The bodies of a woman and toddler were linked to the Gilgo Beach killings. Now a man in Florida has been charged

Decades after the remains of a young mother and her toddler were found on Long Island – victims once believed to possibly be tied to the Gilgo Beach murders – a Florida man has been charged in their slayings.

Andrew Dykes, 66, of Tampa, was arrested on Wednesday and charged with two counts of murder on a warrant out of New York, in connection with the 1997 deaths of 26-year-old Tanya Jackson and her two-year-old daughter Tatiana Dykes, law enforcement sources told multiple news outlets. Dykes is believed to be the biological father of the child.

The deaths of Jackson and Tatiana have been shrouded in mystery since Jackson’s torso was discovered in June 1997, stuffed inside a green Rubbermaid container left in a wooded section of Hempstead Lake State Park on Long Island. She had been dismembered and decapitated.

Her daughter’s remains were found off Ocean Parkway in April 2011, near several victims in the Gilgo Beach murders investigation, prompting years of speculation that the mother and daughter were tied to that case.

Investigators said the toddler was likely killed around the same time as her mother.

For years, Jackson was known only as “Peaches” because of the bitten peach tattoo on her chest. Her daughter came to be known as “Baby Doe.”

Earlier this year, both mother and daughter were finally identified with the help of advanced DNA technology.

Investigators said Jackson, a U.S. Army veteran and single mother, had been living in Brooklyn and working as a medical assistant at the time she vanished.

Born in Alabama, she had ties to Georgia, Texas, and Missouri. Records show Tatiana was born in Texas in 1995 while both parents were serving in the Army.

Det. Capt. Stephen Fitzpatrick said in April that Dykes, listed as Tatiana’s father on her birth record, had been questioned previously and was cooperating with investigators at the time. He did not disclose whether Dykes was considered a suspect then.

The mother and daughter were identified in April amid ongoing court proceedings for Manhattan architect Rex Heuermann, who was arrested in 2023 in connection with several Gilgo Beach killings and later charged with murdering seven women. He has pleaded not guilty.

Heuermann was never charged in the deaths of Jackson or her daughter.

Since late 2010, police have been investigating the deaths of at least 10 people – mostly female sex workers – whose remains were discovered in the area where the toddler was found.

Despite those proximity-based theories, Suffolk authorities have maintained Jackson and her daughter’s murders were separate from the Gilgo case.

Dykes was arrested in Florida on Wednesday just hours after a grand jury handed up the indictment and is being held at the Hillsborough County jail on a fugitive warrant pending extradition.

During his initial appearance Thursday in Hillsborough County Court, Dykes told the judge: “I’d like to go to New York and defend myself.”

Court documents indicate Dykes fled New York after the killings. Authorities have not disclosed the evidence that led to the indictment, nor clarified the relationship between Dykes and Jackson beyond sharing a last name and a child.

The mother and daughter were buried earlier this year at the Alabama State Veterans Memorial Cemetery at Spanish Fort.

Nassau County police and the FBI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.