This story is a collaboration with Biography.com
As the nation is gripped by the upcoming trial in the case of the “Long Island Serial Killer,” a surprising breakthrough has come along regarding possible additional victims. Two bodies found 14 years apart near Long Island’s Gilgo Beach have finally been identified—and even more shockingly, they’re connected.
A dismembered adult body found in Hempstead Lake State Park, which had commonly been referred to as “Peaches” due to a tattoo of the fruit being one of the only defining characteristics to remain, has been identified through DNA analysis as 26-year-old Tanya Jackson. The body of a 2 year old child found roughly 20 miles away from Jackson has been identified as her daughter, Tatiana Dykes. Now, investigators are trying to determine how these two victims died, and if they are connected to killings suspect Rex Heuermann is currently accused of having committed.
When a story of modern forensic technology leading to a breakthrough in a cold case comes along, it’s common for historians and true crime enthusiasts alike to wonder what would have happened if this tech had been around during some of the more infamous crimes of past eras. It raises the question: Could the cutting-edge DNA analysis currently being deployed in the Gilgo Beach case have secured—or even overturned—the verdicts in some of the most infamous trials of the past century?
According to a report in Long Island’s Newsday, some believe it still could.
Could DNA Analysis Solve the Crime of the Century?
In what was called the Crime of the Century, the child of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh was kidnapped and held for ransom on March 1, 1932. The child’s dead body would ultimately be recovered not far from Lindbergh’s New Jersey home from which they had first been absconded. A German immigrant named Bruno Hauptmann was ultimately convicted of the kidnapping in 1935 and subsequently executed. But with a trial that hinged on elements like analysis of the wood grain of a ladder, some observers (both then and now) have been unconvinced of Hauptmann’s guilt—or, at the very least, are convinced Hauptmann did not act alone.
Now, as Newsday notes, three of those doubters have come forward with a lawsuit, seeking to utilize the same modern DNA analysis technology deployed to identify the potential victims of the Gilgo Beach killings to re-examine 90-year-old evidence from the Lindbergh case.
“The plaintiffs want access to certain pieces of evidence—namely several envelopes that contain the original ransom notes,” Newsday wrote, “[…] so they can submit the stamps and adhesives for forensic testing to possibly identify others involved in the crime and prove a conspiracy.”
An attorney for the plaintiffs, comprised of “an American history professor at the University of Kansas, a retired New Jersey teacher, and a developmental psychologist,” hope to recover DNA from the adhesive materials in much the same manner as investigators were able to recover samples from the heavily degraded bodies on that Long Island beach. In a statement for the court filing, genetic genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick remarked that “it has only been recently that DNA testing and analysis have evolved with the potential of testing those envelopes to produce definitive investigative leads that could resolve lingering uncertainties.”
While not one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Fitzpatrick spoke to Newsday about the intended goal of the suit, stating that “in essence, genetic genealogy could allow researchers to backtrack through public databases to find other modern-day relatives of any potential and long-dead coconspirators in the kidnapping.” She notes that DNA had previously been extracted from 19th century envelopes, so such an effort is not without precedent.
The attorney who filed the complaint, Kurt W. Perhach, asserts that such analysis could clarify if Hauptmann had assistance in the crime, including (possibly) an accomplice close to the Lindbergh family. “There are far too many circumstantial things [in] this case,” Perhach wrote, “to have any possible belief that one strange person acted alone.”
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