Gilgo Beach killings: Andrew Dykes, suspect in killing of Tanya Denise Jackson, expected to be arraigned Thursday, sources say

Andrew Dykes, the former Tennessee state trooper suspected in the killing of Gilgo Beach victim dubbed "Peaches," whose dismembered body was found miles away from her toddler daughter’s, is expected to be arraigned in Nassau County Court on Thursday on second-degree murder charges, sources told Newsday.

Dykes was extradited on Wednesday from Hillsborough County Jail, where he had been held since his arrest on Dec. 3 on a fugitive warrant from New York at his home in Ruskin, Florida, a suburb of Tampa.

A Nassau County grand jury indicted him on murder charges in the killing of Tanya Denise Jackson, 26, a Persian Gulf War veteran from Mobile, Alabama, whose torso was found in Hempstead Lake State Park in Lakeview on June 28, 1997.

He has not been charged with the killing of the couple’s 2-year-old toddler, Tatiana Marie Dykes, who died around the same time, but was discovered on Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach in 2011.

Investigators originally believed the killings were the work of the Gilgo Beach serial killer, who they believe was responsible for the deaths of nearly a dozen sets of remains found along the waterfront strip on the South Shore of Long Island in 2010 and 2011.

Massapequa Park architect Rex A. Heuermann, 62, has been charged in the deaths of seven women — including six found near Gilgo Beach — and his case is currently pending in Suffolk County. He has pleaded not guilty to multiple first- and second-degree murder charges in connection with the killings.

For years Jackson was referred to as Jane Doe No. 3 or "Peaches," a reference to the tattoo on her body.

Nassau police detectives working with the FBI first connected Jackson and her daughter in 2022 through DNA testing, matching them to a relative in Alabama.

It wasn’t until April that police revealed the mother and daughter’s name, matching the child with Dykes in Florida.

Jackson and Dykes met in the military, but never married, a relative told Newsday. The child was born on March 17, 1995, while they were both living in Texas.

He was in a relationship with another woman with two sons at the time. It’s unclear if Dykes has retained a lawyer, but his son, Aundrey Dykes, 43, has been adamant that his father is innocent.

"The whole narrative that my dad was trying to, or he killed her to keep it from my mother, is not true, because my mother obviously knew," Dykes said in a phone interview earlier this month. "The military knew."

He said that he spoke to Nassau County detectives who told him that they were "100% certain that my dad committed the murders" and his father’s DNA was found at the crime scene.

Jackson, a medical assistant in the military, moved to Brooklyn with her daughter shortly before her disappearance.

Dykes retired from the Army in 2001, then worked as a corrections officer and as a state trooper for the Tennessee Highway Patrol, and then as a security guard for the state Department of Labor, according to the Tennessee Department of Human Resources.

Hillsborough County, Florida, jail records show that Dykes was transferred to New York at 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday.

He’s expected to be arraigned in front of Nassau County Supreme Court Justice Tammy Robbins around 10:30 a.m. on Thursday.

Newsday's Grant Parpan contributed to this story.