Karen Vergata's remains were discovered in 1996 on Fire Island and later linked to a skull found near Gilgo Beach.
Authorities in New York identified Karen Vergata on Friday as the seventh victim in the Gilgo Beach murder investigation.
Police said Thursday that Vergata, who was 34 at the time she went missing, was a sex worker, just like many of the other victims. Some of her remains were discovered stuffed inside a plastic tub in Hempstead Lake State Park in 1997; others turned up near Gilgo Beach in 2011, along with the remains of an unidentified toddler believed to be her daughter.
Investigators zeroed in on Heuermann as a suspect in the slayings of four women—Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, Amber Lynn Costello, and Maureen Brainard-Barnes—when a new task force formed last year ran an old tip about a Chevy Avalanche pickup truck through a vehicle records database.
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