Gwendolyn Gwen Lukes, a 26-year-old Black woman, was found dead in a cemetery in Upper Brookville on September 13, 1985. The cause of death was strangulation. She had lived and worked in the Hempstead area, where reports describe her moving through the dangers of street-level survival.

Her killing was later considered part of a cluster of unsolved murders in Nassau County from the mid-1980s into the late 1980s that targeted vulnerable women and left bodies in public spaces across several towns. Investigators focused attention at one point on Allen Gormely Jr., who was arrested in 1990 for two Queens murders he confessed to involving strangulation. A Nassau County court judgment dated April 30, 1992 convicted Gormely of two counts of second-degree murder in the Queens cases, and that conviction was affirmed on appeal December 11, 1995.

No arrest has been announced specifically for Lukes’ homicide. Does anyone have information about Gwen Lukes, her movements in Hempstead, or anything that might help finally identify who killed her?