"There's No Question She Was Struggling:" Gilgo Investigator on Tanya (Peaches)

Crime Stoppers Poster offering $25,000 for critical information about Tanya Jackson's case.

Tanya Denise Jackson, known for 28 years as dismembered murder victim "Peaches" because of the tattoo on her chest, lived just a short time of her life in Brooklyn, New York.

And Brooklyn is the place where Tanya likely met her killer.

We are learning now the U.S. Army veteran faced difficulties here as a single mother who was estranged from her family in Alabama and her child's father. She used to drive a 1991 black Geo Storm. We already know for a brief time she was working in a doctor's office and a friend may have helped with babysitting. Mother and daughter were recently buried together in Spanish Fort, Alabama--Tanya's home state--at the Alabama State Veterans Memorial Cemetery.

Tanya Jackson received military honors when she was buried with her little girl at a U.S. Army cemetery in Spanish Fort, Alabama.

A senior official with knowledge of the Long Island serial killer investigation said this week about Tanya, "There's no question she was struggling. These stories, they're very sad."

Tanya Denise Jackson was “struggling” during her time in Brooklyn, New York in 1997.

But the official would not say if Tanya Jackson turned to other work to help pay her bills. She had been honorably discharged from the U.S. Army in Texas, after serving in the Persian Gulf War, while pregnant with her baby girl, Tatiana Marie Dykes, in 1995. Tragically, the toddler was found dead in 2011, wrapped in a blanket along Ocean Parkway, during the Gilgo Beach investigation. Some of Tanya's dismembered remains turned up ten miles west in Jones Beach, on the same side of Ocean Parkway. Tanya's torso had been discovered in Hempstead Lake State Park in 1997 inside a green rubber container.

Green, rubber bin where Tanya Jackson’s torso was discovered in June 1997.

We do know that Gilgo investigators have looked at areas in East New York, Brooklyn, known as The Stroll, in connection with other murder victims. Tanya Rush, a Brooklyn mother of three who was known to walk the streets of Linden Boulevard and New Lots Avenue in East New York, was dismembered by her killer in June 2008. One of her body parts was found in a black suitcase near the westbound entrance to the Southern State Parkway in North Bellmore, Nassau County--about eight miles from the Massapequa Park home of Gilgo defendant, Rex Heuermann, who has pleaded not guilty to seven murders.

Tanya Rush, a Brooklyn mother of 3, was dismembered. Her partial remains were found in a suitcase near the Southern State Parkway.

The nude body of Alicia Adams, a 22 year old mother of two, was tossed into the brush of North Conduit Avenue near the eastbound Belt Parkway in June 2013. 13 of her teeth were missing. Adams, too, did sex work since the age of 13 near The Stroll and was last seen near the Imperial Hotel in East New York.

Alicia Adams, a 22 year old mother of two, was tossed into the brush near the Belt Parkway in Queens. 13 of her teeth were missing.

The initial victims discovered in the investigation, known as the Gilgo Four, had advertised their escort services online. But other victims were allegedly solicited on the street.

Some of the dismembered victims were cut with a "hunter's precision," the official noting, "Some of them, you can tell, they're done with an understanding of the anatomy."

The Heuermann case is still in the pre-trial hearing phase, with the defense trying to keep out evidence utilizing nuclear DNA from rootless hairs found on six of the 7 victims.

Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney wants to try the case with all seven victims included. Defense attorney Michael Brown seeks to sever the case into multiple trials.