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Gilgo Unsolved Part 3: What comes next?

So what's next that police will talk about? They are still working to identify four of the 11 people found dead along Ocean Parkway:

News 12 Staff

Dec 11, 2020, 1:09 AM

Updated 1,455 days ago

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News 12 will be airing a special documentary on the Gilgo Beach investigation this Friday, Dec. 11 at 9 p.m. Watch Gilgo Beach: Unsolved Friday night on News 12 Long Island and News 12 Plus.
With the Gilgo Beach killings still unsolved, investigators revealed what they think would be key in finding who is responsible.
This year has brought some new developments in the Gilgo Beach investigation, as police have released four photos of a belt that they say was used by the killer.
We also learned in May that Suffolk police, with the help of the FBI, used DNA to identify a woman whose torso had been found 20 years before in Manorville. Investigators used a process called "genetic genealogy," combing through publicly available genealogy databases to find possible relatives to identify Jane Doe No. 6 as Valerie Mack.
Police determined Mack was working as an escort in Philadelphia in 2000 and was last seen alive in Port Republic, New Jersey. Port Republic is not far from Atlantic City, where in 2006 the bodies of four other sex workers were found.
Suffolk Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart says they currently have no connection between the two set of homicides.
Hart says Mack had only briefly come to Long Island for sex work.
"It wasn't a prolonged trip to Long Island, it was certainly specifically for that visit," says Hart.
So what's next that police will talk about? They are still working to identify four of the 11 people found dead along Ocean Parkway:
- Fire Island Jane Doe, found in 2011 and 1996.
- A woman known as "Peaches," found in 2011 and 1997 and her toddler daughter, found in 2011 near Gilgo Beach.
- An Asian male, found in 2011.
Suffolk police and the FBI have been trying to use the same DNA technique that was done with Mack to make those determinations.
"The Asian male and the toddler are challenging in that respect, because the samples were degraded to a degree, but we are looking at different avenues," says Hart.
The degrading is due to the fact that the remains of the toddler and her mom were in the thick bramble along Ocean Parkway for more than two decades, constantly exposed to the cold, wind and rain.
A decade later, the Ocean Parkway is still a cold and desolate place with whipping winds. But there is now a bike path, and a lot of the bramble has been severely cut back.
In terms of what developments could be coming in the near future, Hart and now-retired Chief of Detectives Dominick Varrone say the public will be key is solving the case.
"I think it's important for people to think about it," says Varrone, who oversaw the case from 2001-2011. "Think of any people in their lives, husbands, boyfriends, or relatives or somebody who may have had the opportunity or the means."