Gilgo Beach killings: Efforts to ID victim using facial reconstruction sketch have failed, DA says

Efforts by the Gilgo Beach Homicide Task Force to publicize a facial reconstruction sketch of an Asian male considered to be a one of the victims have so far not yet yielded useful leads, Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney told Newsday.

Tierney said recently the information provided to his office has not been "profound" and included one lead that investigators have already discounted.

The district attorney also acknowledged that his office is considering additional forensics techniques to identify the victim known as "Asian Doe," whose ancestry has been traced through genetic analysis to southern China, in addition to distributing the sketches to other police departments.

"Everything is on the table," Tierney said when asked about other forensic methods being considered in the case.

The rendering released weeks ago of the victim whose skeletal remains were found along Ocean Parkway in Gilgo Beach on April 4, 2011, aimed to show what he look like before he died.

At a news conference in mid-September, Tierney said the victim died from homicidal blunt force trauma around 2006 and was between 17 and 23 years old at time of death.

In the event the victim identified as a female, an additional sketch of a person with long hair was provided to the public. Special efforts were made to distribute the sketch to Asian news media, authorities said.

One forensic technique that could be in play is the use of stable isotope analysis, a method of examining human remains to identify what isotope of such elements as oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen can be detected as a way of tracing the movements of person in the weeks and months before they died.

Unlike DNA, which can often identify a person through their genetic makeup, stable isotopes can tell what kind of regional diet and water a person consumed to give an indication of where a victim resided and traveled, sometimes for up two decades before death, experts have said. The technique zeros in on different levels of isotopes which correlate with rainwater and plant life that are part of a person’s diet.

"I think this is a case where isotopes could be potentially useful in the investigation," said Professor Eric Bartelink, co-director of the human identification laboratory at Chico State University in California.

Bartelink, who has written extensively about stable isotopes, said analysis of a victim’s fingernails and hair can provide an indication of where they traveled in the short term — weeks or months — within the United States before death.

One of the most notable cases of stable isotope use involved the 2012 identification of the remains of Nikole Bakoles, 20, a single mother who disappeared 12 years earlier. Bakoles’ bones were found by hunters along the shore of the Great Salt Lake in Utah and isotope analysis of the hair from the remains of Bakoles revealed that she had traveled before death in the northwestern United States. Law enforcement then backtracked through missing persons reports and ultimately made a DNA match to confirm the dead woman’s identity.

Police in Ireland used isotope analysis to identify a murder victim whose dismembered remains were found in March 2005 in a Dublin canal. The victim was identified through a combination of isotope and DNA analysis to be a 38 year-old African immigrant named Farah Swaleh Noor.

Irish police later determined that Noor was killed by the daughters of a woman he was having a relationship with. The daughters, dubbed the "Scissor Sisters" because of the implement they use to dismember the victim, were later convicted of the homicide.

Closer to home, NYPD detectives used stable isotope analysis to track the movements around the eastern United States of a murdered woman known for a time as "Monique" because of a body tattoo. She was later identified through genetic genealogy as Jennifer McAllister, of Brooklyn, a woman whose body parts were found in Brooklyn's Calvert Vaux Park in 2015.

While scientists agree that isotopes can be useful in predicting the movements of unidentified human remains, one law enforcement official cautioned that the remains need to be of good quality to contain enough isotope materials to be useful.

Bartelink also noted that the isotope signature of teeth is established very early in life, making them not useful for tracking someone’s short term travels.

Tierney said last month that although genetic genealogy pinpointed the ancestral origin of the Asian male to southern China, specifically from the Han ethnic group, it is not easy to use in the case. Asians tend to be underrepresented in genealogical databases so genealogy is a challenge to use, Tierney said.

Learning the identity of the Asian male through any forensic method is considered a crucial step in the Gilgo Beach investigation because it may lead to a possible suspect.

So far, Rex A. Heuermann, of Massapequa Park, has been charged with six Gilgo Beach killings and may be charged with a seventh, officials said.

Heuermann, 61, has pleaded not guilty to the charges and is scheduled back in court in December.

By Anthony M. DeStefano

tony.destefano@newsday.comtonynewsday

Anthony M. DeStefano has been a reporter for Newsday since 1986 and covers law enforcement, criminal justice and legal affairs from its New York City offices.