(NewsNation) — A New York district attorney announced Friday that after 27 years, investigators have identified the woman previously known as “Jane Doe Number 7” in the Gilgo Beach investigation.
Karen Vergata is the seventh victim identified so far, but the connection to the man arrested for some of the murders, if any, is still a mystery.
The identification of Vergata comes as authorities seek additional DNA from Gilgo Beach murder suspect Rex Heuermann.
Matt Murphy, a former homicide prosecutor, said police will have a “challenging road ahead” with DNA analysis in the Vergata case.
“These were skeletal remains,” Murphy noted, meaning any trace DNA from a suspect would likely be gone.
Vergata was 34 years old at the time of her disappearance in February 1996. She lived in Manhattan and worked as an escort.
Heuermann, 59, has been charged in connection with the deaths of three women whose bodies were found in 2010 and 2011 along a stretch of highway on Long Island’s Gilgo Beach. He’s the lead suspect in a fourth death. All of the women were sex workers and were found wrapped in burlap sacks.
The women were four of 11 victims found along Gilgo Beach over a decade ago. Authorities have cautioned Heuermann may not be responsible for all 11 deaths.
Vergata appears to have been dismembered, as part of her body was found in another location near Fire Island. The bodies of the women Heuermann is accused of killing were all intact.
Mary Ellen O’Toole, a retired senior profiler for the FBI, said it’s not uncommon for serial killers to change their modus operandi, or how they kill.
“It can change because it’s too difficult to do it the same way, it can change because they’ve read about other cases that do it differently,” O’Toole said. “The dismemberment in a case can be very difficult, and so if this is connected to Heuermann, there could have been reasons like that that he would have discontinued that behavior.
NewsNation digital producer Devan Markham contributed to this report.