A retired Army veteran pleaded not guilty Thursday in the 1997 killing of an Alabama woman whose remains were found near the victims of Long Island’s infamous Gilgo Beach killings. Andrew Dykes, who had also served as a Tennessee state trooper and a corrections officer, was charged with second-degree murder in the killing of Tanya Denise Jackson, a fellow military veteran with whom he had a child outside of his marriage, according to prosecutors on Long Island.
Some of Jackson’s remains were found when investigators were combing an ocean parkway near Gilgo Beach in what would become an investigation into women murdered in the area. Another man has been charged in several of those killings, and prosecutors now say Jackson’s death was a different kind of tragedy.
“Tanya didn’t meet her end at the hands of a serial killer,” Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly said after the hearing in Mineola court. “She was a victim of horrifying violence by a person she trusted.”…