Seraphina Pereira: Found in a Shallow Grave in Queens

DHF-017 — Seraphina Pereira: Found in a Shallow Grave in Queens

Case No. DHF-017 | Subject: Seraphina Pereira | Date: 19–28 October 2026 | Location: Edgemere / Far Rockaway, Queens, New York, USA | Status: CHARGED

Posted: 30 October 2026

Status stamp: CHARGED

Image note for readers: All images in this file are original illustrations created for Dark History Files. They are atmospheric artwork, not photographs and not real evidence. No image in this file depicts Seraphina Pereira, Rogelio Lozano-Garita, any member of any family, or any real person, and no image depicts any act of violence or any death.

Caption: Case card for DHF-017 — Seraphina Pereira, Queens, New York. Status: CHARGED.

THE FILE CARD

Case File No.	DHF-017
Subject	Seraphina Pereira, 35, of Edgemere / Far Rockaway, Queens, New York, USA
Date	19 October 2026 (last seen); 24 October 2026 (body found); 26 October 2026 (arrest); 28 October 2026 (arraignment)
Location	Queens, New York, USA — home near Beach 54th Street; body found near Beach 58th Street and Almeda Avenue, Rockaway Community Park, Edgemere
Status	CHARGED
Investigating authorities	New York Police Department; Queens District Attorney's Office
Charge	Rogelio Lozano-Garita, 26, of Edgemere, has been charged with second-degree murder, criminal possession of a weapon, concealment of a human corpse, and tampering with physical evidence in the death of Seraphina Pereira. A charge is an allegation, not a conviction, and Lozano-Garita is presumed innocent until proven guilty in court. He pleaded not guilty at his arraignment on 28 October 2026 and was ordered held without bail.
Relationship, as reported	The Queens District Attorney describes Pereira as Lozano-Garita's girlfriend. Some reporting describes him as her ex-boyfriend. The exact status of the relationship at the time is reported differently, and this file does not resolve that difference.
Motive	None announced. Police did not announce a possible motive, according to PEOPLE's reporting of 27 October 2026. This file states no motive.
One-line summary	A 35-year-old Queens mother was last seen on 19 October 2026; five days later her body was found in a shallow grave in Rockaway Community Park, about half a mile from her home; and on 26 October 2026 police arrested Rogelio Lozano-Garita, 26, who was charged with murder and related crimes and pleaded not guilty at his arraignment on 28 October 2026.

Why this file is stamped CHARGED: The stamp records only the legal position as reported on 28 October 2026 — that Rogelio Lozano-Garita has been charged with murder and related crimes in Seraphina Pereira's death, and that he pleaded not guilty. It is not a finding that he killed her, and it is not a verdict. Prosecutors' allegations about what happened are attributed to prosecutors throughout this file, because an allegation in a courtroom is not the same as a tested court finding. If the case is dismissed, reduced, or ends in a conviction or acquittal, this file will be updated, dated, and re-stamped to match the court record — never quietly rewritten.

THE CASE

Last seen on a Monday morning

Seraphina Pereira was 35 and lived in Edgemere, in the Far Rockaway area of Queens, New York. She was a mother of young children. On Monday 19 October 2026 she was last seen leaving her home near Beach 54th Street, according to the New York Police Department as reported by PEOPLE, and last seen alive that day with Rogelio Lozano-Garita at her Beach 54th Street home, according to law-enforcement sources reported by the New York Post. Those two statements sit side by side in the record without quite being the same statement: one fixes a departure from a home, the other places two people together at that home on the same day. This file keeps both, attributed, because the difference between them matters to what follows.

What happened inside that home on 19 October is, in the public record, a matter of prosecutors' allegations, and this file treats it strictly as such. Prosecutors allege that Pereira was shot inside an apartment at 343 Beach 54th Street between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. on 19 October, according to reporting of the arraignment on 28 October 2026. The city's chief medical examiner ruled her death a homicide. This file does not repeat the medical examiner's description of her injuries, because that description adds nothing a reader needs in order to understand the case, and because the manner in which a person died is not detail a family should have to read back in a stranger's blog. The facts that matter for the record are the allegation, the ruling, and the charge — and each of them is labelled as what it is.

In the days after 19 October, Pereira was reported missing, and her family and neighbours searched for her. The reporting does not agree on a single date for the missing-person report, and this file does not invent one: one account says she was reported missing on 19 October, another says she was reported missing on 22 October after failing to collect her children, and prosecutors allege a separate fact — that Lozano-Garita himself called 911 two days after the alleged killing to report her missing, telling police that a box containing her belongings had been left at his apartment building with a note said to be from a surfer who claimed to have found the belongings on the beach. That 911 call is a prosecutors' allegation, not an established fact, and it is presented here only as an allegation. What is not in dispute is that, for five days, a mother who had been seen on a Monday morning was not found, while the search around her neighbourhood went on.

Five days later, in a park

On Saturday 24 October 2026, a little before 10 p.m., police found Pereira's body near a beach in Queens, according to the NYPD as reported by PEOPLE. The fuller location, given in reporting of the arraignment, is near a cricket field by Beach 58th Street and Almeda Avenue in Rockaway Community Park, Edgemere, about half a mile from her home. An NYPD K-9 unit searched the beach, according to that reporting. Her body was in a shallow grave, and the Queens District Attorney's Office says Lozano-Garita allegedly transported her body to the park in a wagon. Law-enforcement sources reported by the New York Post say surveillance video showed a man pushing a wagon containing large garbage bags out of Pereira's apartment building and later into a wooded area at Beach 58th Street and Almeda Avenue. That video account is attributed to law-enforcement sources, not stated as a court-tested fact, and the wagon allegation is attributed to the District Attorney. A reader should be able to tell, from this file, which claims rest on video reported by sources, which rest on prosecutors' allegations, and which rest on the medical examiner's ruling — because in a case that has not been tried, the source of a claim is part of the claim.

The distance in this file is short, and that is part of why it is hard to read. Half a mile separates the home on Beach 54th Street from the park ground at Beach 58th Street and Almeda Avenue. Five days separate the last sighting from the discovery. The search, in other words, was looking in the right neighbourhood all along, and the answer was in a public park a short walk from home. That is not a criticism of the search. Parks are large, a grave is small, and a body found by a K-9 unit on a Saturday night after five days of searching is a discovery made by persistence, not by luck alone. But the geography is worth holding in mind, because it is the geography of so many cases in this archive: the missing person is not far away, and the distance between home and discovery is measured in streets, not miles.

The arrest, and what the charge does and does not say

On the evening of Monday 26 October 2026, exactly a week after Pereira was last seen, police arrested Rogelio Lozano-Garita, 26, in connection with her killing, according to the NYPD as reported by PEOPLE. He was charged with murder, criminal possession of a weapon, concealment of a human corpse, and tampering with physical evidence, according to police as reported by PEOPLE and confirmed in the Queens District Attorney's announcement of 28 October 2026, which describes the charge as murder, weapon possession, and related crimes for the shooting death of his girlfriend and the concealment of her body in a shallow grave at Rockaway Community Park.

At his arraignment on Wednesday 28 October 2026, Lozano-Garita pleaded not guilty, and a judge ordered him held without bail, according to reporting of the arraignment. He is due back in court on 30 October 2026, according to that reporting, and faces up to 25 years to life in prison if convicted of the murder charge. When he was escorted from the 101st Precinct in Far Rockaway, he told reporters he was innocent. That denial is part of the record, and this file records it alongside the charge, because a file that prints only the prosecution's case is not a file — it is a brief. A charge, a not-guilty plea, and a denial are three different things, and all three belong in the same paragraph, in that order, so that no reader mistakes the first for the last word.

Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said, as alleged, that Lozano-Garita "mercilessly killed his girlfriend," the mother of his children, "and then tried to cover up the crime." That is the District Attorney's statement, quoted here as a statement, and it carries the same qualifier as everything else in this file that comes from a prosecutor: "as alleged." It is not this file's conclusion. It is the prosecution's characterisation of its own case, and it will be tested, or not, in court. The same discipline applies to the relationship itself. The District Attorney calls Pereira Lozano-Garita's girlfriend; some reporting calls him her ex-boyfriend, and PEOPLE notes that the outlets differ and that it sought clarification from the NYPD. This file does not pick a side in that discrepancy, because the public record has not settled it, and because the charge does not turn on it. What the record does establish is that Lozano-Garita was the father of two of Pereira's children, according to police as reported by PEOPLE and the New York Post — a fact that makes the case harder, not simpler, to write about, and that is stated here plainly and without embellishment.

What remains, and what this file will not do

No motive has been announced for this killing. PEOPLE's reporting of 27 October 2026 states that police did not announce a possible motive, and no later source relied on here supplies one. This file therefore states none, and it does not fill the gap with a theory about the relationship, about a separation, or about anything else that has been reported as background by individual outlets but not established by the authorities. Background is not evidence, and a file that treats it as evidence misleads every reader who trusts it.

This file also names no grieving relative and quotes no family member's grief. Pereira's family searched for her, and that search is part of the record. Their grief is not material for this file, and it is not quoted here. The same restraint applies to her children: this file says only that she was a mother of young children. Reporting differs on the number of her children — some outlets say three, some say four — and this file does not choose a number the record has not settled. A disputed detail about a dead woman's children is not a detail worth getting wrong for the sake of a complete sentence.

What happens next is a court process, and it has a date already: the next court appearance was set for 30 October 2026. After that, the case will move at the pace criminal cases move — slowly, in public, with evidence tested rather than merely reported. Until a court acts, the stamp on this file stays CHARGED, the charged man stays presumed innocent, and the allegations stay allegations. That is not a hedge. It is the whole point of the stamp system: to record, exactly, how far the public record has gone, and no further.

TIMELINE

• 19 October 2026 (Monday, 2 a.m.–6 a.m. as alleged) — Prosecutors allege Seraphina Pereira, 35, was shot inside an apartment at 343 Beach 54th Street, Edgemere, Queens. She was last seen leaving her home near Beach 54th Street on 19 October, according to the NYPD, and last seen alive that day with Rogelio Lozano-Garita at her home, according to law-enforcement sources.
• 19–22 October 2026 — Pereira is reported missing. Sources differ on the date of the report; prosecutors allege Lozano-Garita called 911 two days after the alleged killing to report her missing, saying a box of her belongings had been left at his building with a note said to be from a surfer.
• 24 October 2026 (Saturday, a little before 10 p.m.) — Police find Pereira's body in a shallow grave near a cricket field by Beach 58th Street and Almeda Avenue in Rockaway Community Park, about half a mile from her home. The city's chief medical examiner rules her death a homicide.
• 26 October 2026 (Monday evening) — Police arrest Rogelio Lozano-Garita, 26, in connection with the killing, exactly a week after Pereira was last seen. He is charged with murder, criminal possession of a weapon, concealment of a human corpse, and tampering with physical evidence.
• 28 October 2026 (Wednesday) — The Queens District Attorney announces the charges: murder, weapon possession, and related crimes for the shooting death and concealment of the body in a shallow grave at Rockaway Community Park, allegedly transported there in a wagon. Lozano-Garita is arraigned, pleads not guilty, and is ordered held without bail. His next court date is set for 30 October 2026.
• 30 October 2026 (Friday) — This file is published, based on reporting and official statements available as of 29 October 2026. The charges have not been tested in court.

EVIDENCE & LEADS

• Last seen (NYPD, via PEOPLE; law-enforcement sources via the New York Post): Seraphina Pereira, 35, was last seen leaving her residence on 19 October 2026, and was last seen alive that day with Rogelio Lozano-Garita at her Beach 54th Street home.
• Alleged shooting and homicide ruling (prosecutors, via arraignment reporting; city's chief medical examiner): prosecutors allege Pereira was shot inside an apartment at 343 Beach 54th Street between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. on 19 October 2026. The medical examiner ruled her death a homicide. This file does not repeat the examiner's description of injuries.
• Missing-person report — dates differ (NY Post; CBS New York reporting; prosecutors via arraignment reporting): accounts differ on when Pereira was reported missing. Prosecutors allege Lozano-Garita called 911 two days after the alleged killing to report her missing, with a story about a box of belongings and a note said to be from a surfer. That call and its account are allegations, not established facts.
• Discovery (NYPD, via PEOPLE; arraignment reporting): on 24 October 2026, a little before 10 p.m., police found Pereira's body in a shallow grave near Beach 58th Street and Almeda Avenue in Rockaway Community Park, about half a mile from her home, after an NYPD K-9 search of the beach.
• Wagon allegation (Queens District Attorney, 28 October 2026; law-enforcement sources via the New York Post): the District Attorney alleges Lozano-Garita transported Pereira's body to the park in a wagon. Law-enforcement sources say surveillance video showed a man pushing a wagon containing large garbage bags from her building toward the park. Both accounts are attributed, not stated as court-tested facts.
• Arrest and charges (NYPD, via PEOPLE; Queens District Attorney, 28 October 2026): Lozano-Garita, 26, was arrested on the evening of 26 October 2026 and charged with second-degree murder, criminal possession of a weapon, concealment of a human corpse, and tampering with physical evidence.
• Arraignment, plea, custody, next date (arraignment reporting, 29 October 2026): on 28 October 2026 Lozano-Garita pleaded not guilty, was ordered held without bail, and was set to return to court on 30 October 2026. If convicted of the murder charge, he faces up to 25 years to life in prison. When escorted from the 101st Precinct, he told reporters he was innocent.
• District Attorney's statement (Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz, 28 October 2026): as alleged, Lozano-Garita "mercilessly killed his girlfriend," the mother of his children, "and then tried to cover up the crime." Quoted as the prosecution's characterisation, not as this file's conclusion.
• Motive — none announced (PEOPLE, 27 October 2026): police did not announce a possible motive. This file states none.
• Relationship status — reported differently (Queens District Attorney; PEOPLE): the District Attorney describes Pereira as Lozano-Garita's girlfriend; some reporting describes him as her ex-boyfriend. Police confirm he was the father of two of her children. This file does not resolve the discrepancy.
• What is NOT evidence in this file: any motive; the exact status of the relationship at the time; the number of Pereira's children (reporting differs); a single settled date for the missing-person report; any description of injuries or of the scene; any claim about the case beyond the charges and the attributed allegations above; and any social-media version of events, which this file does not repeat.

Caption: Illustration of a quiet coastal park at dusk — atmospheric artwork, not a photograph of Rockaway Community Park and not evidence.

STILL UNKNOWN

• What was the motive? Police have not announced one. This file states none.
• What was the exact status of the relationship? The District Attorney calls Pereira Lozano-Garita's girlfriend; some reporting calls him her ex-boyfriend. The record has not settled it.
• When exactly was Pereira reported missing? Sources differ, and prosecutors' allegation about a 911 call two days after the alleged killing is untested. This file does not state a single date.
• What will the court find? Lozano-Garita has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent. The next court date was set for 30 October 2026. Until a court acts, the charges remain allegations.
• Is there further evidence police have not released? The investigation and the court case continue. This file records only what police, prosecutors, and reputable reporting have made public.

What would change this file: if the court proceedings on or after 30 October 2026 change the charges, if police or prosecutors announce a motive, if the relationship status is clarified on the record, or if the case ends in a conviction, acquittal, or dismissal, this file will be updated with the date, the source, and the new stamp if the facts require it — never quietly rewritten. Until then, the stamp stays CHARGED.

WATCH THE FULL STORY

No companion video yet. If Dark History Files' sister channel Curiozoid publishes a video on this case, it will be linked here.

SOURCES

• Queens District Attorney's Office, 28 October 2026 — "Edgemere man charged with murder for killing girlfriend": Rogelio Lozano-Garita charged with murder, weapon possession, and related crimes for the shooting death of Seraphina Pereira, 35, and concealment of her body in a shallow grave at Rockaway Community Park, allegedly transported there in a wagon. District Attorney Melinda Katz's statement, as alleged. Read via press-release listing in full.
• PEOPLE, 27 October 2026 — "Mom of 3 Found Dead in Shallow Grave Near Marsh Days After She Disappeared From Home": NYPD confirms Pereira, 35, last seen leaving her residence on 19 October 2026; body found near a Queens beach on 24 October, a little before 10 p.m.; Lozano-Garita, 26, arrested Monday evening, exactly a week after she was last seen; father of two of her children; police did not announce a possible motive; charges as listed; relationship described differently by different outlets. Read in full. (This file does not adopt PEOPLE's headline count of her children, because other reporting gives a different number.)
• New York News Daily, 29 October 2026 — "Queens Man Arraigned on Murder Charges After Prosecutors Say He Shot Seraphina Pereira and Buried Her Body at Rockaway Community Park": arraignment 28 October 2026, not-guilty plea, held without bail, due back 30 October 2026, up to 25 years to life if convicted; prosecutors' alleged 2 a.m.–6 a.m. shooting window at 343 Beach 54th Street; K-9 beach search, discovery just before 10 p.m. on 24 October near Beach 58th Street and Almeda Avenue, about half a mile from home; prosecutors' allegation about the 911 missing-person call two days later and the surfer note; household composition as reported. Read in full. (This file does not repeat the article's description of injuries.)
• New York Post, 27 October 2026 — "Boyfriend accused of gunning down missing NYC mom, dumping body in shallow grave": law-enforcement sources on last seen alive with Lozano-Garita at her Beach 54th Street home on 19 October, wagon video account, arrest Monday, charges as listed. Read via search result in full. (This file does not repeat the article's description of injuries, and does not adopt its single-date account of the missing-person report, because other reporting differs.)
• CBS New York reporting, 28 October 2026, via social summary — televised report on the disappearance and arrest, including the account that Pereira was reported missing on 22 October after failing to collect her children. Used only to establish that the missing-report date is reported differently; no fact in this file rests solely on this summary.
• No competitor article text or image is reproduced in this file. Facts are stated in Dark History Files' own words, with officials' statements attributed to their source. No source beyond those listed above was relied on for facts in the draft. No search-volume numbers are stated, because no tool returned any.

Caption: Illustration of a quiet coastal residential street in the evening — atmospheric artwork, not a photograph of Beach 54th Street and not evidence.

Reader question: A body was found half a mile from home, five days after a woman was last seen. When a search stays close to home and still takes days, what should the public record show about how that search was run — and how much should it show while a court case is still ahead?

RELATED FILES

• DHF-016 — Joshua Cochran: Found in a Neighbor's Closet — https://thedarkhistoryfiles.blogspot.com/2026/10/joshua-cochran-alexandria-case.html
• DHF-014 — Jasmine Gill: The False ICE Story in Sacramento — https://thedarkhistoryfiles.blogspot.com/2026/10/jasmine-gill-sacramento-ice-claim.html
• DHF-012 — Maria Gaminde: Husband Charged in DeBary Disappearance — https://thedarkhistoryfiles.blogspot.com/2026/10/maria-gaminde-debary-murder-charge.html

Previous file: DHF-016 — Joshua Cochran: Found in a Neighbor's Closet — https://thedarkhistoryfiles.blogspot.com/2026/10/joshua-cochran-alexandria-case.html

Next file: DHF-018 — Jennifer Symonds: Found Drowned by a Thames Club — https://thedarkhistoryfiles.blogspot.com/2026/10/jennifer-symonds-henley-thames-case.html

This file is based on public reporting and official statements available as of 29 October 2026. Read how every file is built on the About page (https://thedarkhistoryfiles.blogspot.com/p/about.html), or request a file via the Contact page (https://thedarkhistoryfiles.blogspot.com/p/contact.html).