurisdiction / Entity | Forensic Event & Chain-of-Custody Record |
|---|---|---|
| June 28, 1997 | Lakeview, Nassau Co., NY | Dismembered torso found in Rubbermaid container with peach tattoo; NamUs UP11652. |
| Apr 11, 2011 | Ocean Parkway, Nassau Co., NY | Skeletal remains of Black female toddler (UP9705) recovered in blanket. |
| Dec 2016 | Nassau County Police | DNA profiling definitively confirms the toddler is the biological daughter of Peaches. |
| 2022 | FBI / Gilgo Beach Task Force | DNA samples submitted for high-density SNP sequencing and genetic genealogy. |
| Active | Nassau Co. PD & FBI | Active search for extended family in Alabama, Georgia, and New York; $25,000 reward. |