Who is Tiffany Dixon? Decades-old missing case of 12-year-old back in the spotlight after Rex Heuermann's arrest
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK: A more than 30-year-old disappearance mystery is suddenly gaining attention after the arrest of New York architect Rex Heuermann, 59, who is suspected of several murders. Heuermann has been charged for allegedly killing three women and being the “prime suspect” for the death of another.
While the alleged Gilgo Beach murders for which Heuermann was arrested happened during the time period of 2007-2010, the disappearance of a 12-year-old girl from Brooklyn, Tiffany Dixon, in 1991, has come into the spotlight because of a few coincidences.
Who is Tiffany Dixon?
Tiffany Dixon mysteriously disappeared on October 20, 1991, when she was going to her junior high school in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood after dropping her third-grader cousin at elementary school. She was never seen again.
Tiffany lived with her aunt Norma Delgado in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood. Her biological mother, Iris Franco, could no longer take care of Tiffany when she got divorced seven years earlier, and asked Norma to take in Tiffany.
Per Medium, the police thought the disappearance to be a runaway case. The 83rd Precinct Detective Squad issued a missing person alert only in the week following her disappearance and asked the public to be alert for the missing 12-year-old.
During that time, Norma was however certain that Tiffany did not run away as she was a bright student who was got accepted into a magnet program at her junior high school. She used to love studying and was taking high-level maths and science in school.
She used to spend most of her free time in the library and wanted to become a scientist when she grew up. Norma treated her as her own daughter.
How is Tiffany Dixon’s case getting related to the Gilgo Beach murder suspect?
Per the true crime site Murder Incorporated, just eight months after Tiffany’s disappearance, Gilgo Beach murder suspect Rex Heuermann started working a stone’s throw distance away. Dixon lived on Hart Street in Bushwick and just eight months after her disappearance, the then 27-year-old Heuermann, who worked as an apprentice under Harvey Rothenberg, filed for work at 689 Hart Street.
He filed for two jobs - first, to install an interior fire alarm system, and second, to interior partitions. However, both the two filings were “pre-filed” in May 1992 and did not mention anything about 1991, the very year of Tiffany’s disappearance. The outlet revealed that Heuermann was working just 600 feet away from Tiffany’s dwelling place. Just two weeks after Tiffany’s disappearance, another New York woman Sandra Acosta went missing.
Acosta’s remains were found in Brooklyn. While the residents feared it was the work of a serial killer, Acosta’s sister Luz Carrion said to Pix 11, “Somebody set out to do this.”
Carrion further added, “Not only to her but other people because there’s a lot of young girls missing, about three others. Same color hair, about the same height, weight, same area. The other girl is three blocks away from here, Tiffany.”
The police found out that the Gilgo Beach murders suspect was targeting petite and slim escorts mainly. Heuermann is however not named in relation to Tiffany’s disappearance and police have also not commented anything about the purported link.