Police Identify Jane Doe Victim Found Near Long Island Serial Killer Dumping Ground
Nearly a month after the arrest of the Long Island Serial Killer (LISK) suspect, Suffolk County officials held a press conference Friday to reveal the identity of one of the Jane Doe victims found in the infamous dumping ground.
At least 10 bodies were found along a desolate stretch of Gilgo Beach on the southern shore of Long Island, four of whom have been identified as “The Gilgo Four,” for which Rex Heuermann was charged in the three murders earlier this month.
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A handful of bodies found near the site have remained unidentified, but on Friday, the Gilgo Beach Task Force announced that the victim formerly known as “Jane Doe 7” and “Fire Island Jane Doe” had been identified as 34-year-old Karen Vergata, who was last seen on February 14th, 1996.
The moniker “Fire Island Jane Doe” was given to the body after a set of severed legs were found in a trash bag on Fire Island in April 1996. Upon the discovery of the Gilgo Beach dumping ground, a skull and teeth were found in the vicinity in April 2011; DNA testing later found that the severed legs and human skull had come from the same victim.
At the press conference Friday, Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said that the task force uncovered a “DNA profile suitable for genealogical comparison” in August 2022, which ultimately led to the identification of Vergata, who was “an escort at the time of her disappearance.”
Tierney said the investigation into Vergata’s murder continues but wouldn’t name Heuermann as a suspect, noting that the Vergata slaying occurred nearly 15 years before the “Gilgo Four” murders.
Heuermann was charged with three counts of first-degree murder and second-degree murder in the deaths of Barthelemy, Waterman, and Costello. (Heuermann remains a “prime suspect” in Brainard-Barnes’ death, prosecutors said, adding that investigation was still ongoing.) At his July 14 hearing, Heuermann pleaded not guilty, with his defense attorney telling reporters afterward that Heuermann told him, “I didn’t do this.”
Heuermann is due back in court on September 27.
The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office previously laid out the evidence that led investigators to Heuermann, including computer forensics and cellphone data, as well as the discovery of DNA (woman’s hair) found on two of the victims that forensic scientists ultimately matched that to Heuermann’s wife.
Additionally, a male hair found in the burlap sack that contained Waterman’s remains was later found to be a “99.96%” mitochondrial match to Heuermann’s hair; investigators culled Heuermann’s DNA “from the pizza crust abandoned” by the suspect that investigators saw him discard in a garbage can outside his Manhattan office in January 2023; the lab results were confirmed in June 2023.
The arrest came over a year after Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney K. Harrison publicly shared “previously unreleased information” regarding the case. “We believe now is the right time to disseminate this previously unreleased information in hopes of eliciting tips from the public and providing greater transparency about the victims,” Harrison said in April 2022.
Following Heuermann’s arrest, police in Las Vegas and Atlantic City – where Heuermann had a second home (Vegas) or frequently visited (Atlantic City) – began reexamining their own unsolved murder cases for any connection to the LISK suspect; authorities in Atlantic City subsequently eliminated Heuermann as a suspect in their own string of unsolved sex worker murders.
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