This article from last August indicates that Karen was actually identified late 2022 but it was kept under wraps due to the investigation. 14th August was her father's birthday and she called to wish him Happy Birthday. He died in December 2022.
A petition filed in court in 2017 reveals the 34-year-old woman called her father Dominic Vergata on his birthday on 14 February 1996
www.independent.co.uk
Gilgo Beach murders victim Jane Doe 7 identified as Karen Vergata
Gilgo Beach murders victim Karen Vergata made one final phone call to her father on the day that she was last seen alive, it has been revealed.
A petition filed in court in 2017 reveals that the 34-year-old woman called her father Dominic Vergata on his birthday on 14 February 1996. She was never seen or heard from again.
Long Island officials announced on Friday that Vergata went missing that very same day on Valentine’s Day 1996.
At the time, she was living on West 45th St in Manhattan and is believed to have been working as an escort.
Police said that no missing persons report was filed at the time.
But, court records show that in July 2017 – more than two decades later – Dominic Vergata filed a petition to have his daughter officially declared dead so that he could obtain the unclaimed assets from her estate, including two life insurance policies.
In the petition, Vergata’s father details that he last had contact with his daughter on 14 February 14 1996, when she called him on his birthday.
Before that, he said she would call him from time to time.
Following her disappearance, Dominic Vergata says that he tried to track down his missing daughter including hiring an investigator and contacting law enforcement agencies and people who had known her.
But those efforts were unfruitful as she had been murdered and her remains dumped in Long Island.
The Surrogate’s Court in New York ruled that, based on Vergata’s whereabouts being unknown for so long, she was presumed dead on 14 February 1999 and her father was appointed temporary administrator of her estate.
Records show Dominic Vergata died in December 2022.
It is unclear whether or not he knew what had happened to his daughter before he passed away.
On Friday, Long Island officials identified Vergata as the Gilgo Beach murders victim previously known only as Jane Doe 7 or Fire Island Jane Doe.
Karen Vergata was identified as Jane Doe 7
(Suffolk County DA)
Vergata’s partial remains were first discovered along the Long Island shores more than 26 years ago – but the victim’s identity remained unknown until now.
It was 20 April 1996 when a woman’s legs were found wrapped in plastic at Davis Park on Fire Island’s Blue Point Beach.
Almost exactly 15 years later on 11 April 2011, the woman’s skull was then found off Ocean Parkway during the search for Gilgo Beach victims. The skull was located close to the remains of another unidentified victim – Jane Doe 3, also known as Peaches.
The two sets of remains in Fire Island and Ocean Parkway were later found to belong to the same person.
Before now, investigators had long been unable to identify Jane Doe 7 and she was described only as a white woman aged 18 to 50 years old who had several notable scars including evidence of surgery on her left ankle.
She was one of 11 victims whose remains were found dumped along the shores of Gilgo Beach back in 2010 and 2011 – several of whom are also yet to be identified.
Decades later, investigators were finally able to identify Fire Island Jane Doe using genetic genealogy and her surviving relatives’ DNA.
In August 2022 – around six months after the new Gilgo Beach taskforce was launched – a DNA profile suitable for genealogical comparison was developed from the remains of the victim, officials said in a press conference on Friday.
The next month, the FBI was able to presumptively identify the victim using genetic genealogy as Vergata.
Then, that October, investigators tracked down a relative of Vergata and took a buccal swab. Using this, they were able to definitively identify the victim as Vergata.
While her identity was confirmed late last year, Suffolk County DA Rodney Tierney said in a press conference that officials kept the major breakthrough under wraps until now due to both the ongoing investigation into Mr Heuermann and the need to contact all of Vergata’s family members.
“Prior to disclosing, we needed to contact all Vergata’s family members and around the same time we were beginning the grand jury confidential investigation into the murders of the victims known as the Gilgo 4,” he told reporters.
”So we decided not to make it public... until the results of that investigation became public and we had made notice to Vergata’s family.”
www.crimewatchers.net
