Pain and relief in the twilight zone
"I only loved her and I miss her. She lives in my heart," Thomas Fusco said of his daughter Theresa. Credit: Newsday / Howard Schnapp
Death is difficult. Even in the most ordinary circumstances — old age, an accident, a long bout with disease — the loss of a loved one can be traumatic. Processing, accepting and moving forward is hard.
It's especially painful when death comes from violence, and more so when the perpetrator is not known. Finding peace and closure can seem a Sisyphean task.
So when news comes, as it did earlier this month, that Nassau County investigators had identified a Florida man they said was responsible for the 28-year-old killing of a woman and her toddler daughter whose remains were found near Gilgo Beach, it brings a special sort of relief.
The woman, Tanya Denise Jackson, was known for years as "Peaches" because of a tattoo on her torso; she and her toddler daughter, Tatiana Marie Dykes, were killed in 1997 but remained unidentified until the FBI determined who they were in 2022-23. Up to then, they had been merely statistics on a long list of the missing.
The arrest came a month after Suffolk officials said they had solved another cold case from 1997, the murder of a 69-year-old Northport woman, identifying a since-deceased man they said also raped an elderly woman in 1996. Earlier in the fall, Nassau law enforcement officials made an arrest in the 1984 rape and killing of a 16-year-old Lynbrook girl, Theresa Fusco, years after three men previously convicted of committing that crime were exonerated by DNA testing. Looming over all that is the evolving Gilgo Beach case, and the indictment of Rex Heuermann in seven of the murders.
New techniques in DNA retrieval and testing were responsible for these breakthroughs, as they have been in scores of cold cases. But the validity of this new science and the accuracy of its results are being challenged in courts. The son of the Florida man accused of the Jackson killing insists his father is innocent.
Lasting relief for victims' families, in other words, is still pending.
This is not just a Long Island problem.
More than 345,000 homicide and non-negligent manslaughter cases in the United States went unsolved from 1965 to 2023, according to a Murder Accountability Project analysis of FBI data. At any particular time, as many as 100,000 people are reported as actively missing in the United States, according to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System. The most recent Census of Medical Examiners and Coroners conducted by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics found that the nation's medical examiner and coroner offices held more than 11,000 sets of unidentified human remains.
Those numbers represent a lot of empty seats at a lot of holiday tables, some seats vacant for decades.
But statistics cannot convey the disquieting uncertainty of living in this twilight zone, where one is tormented by a lack of knowledge, an absence of resolution, and a failure to secure justice, whatever one conceives that to be. Society, too, bears a burden. These unresolved acts of heinousness gnaw at all of us, or should. We have an obligation to every person on Earth to account for their departure from this life.
Every piece of news stirs memories and roils emotions. The prospect of resolution brings joy but also fresh pain.
"I can only say it's heartbreaking to go through this over and over again," said Thomas Fusco at a news conference after the latest arrest in his daughter's case. He said he was grateful for what felt to him like an end at last.
"I only loved her and I miss her. She lives in my heart," he said. "I never gave up hope."
We owe it to all of them to find the answers they need.
Columnist Michael Dobie's opinions are his own.
Michael Dobie is a retired member of the Newsday editorial board.
