{"id":354945,"date":"2026-09-23T20:14:58","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T20:14:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/354945\/"},"modified":"2026-09-23T20:14:58","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T20:14:58","slug":"former-exotic-dancer-found-dead-in-trash-can-at-brooklyn-beach-was-beloved-mom-and-event-planner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/354945\/","title":{"rendered":"Former exotic dancer found dead in trash can at Brooklyn beach was beloved mom and event planner"},"content":{"rendered":"

A former longtime exotic dancer found dead dumped in a trash can<\/a> at a remote Brooklyn beach was a devoted mother of five who was beloved in the city\u2019s nightclub community, her devastated friends tell the Daily News.<\/p>\n

Tanaya Campbell Ortiz, 38, was found stuffed inside the trash can in a parking lot at Plumb Beach<\/a> just off the Belt Parkway in Sheepshead Bay about 3 p.m. Sept. 16, cops say. A cause of death has not yet been determined and it\u2019s not yet clear if she was the victim of foul play.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m devastated,\u201d said close friend Cassy Gorham, who met the victim when they worked in a strip club together in 2007. \u201cShe\u2019s a very sweet girl, one of the sweetest, most funniest people I\u2019ve ever met. Always laughing, always happy, always smiling.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe genuinely just did not deserve what happened to her, to be thrown out like trash like that,\u201d Gorham added. \u201cShe deserved so much better. She\u2019s always been a great mother and her kids didn\u2019t deserve that either, to lose her.\u201d<\/p>\n

After developing friendships and contacts for years working in local strip clubs under the stage name \u201cHoney,\u201d Campbell Ortiz this year launched her own events company called Red Honey Productions. The company threw bashes including birthday parties and offered bar service and home-cooked catering like pumpkin rice, macaroni pie, and oxtail.<\/p>\n

In between posts promoting her events, Campbell Ortiz frequently posted about her children, congratulating one daughter for graduating high school and wishing one son happy birthday and cheering on his basketball team.<\/p>\n

\"TanayaTanaya Campbell Ortiz. (Obtained by Daily News)<\/p>\n

The victim\u2019s oldest daughter, Julissa Hernandez, wrote that her mother\u2019s death has torn the family apart on a GoFundMe<\/a> to raise money for Campbell Ortiz\u2019s funeral costs.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone is devastated. [My mother] had not been herself recently, so seeing all of this unfold is hard to even understand, especially because we had just recently seen or spoken with her. The shock of losing her this way has left our family heartbroken and struggling to face what comes next,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnyone who knew my mother knew that she was full of love and life, and did whatever she could to help everyone she loved.\u201d<\/p>\n

The city Medical Examiner is conducting an autopsy to determine how Campbell Ortiz died. She lived in St. Albans, according to cops.<\/p>\n

Her shocking death has sent shockwaves through the club world.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re working in the nightlife, you\u2019re in the club with people every day, 12 hours a day, seven days a week, no breaks,\u201d Gorham said. \u201cYou spend a considerable amount of time with these people, so they become your family outside your family.\u201d<\/p>\n

News of Campbell Ortiz\u2019s death is \u201ccirculating pretty fast amongst us girls,\u201d said Gorham, who moved to North Carolina in 2020. \u201cA lot of us don\u2019t work anymore but we all stay in contact.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen somebody told me, I couldn\u2019t even wrap my head around it,\u201d she added. \u201cI was like, \u2018Honey, no. Nobody would do anything to Honey. Honey\u2019s too sweet.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Gorham recalled Honey once leaping off the stage to defend her.<\/p>\n

\u201cA customer punched me in my face because I wouldn\u2019t give my phone number,\u201d Gorham said. \u201cI just remembered Tanaya jumping off the stage and literally holding my mouth and my face together until the ambulance got there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was bleeding all over her but she didn\u2019t care,\u201d Gorham added. \u201cShe had my blood all over her and she just stayed with me and helped me. That\u2019s just that person that she is.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TanayaTanaya Campbell Ortiz’s body was found stuffed inside a trash can in a parking lot at Plumb Beach, just off the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn on Sept. 16. (Google Maps)<\/p>\n

Gorham last spoke to the victim in April.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was like, \u2018You\u2019re beautiful and I\u2019m just happy you\u2019re still here. You survived everything you\u2019ve been through and I love you to death.\u2019 That\u2019s what she told me,\u201d Gotham recalled. \u201cI was like, \u2018I love you too.\u2019 And she was like, \u2018I\u2019m very blessed to have you as my very close friend,\u2019 and that was the last thing she said to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was always making me laugh, always saying something funny, always smiling,\u201d she added. \u201cI don\u2019t know if she ever had a bad day \u2014 and if she did, she held it together very well. She was just a light, a bright light \u2026 I just wanted so much better for her. I can\u2019t believe this. It\u2019s unbelievable to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other people who knew Campbell Ortiz from her nightclub work were equally shocked by her death.<\/p>\n

\u201cHoney was not one of those girls that had trouble,\u201d said Chris, 39, who worked security at Crazy Horse, formerly Key Club Cabaret, in the Bronx and drove Campbell Ortiz home several times. \u201cShe wasn\u2019t one of the wild ones. Honey was a sweet young lady. Like she was there to do her thing, get her money, and that\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just really sad to hear this and I don\u2019t know how to deal with this,\u201d said Salma, who met Campbell Ortiz at the club Perfections in 2008, where Salma worked as a makeup artist for the dancers. \u201cShe would just go home and just enjoy her kids. She was all about her kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI danced with her in the past in Club Infinity, Crazy Horse, Lust, Heavens\u2014many clubs from Brooklyn to Queens to the Bronx,\u201d said a friend and fellow former exotic dancer who asked to be referred to by her stage name, Paradice.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe held herself with a poise and respect. She would talk about her kids all the time, and we would discuss our kids because I have a child as well and they were similar age.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former longtime exotic dancer found dead dumped in a trash can at a remote Brooklyn beach was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354946,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,262,263,266,85,267,9,24,264,12,63,261,122,265],"class_list":["post-354945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-city","tag-county","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-county","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-crime","tag-queens","tag-sub-county-region"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}