In Taylor’s case, a police photo taken at the scene showed a tattoo on the right side of her back, with dozens of razor-thin crooked gashes, as though someone spent some considerable time not merely cutting the tattoo off but repeatedly slicing it from top to bottom.
Police say it took medical examiners pushing the skin together to figure out what the tattoo was: a red heart with an angel wing that said, ‘‘Remy’s angel.’’ A Washington, D.C. detective recognized the tattoo, six months later, as belonging to a woman reported missing by another local sex worker.
Taylor was an upstate New York native, last seen on the streets of Manhattan, working near the Port Authority Bus Terminal the week before her body was found, according to police reports.
She had been arrested in Atlantic City, New York, and D.C., where she had just relocated from that same month. Little else was known about Taylor at the time.
She had been working near the Port Authority Bus Terminal between July 18-21, an area once known as the Minnesota Strip — a term coined by cops in the ’70s because that stretch of Eighth Avenue between 42nd and 57th Streets was known for prostitution, and when Minnesota passed tough anti-prostitution laws, many women left for the streets of New York City.
During that time, city-based punk rock band The Dictators penned the song “
The Minnesota Strip” [“The strip is hopping on Friday night / They come from so far away”]. In the ’90s, the area was cleaned up — making it much more unusual to see women walking the streets topless after midnight — but there are still a handful of adult shops scattered around the area, and, although you may have to look a little harder, there are still sex workers.
As of this story, Suffolk police say there are no updates in Taylor’s case, although even if there were new leads, homicide squad detectives would likely not publicly release them in order to secure a conviction should they eventually make an arrest, as is standard practice.
But in 2016, Khalil White — who was alternately described as Taylor’s pimp and boyfriend — told the
A&E docuseries The Killing Season that homicide squad detectives informed him that she was found wrapped in burlap.
That detail was significant because it was also widely reported that the first four victims found in Gilgo Beach in December 2010 were also wrapped in burlap. Taylor, however, was previously reported to have been covered with plastic, although police did not confirm that detail.
“The department has not addressed the question of burlap vs. plastic or any other materials,” police recently told the
Press.
Twenty years ago on the morning of July 26, 2003, a woman walking her dog along secluded Halsey Manor Road in Manorville discovered a body that was later identified as that of Jessica Taylor. Eight years later, her additional remains were found 50 miles away on the side of Ocean Parkway.
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