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Florida Man is Arrested in Connection to Murder Once Tied to Gilgo Beach Serial Killer · Murder Files Unsealed

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Speaker 1: I want you to think just for a second about
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the most mundane, bureaucratic documents in your life, right.
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Speaker 2: Now, right, the stuff you just ignore.
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Speaker 1: Exactly, the kind of stuff you probably have sitting in
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a dusty filing cabinet or you shoved into the back
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of a desk drawer somewhere.
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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, totally.
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Speaker 1: I'm talking about like a standard residential lease agreement, or
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maybe a birth certificate that you haven't laid eyes on
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in a decade.
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Speaker 2: Just gathering dust.
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Speaker 1: Right. We treat these pieces of paper like dead weight,
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you know, they're just the administrative exhaust of being alive.
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Speaker 2: That's a good way to put it. I mean, they
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are completely static. A birth certificate is essentially a receipt
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of existence.
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Speaker 1: A receipt of existence.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's printed ones filed away, and it's rarely relevant
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to your day to day life, unless you're like waiting
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in line at the DMV.
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Speaker 1: But what happens when that static piece of paper becomes active?
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Speaker 2: That is the big question.
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Speaker 1: What if a simple, mass produced document, filed away and
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completely forgotten nearly thirty years ago suddenly became the literal
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key to unraveling one of New York's most haunting, most
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gruesome mrmisteries.
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Speaker 2: It forces a total re evaluation of how we view
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the paper trails we leave behind. I mean, the permanence
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of bureaucracy often outlasts the impermanence of human memory.
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Speaker 1: It really does.
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Speaker 2: And sometimes the most explosive secrets are just hiding in
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the most ordinary administrative ink.
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Speaker 1: That intersection of ordinary ink and extraordinary crime is exactly
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our mission for today's deep dive. We are going to
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explore the freshly unfolding case as we sit here in
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mid twenty twenty six of.
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Speaker 2: Andrew Dyke's A truly wild case is this.
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Speaker 1: Is a man who has recently arrested for a brutal,
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deeply unsettling Long Island cold case dating all the way
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back to nineteen ninety seven.
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Speaker 2: And to ensure we are navigating this sprawling timeline accurately,
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you know, we are pulling from a very specific stack
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of sources today, right, we have to ground this in
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the facts exactly. Our foundation comes from the official statements
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released by the Nassau County District Attorney's Office, alongside the
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actual grand jury.
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Speaker 1: Indictments, the primary documents.
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Speaker 2: Yes, and to fill in the historical context and the
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chronological unspooling of the investigation. We are utilizing contemporary long
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term reporting from CBS News, the Associated Press, and Newsday.
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We are analyzing the facts strictly as they exist in
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the official verified record.
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Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this, because before we can even begin
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to understand how those mundane documents cracked this case wide open,
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we have to understand the horrifying puzzle investigators were handed
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on a stifling summer day back in nineteen ninety seven.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, the scene was, it was grim.
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Speaker 1: Set the scene for us, what exactly are detectives walking into.
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Speaker 2: We need to go back to June twenty eighth, nineteen
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ninety seven. We are in Nassau County, New York, specifically
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inside Hempstead Lake State Park. Okay, this is a large,
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heavily wooded recreational area. So a local resident is out
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walking when they come across a green, plastic, rubber made
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container just discarded in the.
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Speaker 1: Brush, Just a normal plastic bed, right.
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Speaker 2: Like you'd use for storage in your garage. And in
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the intense heat of late June, this container is emitting
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an undeniable biological odor.
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Speaker 1: Oh ma'am.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, So when law enforcement arrives and breaches the container.
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They do not find a complete set of human remains.
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Speaker 1: What do they find.
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Speaker 2: They find the torso of a young black woman carefully
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wrapped in a red towel and a floral pillowcase.
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Speaker 1: A torso wrapped in a towel. So we are we
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are missing crucial parts of the anatomy here.
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Speaker 2: A condition of the remains immediately escalated this from a
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standard homicide investigation to something far more complex.
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Speaker 1: Because it's not just a body dumped in the woods.
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Speaker 2: No, not at all. The perpetrator had removed the victim's head,
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both of her arms, and both of her legs below
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the knee. Wow, And to this day, almost thirty years later,
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those specific body parts have never been recovered.
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Speaker 1: That is just chilling. When you look at the mechanics
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of a crime scene like that, it feels like a
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like a tactical deconstruction.
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Speaker 2: That's exactly what it was.
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Speaker 1: This isn't a chaotic heat of the moment flight response
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where someone just leaves a victim where they fall. What
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does this level of dismemberment tell investigators about the psychology
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and the capability of the killer.
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Speaker 2: Well, the psychology of the disposal is critical Placing remains
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inside a sealed plastic container and leaving it in a
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sprawling state park is a highly deliberate, calculated act designed
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to delay discovery.
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Speaker 1: Right. The plastic seals and the evidence keeps scavengers.
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Speaker 2: Away for a bit, exactly. But the dismemberment itself serves
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an even darker, more functional purpose. It's about the complete
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eradication of.
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Speaker 1: Identity, taking away who she was.
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Speaker 2: By removing the head, you eliminate the possibility of facial recognition,
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dental record matching or composite sketching.
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Speaker 1: And all the standard ways you identify.
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Speaker 2: Someone right, And by removing the hands, you strip away
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the fingerprints, rendering the standard nineteen ninety seven afis the
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automated fingerprint identification system completely useless. You are actively turning
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a human being into a ghost.
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Speaker 1: It's essentially erasing the hardware that law enforcement relies on.
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But doing that physically is incredibly difficult, isn't it. Our
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sources note the police immediately suspected the killer had specific skills.
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Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely, The nineteen ninety seven autopsy notes flagged this detail.
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Immediately Separating human joints and limbs is not like cutting
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through wood.
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Speaker 1: It's not just brute force.
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Speaker 2: No, it is an anatomically complex task. It requires an
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intimate understanding of bone structure, the dense connective tissue of ligaments,
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and the mechanics of human joints.
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Speaker 1: You have to know where things connect.
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Speaker 2: You have to know exactly where to apply leverage and
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what tools to use to cleanly separate carlage and bone. Wow,
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the medical examiner observed a level of precision that strongly
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suggested the killer possessed significant physical strength, severe premeditation, or
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most alarmingly, specialized anatomical knowledge.
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Speaker 1: So this wasn't just some frantic hacking in the dark.
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Speaker 2: No, it was methodical, it was almost surgical.
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Speaker 1: But despite this meticulous effort to erase her identity, the
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killer missed one thing right. There was a single identifying
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mark left on the torso yes.
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Speaker 2: On her left breast. The victim had a very distinctive,
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high quality tattoo. Okay, it was a heart shaped peach
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with a bite taken out of it and two small
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drops falling from the core.
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Speaker 1: And since they had nothing else.
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Speaker 2: To go on exactly, because law enforcement had absolutely no name,
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no face, and no fingerprints, that ink became her entire identity.
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Speaker 1: So she became the text.
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Speaker 2: Right in official files, she was Jane Doe number three,
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but to the task forces and the public, she simply
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became known as Peaches Peaches.
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Speaker 1: Okay, but our sources mentioned that this tattoo actually generated
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a significant lead pretty early on. It did. Yeah, they
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found a tattoo artist up in Connecticut who remembered inking
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a very similar design on a young black woman.
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Speaker 2: That's right.
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Speaker 1: He even remembered her coming in with relatives and complaining
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about boyfriend troubles.
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Speaker 2: A massive lead on paper.
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Speaker 1: Right, So if they had the guy who drew the peach,
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why did the case go cold? How do you have
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a witness who actually interacted with the victim but still
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failed to find out who she is?
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Speaker 2: It highlights the massive, often frustrating limitations of jurisdictional police
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work in the late nineteen nineties.
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Speaker 1: Right before everything was instantly online.
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Speaker 2: Even if a tattoo artist remembers a face and a
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conversation about a boyfriend, that artist doesn't log the client's
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Social Security number or check their government ID.
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Speaker 1: Right, They just do the work and take the cash exactly.
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Speaker 2: They aren't keeping adasia on their clients. Furthermore, the databases
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of the era were heavily.
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Speaker 1: Siloed, meaning they didn't talk to each other.
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Speaker 2: Right, the National Crime Information Center or NCIC existed, but
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cross referencing missing persons reports across state lines without a
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name or a fingerprint was like trying to find a
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needle in a haystack while blindfolded.
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Speaker 1: So, unless someone in her immediate circle walks into a
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police station in New York and says, hey, my friend
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with the peach tattoo is missing, the police really have
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nowhere to go.
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Speaker 2: Precisely, and investigator There's aggressively checked missing persons reports, but
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there was no one matching her general description reported missing
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in a way that connected to the Hempstead Lake discovery.
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Speaker 1: That is so tragic.
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Speaker 2: It is if society isn't actively looking for you, and
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your remains are stripped of all biometric identifiers, you represent
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an investigative dead end. The trail froze solid, and.
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Speaker 1: It stayed frozen for fourteen years.
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Speaker 2: Fourteen years of absolute silence.
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Speaker 1: The timeline goes completely dark until twenty eleven, when a
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totally separate, massive investigation inadvertently stumbles onto the second half
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of this tragedy.
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Speaker 2: Right, we're shifting focus to April twenty eleven and the
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landscape of Long Island policing is operating at a fever pitch.
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Speaker 1: This was all over the news.
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Speaker 2: Oh, it was a frenzy. Investigators are scouring the dense
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brush along the Ocean Parkway corridor near Gilgo Beach, searching
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for the victims of a suspected serial killer.
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Speaker 1: This was a massive media event. I remember they were
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practically combing the highway's shoulder foot by foot, and they
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were finding multiple victi.
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Speaker 2: Yes, And during that exhaustive search they discover something that
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profoundly deepens the mystery.
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Speaker 1: What was it?
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Speaker 2: In the weeds near the roadway, they find the skeletal
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remains of a toddler.
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Speaker 1: Oh my god.
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Speaker 2: And nearby they find more scattered adult skeletal fragments. When
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forensic teams extract DNA from these newly discovered adult bones
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and run them against cold case files, they get.
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Speaker 1: A hit, a hit from nineteen ninety seven.
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Speaker 2: Yes, the DNA matches the torso found in the rubber
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maid container. They belong to peaches.
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Speaker 1: That is wild And a few years later, the science
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progresses just enough to give them another devastating piece of
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information about the toddler. Right.
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Speaker 2: Yes, in twenty sixteen, advanced DNA profiling confirms that the
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toddler found in the weeds is the biological daughter of Peaches.
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Speaker 1: Wow. If we put ourselves in the shoes of the
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detectives on the ground in twenty nine to eleven, you
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are hunting a prolific serial killer. You are finding bodies
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scattered along a very specific geographic.
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Speaker 2: Corridor right a dumping ground, and.
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Speaker 1: Then you find a toddler and more or remains right
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in that exact same area. It feels almost impossible not
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to assume they're connected to the serial killer you're already hunting.
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Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, we really
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have to examine the phenomenon of cognitive spatial bias and
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criminal investigations.
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Speaker 1: Cognitive spatial bias, Okay, break that.
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Speaker 2: Down for us specifically, the anchoring heuristic. Human beings are
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fundamentally patterned seeking creatures.
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Speaker 1: Right, we want things to make sense.
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Speaker 2: Exactly when law enforcement allocates massive resources to a specific
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geographic zone hunting a specific type of predator. Any discovery
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in that zone is immediately anchored to the primary theory.
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Speaker 1: Thinks, right there, right.
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Speaker 2: The proximity of Peaches and her daughter to the Giligo
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Beach dumb sites entirely derailed the narrative of who they
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were and who killed them.
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Speaker 1: It created an investigative gravity. Well, it just warped the
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trajectory of all the evidence, because if you think she's
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the victim of a serial killer, you start looking for
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a stranger.
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Speaker 2: You look outward, not inward right, You.
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Speaker 1: Start looking for a boogeyman picking up victims of opportunity,
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rather than looking at her personal life for finances or
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her romantic relationships.
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Speaker 2: And that misdirections siphoned away precious time and resources. The public,
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the media, and a significant portion of the investigative apparatus
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assumed Peaches and baby Doe were early victims of the
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Gilg killer.
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Speaker 1: It just fit the story too well.
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Speaker 2: The geographical coincidence was just too strong to ignore.
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Speaker 1: But our sources are very clear on the current reality.
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Authorities eventually concluded there was absolutely.
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Speaker 2: No connection, none whatsoever.
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Speaker 1: The man eventually charged in the Gilg killings, Rexwarman, has
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no alleged ties to Peaches, but breaking that spatial bias
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must have been incredibly difficult. Why did they ever leave
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the remains of the toddler in the weeds while the
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mother's torso was hidden in a plastic bin in a
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different county.
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Speaker 2: It speaks to the chaotic, longitudinal nature of the disposal,
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which we'll explore further. But the critical takeaway from twenty
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eleven is that folding Peaches into the serial killer narrative
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blinded investigators to the interpersonal nature of the crime.
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Speaker 1: They were looking for the wrong kind of monster exactly.
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Speaker 2: It wasn't until authorities conclusively severed this case from the
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go go investigation that the real breakthrough could happen, And
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that breakthrough wasn't driven by geographical searches.
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Speaker 1: What drove it then?
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Speaker 2: It was driven by a revolution in molecular biology.
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Speaker 1: Which brings us to a press conference in April twenty
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twenty five, after twenty eight years of anonymity, Nassau County
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officials and the FBI standed a podium and announced names.
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Peaches was Tanya Denise Jackson, born in October nineteen seventy
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in Alabama, and the toddler was her daughter, Tatiana Marie Diykes,
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born in March nineteen ninety five in Texas.
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Speaker 2: Just hearing their names is powerful, it really is.
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Speaker 1: But how do you go from a completely anonymous DNA
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sample to a full name and birth date nearly three
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decades later.
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Speaker 2: The mechanism is forensic genetic genealogy, and understanding how it
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works is vital because it represents a total paradigm shift
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in how we view anonymity.
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Speaker 1: It really changes everything.
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Speaker 2: For decades, forensic DNA analysis was primarily comparative. If you
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have a suspect, you take a buckle swab from their cheek,
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you extract the DNA, and you look for a direct
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match against biological evidence left at a crime scene.
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Speaker 1: Right, It's like matching a fingerprint.
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Speaker 2: It's essentially a molecular fingerprint. But if your suspect isn't
13:19
in a database, that fingerprint is completely useless.
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Speaker 1: Right. The traditional database only tells you who someone is
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if they've already been caught for something else and put
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into this system.
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Speaker 2: Genetic genealogy changes the math entirely. Instead of looking for
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a direct match, scientists analyze the unknown DNA profile to
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identify single nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs.
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Speaker 1: SNPs.
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Speaker 2: These are tiny, specific variations in our genetic code. By
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looking at hundreds of thousands of these SNPs, they can
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upload the profile to public ancestry databases.
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Speaker 1: Like the ones people use to find their family.
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Speaker 2: History, exactly places where ordinary people have voluntarily submitted their
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DNA to learn about their heritage.
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Speaker 1: So they are looking looking for Tanya in the database.
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They're looking for Tanya's third cousin who decided they wanted
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to know where their ancestors came from.
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Speaker 2: Exactly the concepts, though the execution is painstakingly complex. The
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database measures the shared DNA between the unknown profile and
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the public users using a unit called centa Morgans CeNSE
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of Morgans right. The higher the shaded cent of Morgans,
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the closer the relation. Once genetic genealogists find a web
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of distant cousins, they utilize public records, census data, marriage licenses,
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obituaries to manually build massive family trees.
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Speaker 1: It sounds like it takes forever.
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Speaker 2: It is incredibly tedious. They work backward generation by generation
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until the branches intersect. Through this triangulation, they isolate the
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specific branch of the family tree where Tanya Jackson had
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to exist.
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Speaker 1: It's astonishing, it really is. But the moment they attached
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and name to Tanya, it also answered the agonizing question
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of why no one was looking for her.
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Speaker 2: Yes, the estrangement right.
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Speaker 1: Our sources indicate that Tanya grew up in Mobile, Alabama,
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but she was largely as strange from her family. She
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was a Gulf War veteran who served in the army,
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and by nineteen ninety seven she was a single mother
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living in Brooklyn.
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Speaker 2: Her background illustrates the profound vulnerability of estrangement. Tanya was
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out of the military structure, geographically isolated from her hometown,
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and navigating the complexities of single motherhood in a massive city.
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Speaker 1: She was really on her own completely.
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Speaker 2: When a person in that specific set of circumstances vanishes,
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there isn't necessarily a local support system ready to sound
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the alarm. The tragedy here is not just the murder.
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It is the societal failure that allows a veteran and
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her child to disappear without triggering a systemic response.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, that is heavy, But here's where it gets really interesting.
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Because as miraculous as the genetic genealogy was in giving
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Tanya and Tatiana their names back, identifying them was only
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the prerequisite for solving the murder.
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Speaker 2: It was just the starting line, the ultimate.
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Speaker 1: Pivot point in this entire thirty year saga. Wasn't the
15:57
billion dollar genomic sequencing. It was a Texas birth certificate.
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Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is the stark contrast and the tools
16:05
used to dismantle this mystery.
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Speaker 1: He's crazy.
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Speaker 2: On one hand, you have the cutting edge computational wizardry
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of genetic genealogy, tracing microscopic cellular variations across multiple generations.
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It is a triumph of modern science. On the other hand,
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you have a piece of paper that costs a few
16:21
dollars to print at a county cruk's office.
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Speaker 1: When investigators pulled Takiana's birth certificate from a hospital in
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San Antonio, Texas, dated March nineteen ninety five, it listed
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Tanya Denise Jackson as the mother, but crucially, it listed
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a man named Andrew Dykes as the father.
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Speaker 2: The moment investigators read that second name on the birth certificate,
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the entire serial killer theory evaporated.
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Speaker 1: Oof go on.
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Speaker 2: A serial killer targets victims of opportunity, often strangers, but
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a shared child permanently tethered Tanya to a specific individual.
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Speaker 1: It connected them forever.
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Speaker 2: The suspect pool instantly shrank from an unknown fandom haunting
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a highway to a very real documented man.
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Speaker 1: With the names in hand, law enforcement could finally reconstruct
17:05
Tanya's life. They could trace her movements, and more importantly,
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they could map out exactly how her timeline intersected with
17:13
Andrew Diykes. Let's look at the trajectory of their relationship,
17:16
starting in the military.
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Speaker 2: The intersecting timelines paint a very clear, highly concerning picture.
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Let's look at Tanya's military record first. Okay, she served
17:25
in the United States Army from roughly nineteen ninety three
17:27
to nineteen ninety five. During a significant portion of that time,
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she was stationed at Fort sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas,
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where she worked in a medical capacity.
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Speaker 1: And Fort sam Houston is exactly where she crosses paths
17:38
with Andrew Diykes.
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Speaker 2: Yes, it is.
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Speaker 1: Let's examine his resume because this is the detail that
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completely recontextualizes the nineteen ninety seven autopsy report.
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Speaker 2: Andrew Dikes had a deeply entrenched twenty year career in
17:50
the Army, spanning from nineteen eighty all the way to
17:53
two thousand and one.
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Speaker 1: A lifer basically, yeah.
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Speaker 2: His occupational specialty was as an operating room technician, but
18:00
his role went beyond just assisting in surgeries. When he
18:03
was stationed with Tanya in Texas, he was a military instructor.
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Speaker 1: Okay, an instructor.
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Speaker 2: What was he teaching and what was his specific curriculum?
18:11
He taught anatomy and physiology.
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Speaker 1: Wow, he wasn't just familiar with the human body. He
18:16
literally wrote the lesson plans on how it functions and
18:19
how it is constructed.
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Speaker 2: The sources cite his military performance reviews, which specifically highlighted
18:25
his exceptional proficiency in teaching the skeletal system, the muscular system,
18:29
the digestive tract, and the circulatory system.
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Speaker 1: Put yourself in the room with those cold case detectives
18:35
in twenty twenty five. You were holding an autopsy report
18:38
from nineteen ninety seven that details of precise, methodical dismemberment,
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someone who knew exactly how to navigate joints, ligaments, and
18:45
bone to cleanly dismantle a human.
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Speaker 2: Being, someone with training.
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Speaker 1: And then you pull the military personnel file of the
18:52
victim's baby's father and his official job title is instructor
18:57
in the skeletal and muscular systems. It gives you that
19:00
is the moment that theoretical becomes tangible, the specialized anatomical
19:04
knowledge wasn't a guess anymore, it was a documented occupational skill.
19:08
Speaker 2: It connects the physical reality of the crime scene directly
19:12
to the vocational expertise of the suspect. But canability does
19:16
not equal motive right.
19:17
Speaker 1: Just because he could do it doesn't mean he did.
19:20
Speaker 2: Investigators had to understand the dynamic of their relationship to
19:23
understand why a crime of this magnitude would occur. According
19:26
to prosecutors, when Dikes and Tanya began their affair at
19:29
Fort sam Houston, Diykes was already married and had two
19:32
children of his own.
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Speaker 1: This introduces a massive underlying tension. Think about the human
19:37
element here, the profound power imbalance. On March seventeenth, nineteen
19:41
ninety five, Tanya gives birth to Tatiana. Shortly after, the
19:45
military transfers Dikes from Texas up to Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn,
19:48
New York. Tanya, who is now discharged from the military,
19:52
packs up her newborn daughter and follows him across the
19:54
country to New York.
19:56
Speaker 2: She relocates to the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, which
19:59
is geogo graphically very close to Fort Hamilton. She secures
20:03
employment in a doctor's office, trying to build a foundation for.
20:06
Speaker 1: Her and her child, trying to make a life.
20:08
Speaker 2: But the critical structural detail of her life in New
20:11
York was that Andrew Dikes held the lease on her apartment.
20:15
Speaker 1: That detail about the lease is everything, it really is.
20:18
It illustrates total dependence and total access. She is isolated,
20:23
estranged from her Alabama relatives, raising a child in a
20:26
new city, and living in an apartment legally controlled by
20:30
a married man who has a vested interest in keeping
20:32
her a secret from his official family.
20:35
Speaker 2: Prosecutors allege that the motive was rooted in this exact friction.
20:39
Tanya reportedly wanted a legitimate future. She wanted acknowledgment and
20:43
stability for herself and their daughter.
20:45
Speaker 1: Which is completely understandable, of course.
20:47
Speaker 2: But for Dikes, acknowledging Tanya and Tatiana meant the potential
20:51
destruction of his existing marriage, his family structure, and his
20:55
established military career. They represented an existential threat to the
20:59
life he had buien.
21:00
Speaker 1: When you combine the motive to eliminate a threat to
21:03
his family life, the unfettered physical access granted by holding
21:07
the apartment lease, and the highly specialized surgical skills required
21:11
to execute the dismemberment, investigators finally had a comprehensive narrative
21:15
of what likely happened in the weeks leading up to
21:18
June nineteen ninety seven.
21:19
Speaker 2: They had a powerful, circumstantial case. They had the who,
21:23
the why, and the theoretical how.
21:25
Speaker 1: But circumstantial isn't enough, not at all.
21:27
Speaker 2: In the American legal system, a compelling narrative built on
21:30
twenty eight year old circumstantial connections is not enough to
21:33
secure a murder indictment.
21:35
Speaker 1: You need hard proof.
21:36
Speaker 2: As the calendar turned to mid twenty twenty five, investigators
21:40
knew who they were looking for. Andrew Diykes was now
21:43
sixty six years old, reportedly a retired state trooper living
21:47
quietly in the Ruskin area of Florida, just south of Tampa.
21:51
Speaker 1: How did they approach him? Did they just knock on
21:52
his door and ask about nineteen ninety seven?
21:54
Speaker 2: They did initiate contact. Once the victims were definitively identified,
21:58
investigators traveled to Florida and interviewed Dykes.
22:01
Speaker 1: And what did he say?
22:02
Speaker 2: During this interaction he acknowledged the undeniable. He admitted he
22:06
was Tatiana's father, which the birth certificate proved anyway, However,
22:10
he vehemently denied any involvement in their disappearances or murders.
22:14
Speaker 1: He admits to the paternity, but desies the crime. Our
22:18
sources note that the District attorney's office felt his account
22:21
of his interactions with Tanya in nineteen ninety seven didn't
22:25
add up. It was suspicious, yeah, but suspicion isn't probable cause.
22:29
If he isn't cooperating and they don't have enough to
22:31
arrest him, they can't compel him to provide a DNA sample, right,
22:35
They can't just force the swab.
22:37
Speaker 2: Exactly the legal hurdle they faced. The Fourth Amendment protects
22:40
citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures, and compelling a biological
22:44
sample requires a warrant based on probable cause.
22:47
Speaker 1: They needed more than just a good theory.
22:49
Speaker 2: Investigators had a theory, but they needed physical evidence directly
22:53
tying his biology to the crime scene. To bridge that gap.
22:56
Since they couldn't compel a sample, they had to collect
22:59
one surreptitition. They had to play a waiting game.
23:02
Speaker 1: Which launches a massive surveillance operation. In October twenty twenty four,
23:07
law enforcement sets up on a sixty six year old
23:10
retiree in Florida just watching him live his day to
23:13
day life. It requires incredible patience.
23:16
Speaker 2: Days and days of just watching.
23:18
Speaker 1: They are essentially waiting for him to make one tiny,
23:20
mundane biological mistake.
23:22
Speaker 2: They are waiting for the moment he legally abandons his DNA.
23:26
Speaker 1: And that moment finally happens in the most American way possible,
23:30
a trip to a fast food joint.
23:31
Speaker 2: It really is.
23:32
Speaker 1: Surveillance units followed Dikes to a Charlie's Cheese Steaks restaurant
23:35
in Tampa. He orders a drink, consumes it, and then
23:39
discards the plastic cup, the lid, and the straw into
23:42
a public trash receptacle outside.
23:44
Speaker 2: The restaurant, And as soon as he vacates the area,
23:46
plain clothes investigators secure the trash can. They extract that
23:50
specific cup and straw, bag it into evidence and immediately
23:53
transfer it to a forensic laboratory.
23:55
Speaker 1: The'salp of the mechanics of this, because it's fascinating. He
23:58
took a sip of drink. What does a laboratory turned
24:01
microscopic saliva on a piece of plastic into a definitive profile.
24:05
Speaker 2: The technique relies on a process called PCR or polymeris.
24:09
Speaker 1: Chain reaction polymerase chain reaction.
24:11
Speaker 2: Okay, even a casual sip leaves behind epithelial cells from
24:15
the inside of the cheek and mouth. Forensics teams extract
24:19
the DNA from those thrugh cells. Because the initial sample
24:22
is so small, PCR acts as a molecular photocopier.
24:26
Speaker 1: Photocopier for DNA, that's a great analogy.
24:29
Speaker 2: It uses thermal cycling, heating and cooling the sample with
24:32
specific enzymes to duplicate the DNA millions of times over
24:36
until there is a large enough sample to run a
24:38
full genetic profile.
24:40
Speaker 1: Once they amplify the DNA from the Florida straw, they
24:42
have to compare it against the nineteen ninety seven evidence.
24:45
What exactly were they comparing it to.
24:47
Speaker 2: They compared the amplified profile from the fast food straw
24:50
to a biological sample that had been meticulously preserved in
24:53
a cold storage evidence locker since nineteen ninety seven.
24:56
Speaker 1: Just waiting there.
24:57
Speaker 2: Specifically, it was a vaginal swab taken from Tanya Jackson
25:00
during the original autopsy conducted by the Nassau County Medical Examiner.
25:04
Speaker 1: The science yields a definitive result. The profile extracted from
25:08
the twenty twenty four straw matched the male DNA found
25:11
on the nineteen ninety seven swab at a statistical threshold
25:15
that scientists reported as being millions of times more likely
25:18
to belong to Andrew Dyke's than to any unrelated individual
25:22
in the population.
25:23
Speaker 2: This raises an important question regarding the legal boundaries of
25:26
modern surveillance, which is vital to understand for cases like this.
25:30
Let's hear it, the tactic of surreptitious DNA collection from
25:33
discarded trash is entirely legal under current United States jurisprudence.
25:39
Speaker 1: Some people might find that shocking.
25:40
Speaker 2: They do, but the legal framework, heavily influenced by Supreme
25:44
Court cases regarding garbage collection, relies on the doctrine of
25:47
abandoned property.
25:48
Speaker 1: Abandoned property.
25:49
Speaker 2: The moment you voluntarily deposit an item into a public
25:52
trash receptacle, you forfeit any reasonable expectation of privacy over
25:55
that item, including the biological material attached to it.
25:59
Speaker 1: The irony of his cap sure is just staggering. Here
26:01
is a man with documented expert level anatomical knowledge, a
26:05
literal expert right he allegedly utilized that specialized training to
26:10
execute a methodical dismemberment, successfully erasing a woman's identity and
26:14
hiding his crime for nearly three decades. He outsmarted the
26:17
conventional justice system.
26:18
Speaker 2: For almost thirty years.
26:20
Speaker 1: And in the end he is undone by a completely
26:22
casual Tuesday afternoon trip to a cheese steak restaurant and
26:26
a piece of disposable plastic.
26:28
Speaker 2: It demonstrates that in the modern era, physical evasion is
26:31
entirely separate from biological evasion.
26:33
Speaker 1: You can't outrun your own cells.
26:35
Speaker 2: You can move states, change careers, and age thirty years,
26:39
but you cannot stop shedding your biology. You leave your
26:43
genetic footprint on coffee cups, on napkins, on silverware. You
26:47
are constantly broadcasting your identity to anyone with the technology
26:51
to read it.
26:52
Speaker 1: That DNA match from the straw was the final structural
26:55
pillar the prosecution needed. It provided the indisputable probable cause
26:59
to secure a grand jury indictment and an arrest.
27:02
Speaker 2: Warrant, the final piece of the puzzle.
27:03
Speaker 1: In December twenty twenty five, a multi agency team including
27:07
the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, descends on his home in Ruskin, Florida,
27:11
and takes him into custody.
27:12
Speaker 2: Following his arrest, he was held in Florida pending extradition proceedings,
27:17
and he was subsequently flown back to New York. On
27:20
December eighteenth, twenty twenty five, Andrew Dikes stood before a
27:24
judge in Nassau County and was formally arraigned on an
27:27
indictment charging him with second degree murder.
27:30
Speaker 1: He pleaded not guilty to the charge, and the judge
27:33
ordered him remanded without bail. If convicted, he faces a
27:37
sentence of twenty five years to life in a New
27:39
York state prison.
27:40
Speaker 2: However, there is a very critical legal caveat regarding this
27:44
indictment and we must be extremely precise about the scope
27:47
of the charges based on the official sources.
27:49
Speaker 1: Right, this is important.
27:50
Speaker 2: Andrew Diykes has been charged only with the second degree
27:53
murder of Tanya Denise Jackson. As of today, he has
27:56
not been charged with the murder of his two year
27:58
old daughter, Tatiana.
28:00
Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? How does the district
28:02
attorney stand up in court with a mountain of evidence
28:05
suggesting a man murdered the mother, but stop short of
28:08
charging him for the toddler found nearby?
28:10
Speaker 2: It seems contradictory.
28:11
Speaker 1: It feels especially jarring when you listen to the press conferences.
28:15
Nassau County Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder stood at a podium
28:18
and stated, with palpable anger, he threw a baby out
28:22
like the trash into the weeds.
28:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, those were his exact words.
28:26
Speaker 1: Law enforcement clearly believes he is responsible for both deaths.
28:30
Why is the indictment only for one?
28:32
Speaker 2: This discrepancy goes straight to the heart of the brutal
28:35
practical realities involved in prosecuting historical cold cases. The justice
28:40
system does not operate on police theory or even moral certainty.
28:43
Speaker 1: That operates on proof.
28:45
Speaker 2: It operates on the strict requirement of proof beyond a
28:48
reasonable doubt, and in a thirty year old case, time
28:51
itself is the greatest enemy of physical evidence. We have
28:54
to look at how and where the victims were found.
28:57
Speaker 1: Let's break that down. Tanya's remains were fed in nineteen
29:00
ninety seven, relatively shortly after the murder, and while it
29:04
was a horrific scene, the remains were contained within a plastic,
29:07
rubber made bin which provided a barrier against the elements.
29:11
Speaker 2: Correct That containment preserved the integrity of the biological evidence,
29:16
allowing the medical examiner to recover the vaginal swap that
29:19
ultimately matched the DNA.
29:20
Speaker 1: On the straw, but Tatiana was different.
29:23
Speaker 2: Tatiana's remains, conversely, were not discovered until twenty eleven. Her
29:27
skeletal remains were left completely exposed to the harsh environmental
29:31
conditions of the coastal weeds along Ocean Parkway for fourteen years.
29:35
Speaker 1: We're talking about direct exposure to the elements in a
29:37
barrier island, salt air, fluctuating humidity, direct ultraviolet radiation from
29:43
the sun, freezing winters, and scavenging animals. What does that
29:47
specific environment do to bone on a molecular level over
29:51
fourteen years.
29:52
Speaker 2: It causes catastrophic degradation. Bone is a composite material made
29:56
of a protein matrix largely collagen, hardened by a mineral
29:59
called calcium phosphate. When exposed to the elements, especially acidic
30:03
soil and salt water, that mineral structure begins to break down. Ultraviolet,
30:07
light and temperature fluctuations physically shear the DNA strands contained
30:11
within the bone cells.
30:12
Speaker 1: It just rips the DNA apart.
30:14
Speaker 2: By the time investigators recovered the Toddlers remains. In twenty eleven,
30:18
the biological material necessary to extract a pristine, comparable DNA profile,
30:24
one that could definitively tie a suspect's biology to those
30:27
specific bones, was severely compromised.
30:30
Speaker 1: So the prosecutors are essentially playing it safe. They are
30:33
moving forward with the case where the chain of evidence
30:37
and the biological preservation is strongest.
30:39
Speaker 2: Exactly. Prosecutors have publicly acknowledged that their evidentiary foundation is
30:44
significantly more robust in Tanya's case. They are continuing to
30:47
collaborate with authorities in Suffolk County where the toddler was found,
30:52
and as of mid twenty twenty six, the presiding judge
30:54
has ordered additional advanced DNA testing on the degraded remains.
30:58
Speaker 1: So it's still ongoing.
31:00
Speaker 2: But right now we are witnessing the profound tension between
31:03
what the police fundamentally believe happened and what the district
31:06
attorney feels they can legally prove to a jury today,
31:09
and the defense.
31:09
Speaker 1: Is certainly not going to make it easy for them.
31:11
We have to examine how Dykes is pushing back On
31:14
a personal level. His family has expressed absolute.
31:17
Speaker 2: Shock, total disbelief.
31:18
Speaker 1: Our sources quote one of his sons, describing him as
31:20
a teddy bear, stating that these grotesque, violent allegations are
31:25
completely irreconcilable with the father he grew up with.
31:27
Speaker 2: And from a tactical legal standpoint, his defense attorney has
31:30
already laid the groundwork for how they plan to dismantle
31:34
the prosecution's narrative. They are going to mount a vigorous
31:38
challenge against the application of the new DNA.
31:40
Speaker 1: Technology, attack the science.
31:42
Speaker 2: A cornerstone of their defense will be attacking the chain
31:45
of custody.
31:46
Speaker 1: They're going to ask the jury how securely was that
31:49
nineteen ninety seven vaginal swab stored for twenty eight years?
31:54
How many times was it transferred? Who had access to
31:57
the freezer.
31:57
Speaker 2: Furthermore, they will challenge the reliability of the peer. You
32:00
see our amplification itself. Comparing decades old, potentially degraded biological
32:05
matter against a microscopic sample of saliva pulled from a
32:08
fast food trash can in twenty twenty four leaves room
32:12
for a defense attorney to argue the possibility of contamination
32:15
or methodological error.
32:16
Speaker 1: They don't have a proof he's innocent. They just need
32:18
to prove their's doubt.
32:19
Speaker 2: They will attempt to introduce reasonable doubt into the science itself.
32:22
Speaker 1: This is not going to be a simple, open and
32:24
shut trial. We're watching the arduous process of legal discovery
32:28
unfold in real time as we sit here in twenty
32:31
twenty six. Going to be long road, but honestly, taking
32:34
a step back, the mere fact that this case is
32:35
inside a courtroom, that there is an active docket number
32:38
attached to it is a monumental testament to the evolution
32:42
of forensic science and the stubborn perseverance of investigators who
32:45
refuse to let Jane Doe number three fade away.
32:48
Speaker 2: It is a remarkable narrative arc. When you synthesize the
32:52
entire journey, you see how a case that was fundamentally
32:55
dead on arrival in nineteen ninety seven, a nameless torsos,
33:00
stripped of all traditional identifiers, managed to survive.
33:03
Speaker 1: It's incredible to survive at all.
33:04
Speaker 2: It survived the initial lack of databases. It survived being
33:08
falsely swallowed up by the panic and the intense spatial
33:11
bias of the Gilgo Beach serial killer investigation, which easily
33:14
could have relegated it to a footnote in another men's story.
33:18
Speaker 1: And it was finally dragged into the light by the
33:20
most unexpected pairing of investigative tools. It took the astonishing
33:24
generational mapping of forensic genetic genealogy just to figure out
33:28
what names to type into a search bar, just to
33:30
get a name. But once they had the names, the
33:33
entire thirty year mystery was solved by tracing the ink
33:36
on a standard Texas birth certificate and extracting invisible cells
33:40
from a discarded cheese bake straw.
33:42
Speaker 2: It brings us right back to our overarching theme today,
33:45
the quiet, undeniable power of our bureaucratic and biological footprints.
33:50
A birth certificate is designed to be a joyous piece
33:53
of administrative paperwork. It exists to celebrate and legally codify
33:57
the start of a new life. Yeah, in this devastating case,
34:01
that same piece of paper waited silently in an archive
34:04
for three decades, surviving to tell the story of how
34:07
that child's life and her mother's life violently ended. The
34:11
paper outlasted the very people whose names were printed on it.
34:14
Speaker 1: It is a profound, sobering reality, and as a vital
34:18
reminder to you listening, the legal process is ongoing. Andrew
34:21
Dykes maintains his innocence, he is formally pleaded not guilty
34:24
to all charges, and the American justice system, through a
34:27
jury of his peers, will have the final authoritative say
34:30
on the evidence presented.
34:31
Speaker 2: Exactly, we have to respect the process.
34:33
Speaker 1: Our role today is simply to guide you through the astonishing,
34:37
verified facts of how the investigation reached this unprecedented point, and.
34:41
Speaker 2: The mechanics of that investigation alone are enough to permanently
34:45
alter how you perceive privacy evidence and the long memory
34:49
of the law.
34:50
Speaker 1: They absolutely are, And I want to leave you with
34:52
one last thing to mull over as we wrap up
34:54
today's deep dive. Think back to that dusty filing cabinet
34:57
we talked about at the very beginning, the one with.
34:59
Speaker 2: The least the birth certificate.
35:01
Speaker 1: If a thirty year old, expertly concealed, meticulously executed crime
35:05
can be completely dismantled by a piece of paper sitting
35:08
in a municipal archive and a piece of plastic casually
35:11
tossed into a public trash can.
35:13
Speaker 2: It makes you wonder, in an age.
35:14
Speaker 1: Where our genetic footprints are literally inescapable and constantly cataloged,
35:19
are there truly any cold cases? Left, Or are they
35:22
all just waiting in a dusty drawer somewhere, biting their time,
35:26
waiting for the technology to finally catch up to the truth.