Gilgo Beach killings: Investigators renewing efforts to identify remains of Asian victim found in 2011

Prosecutors are renewing their push to identify an Asian man whose remains are considered part of the Gilgo Beach homicide investigation, Suffolk District Attorney Ray Tierney said.

In the aftermath of convicted Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex A. Heuermann’s sentencing last week to life in prison without the possibility of parole, Tierney told Newsday that investigators plan to visit Asian communities in the New York City region, seeking DNA samples to help identify the man whose skeletal remains were discovered near Ocean Parkway in 2011.

"We're trying to identify that individual through investigative genetic genealogy, which means we’ve got to get more information about the gene pool," Tierney told Newsday in an interview following the Wednesday sentencing. "Once you know who the person is, you could go back to their life at the last point, just before them disappearing, and develop leads from there."

Search to ID 'Asian Doe'

Remains of the man, who prosecutors refer to as "Asian Doe," were found east of Gilgo Beach on April 4, 2011, although he is believed to have been dumped there at least five years earlier.

Investigators have said the man, who died of blunt force trauma, was clad in women's clothing, an indication that he might have been a sex worker.

In 2024, Suffolk investigators published two reconstructions of his face — one showing him with long hair and the other with shorter cropped hair.

Despite wide publicity of the sketches, particularly in Asian media, the leads investigators received weren’t successful and to date prosecutors haven't been able to identify him or locate relatives, Tierney said.

"We're going to go into Asian communities and ask them, ‘Will you give us a DNA sample? Will you participate in this study, so we can get more genetic profiles to allow us to hopefully locate relatives of this individual?’ ” said Tierney, who previously told Newsday that the man may have come from the city's Asian immigrant community rather than Long Island.

Tierney's office said the identification campaign will commence in the coming weeks, with investigators fanning out to Chinatown in Manhattan, Flushing in Queens, and Sunset Park, Bath Beach and Dyker Heights, all three in Brooklyn. They’ll be joined by members of the NYPD’s Community Affairs Division, the Asian Jade Society and by staff from local police precincts, officials said.

Flyers will be distributed in various translations, and investigators, with the help of translators, will speak to residents, said Tania Lopez, a spokeswoman for Tierney's office. Investigators, she said, will have DNA kits on hand for individuals who consent to contribute their samples.

"We hope these efforts will assist law enforcement in not only identifying Asian Doe, but any Asian unidentified human remains," Lopez said.

Challenging endeavor

The identification effort is considered more challenging because Asian populations have their own genealogy system and don't contribute in large numbers to public DNA search sites, hurting the chances of getting a good genetic comparison, said Colleen Fitzpatrick, a nationally known genealogist with Identifinders in California.

"I think there'll be plenty of people that will be cooperative [with the effort] and there's going to be some people that just don't trust the whole thing," Fitzpatrick said. "It's not really mistrust though. It's more that some people are just not familiar with what they're trying to do. The younger people might not care and would be willing to help, and the older people might not understand the whole DNA system."

Asian Doe is believed to be between 17 and 23 years old and between 5-3 and 5-9 in height. He was found wearing all women’s clothing including a bra, a large Chrysantheme gray ribbed short-sleeve crew neck shirt, a size 10 Rafaella shirt and Bill Blass blue jeans, investigators previously said.

When the sketches were first publicized in September 2024, Tierney said Asian Doe's ancestry was traced through DNA analysis to southern China, specifically to the Han ethnic group, which makes up more than 90% of the Chinese population in China and 97% of the Chinese population in Taiwan, records show.

The use of genetic genealogy led Gilgo Beach homicide investigators to identify the remains in 2020 of Gilgo Beach victim Valerie Mack.

And in 2023, Gilgo investigators revealed that genetic genealogy also was used to confirm the identity of Gilgo victim Karen Vergata, whose remains were found on Fire Island in 1996.

In April, Heuermann, a Massapequa Park resident and Manhattan architect, pleaded guilty to the murders of seven women and admitted killing an eighth, including Mack and Vergata.

The Suffolk County District Attorney's Office has not implicated Heuermann in the death of Asian Doe and members have declined to comment on whether they believe he committed that homicide.