She's one of the most tragic figures to emerge from a haunting story of murder and mystery. 

A ghost for nearly 30 years, this week the body of 'Peaches' - a homicide victim known only by her fruit tattoo - was finally given a name. 

US Army veteran Tanya Denise Jackson, 26, is the woman whose remains were discovered in June 1997. 

Her mutilated body had been cut up and discarded in various parts of Long Island, some of them on the stretch of sand that's become known as the Gilgo Beach killer's dumping ground. 

Now, the man who found the first parts of her is sharing his haunting account for the first time. 

It was June 28 and retired construction worker Shel Basch had taken his daughter and her friends to a fishing workshop in Hempstead Lake State Park.  

Now 72, he remembers it vividly. 

'The kids got bored and wanted to go for a walk in the woods. So we went...' 

It was the smell that he noticed first. The unmistakable stench of a decomposition. 

Tanya Denise Jackson, 26, (left) and her two-year-old daughter Tatiana Marie Dykes (right) were identified Wednesday as two of the unnamed Gilgo Beach victims

Shel Basch says he hopes Tanya’s family can finally get some closure now that she has been identified 27 years on

'I looked down the path and saw a big garbage pale with a plastic bag over the top. I told everyone to get back.' 

He prodded the Rubbermaid container with his foot. The weight immediately revealed what was inside. 

'I think I've found a dead body,' he told a park officer. 

It wasn't long before a 'million cops' descended on the scene. 

Inside the container was a human torso, with no arms, legs or head, along with a floral patterned pillowcase and a red towel. 

'It was a terrible thing to see,' Basch says. 

'I was born and grew up in the mean streets of Brooklyn and saw a lot of bad, nasty stuff,' he says.

'... I felt bad that somebody was just dumped with no concern for the human... they were just treated like garbage. It was very sad.'

Investigators soon estimated the woman had been killed around three days earlier. 

But for the next 27 years, the woman's identity remained a mystery.

She became known as 'Jane Doe 3' or 'Peaches' due to a distinctive heart-shaped tattoo of a peach on her left breast.

The discovery has stumped investigators for years. There were no identifiable features on either Tanya or her daughter, aside from the tattoo. 

Finally, thanks to genetic genealogy, they were named this week. 

While Jackson's death has long been linked to the Gilgo Beach killings, suspect Rex Heuermann has not been charged in her murder or that of her daughter. 

Bash tells Daily Mail he is 'very happy' to finally see the mother and daughter being given the dignity of a public identity. 

'Every family deserves to have closure in a situation like this when they lose someone and they suffer for so many years not knowing what happened,' Basch says.

Shel Basch found the woman's torso in this Rubbermaid container in a park in June 1997. More of her remains were found in 2011

Inside the Rubbermaid container was a floral patterned pillowcase and a red towel (pictured top). Similar gold jewelry was also found with both the mom and child's remains

The woman had this distinctive heart-shaped tattoo of a peach on her left breast, earning her the nickname 'Peaches' 

Peaches was black, aged 20 to 30 years old and had what appeared to be a Cesarean section scar. 

In April 2011, her arms and legs were found on the north side of Ocean Parkway, in Jones Beach State Park, at the height of the search for victims in the Gilgo Beach investigation. 

Her head has never been found. 

The skeletal remains of a toddler girl - dubbed Baby Doe - were also found along Ocean Parkway. 

Similar gold jewelry was found with both victims' remains. 

In 2016, DNA testing determined that the infant was the woman's young daughter.

But it would be another nine years before the mom and daughter would get their names back, when Nassau County officials held a bombshell press briefing Wednesday. 

The mom and daughter had been identified 27 years on from their murders thanks to Investigative Genetic Genealogy (IGG) - an investigative method first made famous in the Golden State Killer case. 

The use of IGG eventually led investigators to family members who were able to be interviewed and additional DNA testing was then carried out. 

Map showing where the remains of victims were found along Ocean Parkway 

The father of the child has been identified and is cooperating with the investigation, officials said.

At the time of her murder, Tanya was a 26-year-old single mother and US Army veteran living in Brooklyn, New York.

Originally from Alabama, she served honorably in the military from July 1993 to February 1995, including at the Army bases Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Fort Gordon in Augusta, Georgia, and Fort Leonard Wood in the Missouri Ozarks.

While living in Brooklyn, she is believed to have been working at a doctor's office, officials said. She drove a black 1991 Geo Storm. 

Her daughter Tatiana was born in Texas in March 1995 and was just two years old at the time of her death.

At the time of their 1997 murders, Tanya was estranged from her family and so neither she nor the infant were reported missing.

Now, the mom and daughter's remains have been laid to rest together at Alabama State Veterans Memorial Cemetery at Spanish Fort, Alabama, with military honors.

Basch says he is surprised it took so long for Tanya and Tatiana to be identified 'because we're so used to TV shows' where things are solved and victims identified quickly. 

Accused serial killer Rex Heuermann appears in Suffolk County Court in Riverhead, New York, on April 15, 2025

He feels that authorities' sense of urgency can sometimes come down to 'who you are.'  

Now, he says he is sending prayers to Tanya and Tatiana's family following the tragic news.

'I pray for them. They're in my prayers,' he says.

'I'm glad they can finally find some closure in this situation. I mean I'm not glad but she could have gone unnoticed forever and they wouldn't know anything.'

'I'm glad I was able to contribute a little bit to their final closure,' he adds.

Reached by phone by DailyMail.com Wednesday, a relative of the victims declined to comment on the case. 

Now, a $25,000 Crimestoppers reward is now being offered for information leading to the mom and daughter's killer. 

At Wednesday's press conference, officials said that, while the victims have long been linked to the Gilgo Beach serial killer case due to where their remains were found, 'we are not discounting that [the murders] could be unrelated.'

‘I am not saying it is Rex Heuermann and I am not saying it is not. We are proceeding that it is not and keeping our eyes wide open,' Nassau County Homicide Detective Captain Stephen Fitzpatrick told DailyMail.com.

‘We are proceeding as we do every other investigation. I am not saying it is him. I am not saying it is not him.'

Nassau County officials said they will continue to work closely with local and federal law enforcement agencies on the case, including Suffolk County - the jurisdiction leading the Gilgo Beach case. 

'The reality is our work has just begun,' Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly said at the briefing.     

'Knowing the identifies of the mother and the baby is just a first step.'

She urged anyone who knew Tanya 'if you worked with her, if you met her at the grocery store, if you had an interaction with her please let us know.'

Officials also urged anyone who might have served with Tanya in the military to get in contact. She also had ties to Georgia. 

'Help us solve this horrific, horrific crime,' DA Donnelly said.

Tanya drove a black 1991 Geo Storm and was living in Brooklyn at the time of her murder

Officials shared this image of Tanya's family members as the mom and daughter were laid to rest in Alabama 

'Today is a bittersweet day. Today after decades we are finally going to be able to tell you the identities of two victims back from 1997,' DA Donnelly said at the briefing. 

'The mother's name was Tanya. The baby's name was Tatiana.'

When asked how long investigators had known the identities of Peaches and the toddler, Nassau County Commanding Officer of the Homicide Squad Stephen Fitzpatrick told DailyMail.com before the briefing: 'We had it for a while and been catching up on 27 years of investigation.' 

The announcement comes amid a legal battle between Heuermann's defense attorneys and Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney's office over crucial DNA evidence in the case.

The DA's office told DailyMail.com he would not comment on the development while the Frye hearings about the DNA evidence are still ongoing.

'DA Tierney has refrained from making any comments about Rex Heuermann and any topics even tangentially involved to the investigation, pending completion of the ongoing pre-trial hearing,' his office said. 

'Once the hearing is concluded, DA Tierney will resume speaking with the media.'

Heuermann's attorney did not return a request for comment. 

Bob Macedonio, the attorney for Heuermann's now ex-wife Asa Ellerup, declined to comment on the development. 

With the mom and daughter finally given their names, only one of the 11 victims found along Gilgo Beach is yet to be identified. 

Investigators are still seeking the public's help in identifying the victim known as 'Asian Doe.'

The Gilgo Beach serial killer case haunted the Long Island community for more than a decade, ever since the first of multiple bodies were discovered along Ocean Parkway in December 2010.

More than a decade later, in July 2023, Massapequa Park local Heuermann was then dramatically arrested as he left his office in midtown Manhattan. 

Heuermann was initially charged with the murders of three women: Amber Costello, Melissa Barthelemy and Megan Waterman.

Since then, he has been charged with the murders of four more victims: Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Sandra Costilla, Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack. 

All of the victims were working as sex workers when they vanished. 

Heurmann has denied all of the charges.   

Following the launch of a new taskforce, investigators learned that Heuermann drove that same type of vehicle at the time of the murders, prosecutors say.

He also matched the description of the client seen by the witness.

As well as the DNA evidence, prosecutors said investigators also found a chilling ‘planning document’ on a hard drive in the basement of Heuermann’s family home in Massapequa Park.

In the haunting document, he allegedly had a section detailed ‘PREP’ and noted that ‘small’ women were preferred.

Heuermann has lived his entire life in Massapequa Park and would commute to his architecture job in Midtown Manhattan, where some of the victims worked and were last seen alive.

He was especially familiar with Ocean Parkway, where the victims’ bodies were dumped, thanks to a job he had at Jones Beach in his 20s, according to prosecutors.

Fears that a serial killer or killers were at large on Long Island began back in May 2010, when Shannan Gilbert vanished in bizarre circumstances one night.

The 24-year-old, who was working as an escort, had gone to see a client in the Oak Beach Association community when she made a terrifying 911 call, saying that someone was trying to kill her. 

Police search a marsh in Oak Beach for the remains of Shannan Gilbert in December 2011

During a search for Gilbert in December 2010, officers came across the body of Melissa Barthelemy in the marshes by Gilgo Beach.

Within days, three more bodies - Amber Costello, Maureen Brainard-Barnes and Megan Waterman - had been found.

The four victims, who became known as the Gilgo Four, had been dumped within a quarter mile of each other, some of them bound and wrapped in burlap.

Over the following months, the remains of seven other victims were found.

Gilbert’s body was found last. Investigators maintain that she was not a victim, but died by accidental drowning after she fled into the dense thicket that night.

Heuermann has not been charged in connection to the deaths of the other four victims: Karen Vergata, Tanya and Tatiana and Asian Doe.

Costilla, meanwhile, had never been linked to the Gilgo Beach serial killer case until Heuermann was hit with charges for her murder in 2024.

Her murder expands the timeline that the accused serial killer is alleged to have been actively preying on victims.

Heuermann has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.