Nassau County Serial Murders

Serial Killer

The Nassau County Serial Murders

Overview

The Nassau County serial murders were a series of five unsolved killings committed in Nassau County, New York, between 1984 and 1989. The victims were young women who were reportedly involved in prostitution, affected by drug addiction, or connected to areas where sex work and illegal drugs were common. Their bodies were abandoned in different locations across the county, including residential streets, parking lots, industrial areas, a cemetery and secluded woodland. Investigators suspected that the five deaths might have been connected, although the victims were not killed in a consistent manner. One woman was shot, two were beaten, one was strangled and another was stabbed repeatedly. The varying methods complicated efforts to establish a recognizable pattern, but the victims' circumstances and the disposal of their bodies led authorities to consider the possibility that a single offender had deliberately targeted vulnerable women.

Victims

• Deborah Lee Smith, 20 August 1984, Valley Stream: Smith was originally from Quincy, California. Her body was discovered on August 21, 1984, wrapped in a blanket and left near a curb on Hunters Avenue in Valley Stream. She had been shot at close range in the head and chest with what investigators believed was a large-caliber firearm. Available accounts identify August 1984 as the period of her death, but the precise day she was killed was not publicly established.
• Jonie Jackson, 27 early 1985, Hempstead: Jackson's moderately decomposed body was found on February 18, 1985, in a parking lot on Franklin Avenue in Hempstead. She had suffered a fatal head injury caused by a severe beating. Her body had been covered or enclosed with a plastic bag before being abandoned. Because decomposition prevented authorities from establishing an exact date of death, investigators determined only that she had been killed sometime before her discovery.
• Gwendolyn "Gwen" Lukes, 26 September 1985, Upper Brookville: Lukes was found strangled in a cemetery in Upper Brookville on September 13, 1985. She was known to have worked in prostitution in the Hempstead area for approximately three years. Publicly available information does not establish whether she was killed on September 13 or sometime shortly before her body was found.
• Genise Wilder, 22 June 1989, Hempstead: Wilder, a resident of Roosevelt, was found on June 27, 1989, in an industrial or factory area near Kellum Place in Hempstead. She had been stabbed multiple times. Investigators believed she had been murdered during June 1989, although an exact date of death was not publicly confirmed.
• Christine Warner, 23 December 1989, Old Westbury: Warner was originally from Manhattan and was also known as Tina Clark. Her body was discovered on December 13, 1989, in a wooded area near the Meadowbrook Polo Club in Old Westbury. She had been beaten to death. Available reports identify December 13 as the date her body was found, but they do not conclusively establish that she was killed on that same day.

...

Confirmed Victims: (5)

Deborah Lee Smith Age: (20), Date of Death: 1984-08

Suspect in Gilgo Beach serial killings