Jason Di Trapani wasn’t exactly sure how he would find his mother’s grave at the Frederick Douglass Memorial Park in Staten Island.
Unlike most of the graves at this African American burial ground, the one holding the remains of
Di Trapani’s mother was unmarked until cemetery workers put a small, flagpole stick there.
Di Trapani’s mother was not African American, but she was buried there in 1993 as a “Jane Doe,” eight months after she was found murdered, dismembered and placed in a Yonkers dumpster.
Her name was Meresa Hammonds; she was one victim of serial killer
Robert Schulman, a Long Island postal worker.
“When I first arrived to the gravesite, it was hard,” Jason Di Trapani told WPIX, “because all I saw was the stick coming out of the ground.”
He’s hoping to get a headstone for his mother. “I want it to be a beautiful headstone, with her name on it, when she was born, when she passed away,” Di Trapani said.
Hammonds’ body was discovered in the dumpster on June 27, 1992. Detective John Geiss of the Yonkers Cold Case Squad started looking at her file in the year 2000.
“She still was a Jane Doe, and that’s not her name,” Geiss said. “I thought it was important for us, the City of Yonkers, to give her her name back.”
When Di Trapani found his mother’s unmarked grave, he initially stood over it and somberly clasped his hands together in prayer. Then, he knelt down, kissed his hand, and placed it over the stick that marked his mother’s gravesite.
Di Trapani has learned quite a bit about his mother since meeting her family over the holidays. She was born in Kentucky, lived in Michigan, and later did modeling with her sister.
Hammonds was living in Jersey City when she gave birth to two sons.
“This whole time, I didn’t have one family member that looked like me,” Di Trapani said. “Now, I have a whole bunch of people that I resemble.”
Son finds his mother was serial killer victim after DNA testing | KLAS