The location where Meresa Hammonds was found

This is the location where serial killer Robert Shulman dumped the body of Meresa Hammonds.

It is situated at 1288 Midland Avenue in Yonkers, New York.

At the time of the murder, the unit belonged to a pizzeria called "I Luv NY Pizza". Recent Google Street View images show that the property has been vacant for a number of years.

On June 27th, 1992, the dismembered body of an unidentified woman was found wrapped in black trash bags in a dumpster behind this building.

One of her legs and both of her hands were missing. Consequently, the police were unable to cross-reference her fingerprints. Eight months after her murder, she was buried in an unmarked grave at Frederick Douglass Memorial Park in Staten Island.

Sadly, Hammonds remained unidentified for nearly three decades. During this period, she was referred to as "Yonkers Jane Doe".

Her killer was arrested in 1996 after the police identified his final victim, Kelly Sue Bunting. Between 1991 and 1995, Shulman regularly picked up sex workers in Hollis, Queens, before bringing them back to his apartment in Hicksville, Long Island. On at least five of these occasions, he bludgeoned the women to death in a fit of anger, dismembered their bodies, and then discarded their remains in different dumpsters.

Although Shulman confessed to murdering Yonkers Jane Doe, he did not know her name.

Hammonds finally got her name back in 2021 when a cold case detective named John Geiss matched her DNA against her cousin's profile on a genealogy website. Following the match, he was able to reach out to her relatives and confirm her identity.

Hammonds was born in Kentucky and grew up in California. Later, she moved to Michigan with her sister before eventually heading further east and settling in New Jersey.

Her now-adult son, Jason Di Tripani, was adopted and raised by her friend in New Jersey. He grew up wondering why his mother had never tried to track him down.

Tripani was understandably shocked and saddened when he found out that she had been murdered by a serial killer in 1992. However, the silver lining was knowing that she hadn't refused to look for him all those years.

Following her identification, he was able to connect with his mother's siblings in Michigan.

Further information is available in the "Photos" section below.

Photos

Photos of the store and other related images.

1288 Midland Avenue

This Google Street View image of 1288 Midland Avenue was captured in January of 2022—almost 30 years after Hammonds' remains were found in a dumpster at the back.

At the time of the murder, this building was home to a pizzeria called "I Luv NY Pizza".

2016

Image source: Google Maps

This is an older Street View image from 2016.

Crime scene

This is a "then and now" image of the crime scene. The photograph at the top was taken on June 27th, 1992.