Officials ID another Gilgo Beach murder victim after 27 years missing

Prosecutors on Long Island have identified the remains of a Gilgo Beach murder victim whose name has eluded authorities for decades.

Karen Vergata, who went missing in 1996, has been named by the Suffolk County district attorney’s office as the woman previously referred to as “Fire Island Jane Doe,” DA Ray Tierney said during a brief news conference on Friday.

Vergata, who Tierney said was working as a sex worker, was 34-years-old at the time of her disappearance.

Her identity emerged as part of a yearslong investigation into nearly a dozen homicides — with victims’ bodies dumped in remote areas around Gilgo Beach. The arrest of Rex Heuermann last month for the alleged murders of three women was touted by authorities as the biggest breakthrough to date in a case that has baffled investigators for more than a decade.

It is unclear if Vergata is at all connected with Heuermann. Tierney declined to take questions and did not announce any additional charges or suspects.

No one filed a missing persons complaint at the time of Vergata’s disappearance. Tierney said her remains were first discovered in 2011. In August 2022, six months after the Gilgo task force was formed to reinvestigate the Gilgo murders, officials used new DNA profiling methods and confirmed her identity in October 2022.

Investigators kept Vergata’s identity under wraps at the time in order to avoid tipping off Heuermann or other potential suspects in the case.

Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Megan Waterman, Amber Costello and Melissa Barthelemy — known as the Gilgo Four — were all believed to be sex workers and their bodies were discovered along a stretch of Gilgo Beach in 2010 and 2011. At least seven other bodies, including Vergata's, were discovered as part of the investigation.

Heuermann, an architect who worked in Manhattan and lived in Massapequa Park, is charged with six counts of first- and second-degree murder for the killings of Barthelemy, Costello and Waterman. Prosecutors suggested last month it was likely he will also be charged in the murder of Brainard-Barnes, but they have not announced it yet.

Heuermann has pleaded not-guilty to the murder charges.