A 52-year-old serial murderer serving life without parole for killing and dismembering five New York women died of natural causes early yesterday, a spokesman for the State Department of Correction said. An autopsy will be performed to confirm the specific cause of death, said the spokesman, Michael J. Fraser.
Robert Shulman leaving a police station on Long Island in 1996.
The man, Robert Shulman, of Hicksville, N.Y., was convicted of three murders by a Suffolk County jury in March 1999, and the next year, he was convicted in Westchester County of two other murders.
Mr. Shulman was sentenced to execution by lethal injection in 1999 but was among the handful of New York State prisoners whose sentences were commuted in 2004 when the New York State Court of Appeals declared the 1995 death penalty to be unconstitutional. He then was sentenced to life without parole.
Mr. Shulman routinely picked up prostitutes in Queens and brought them back to his apartment, where they would often use drugs before having sex. On five occasions, he said, he bludgeoned the women to death. With the help of a tattoo found on a victim who was dumped in a bin in Melville in 1995, Suffolk County detectives identified her as Kelly Sue Bunting, 28, of Hollis, Queens.
In addition to Ms. Bunting, who was known as a prostitute, Mr. Shulman's victims were Lori Vasquez, 24, of Brooklyn, whose body was dumped in a trash bin in Yonkers in 1991; Lisa Ann Warner, 18, whose body was found on April 6, 1995, at a Brooklyn recycling plant; and two unidentified women. One body was found in 1992 in Yonkers and the other in 1994 in Medford, N.Y.
Mr. Shulman's younger brother, Barry Shulman, was sentenced to two years in jail for helping his brother dispose of the bodies.
After his sentencing, Mr. Shulman was transferred to the Clinton Correctional Facility near Dannemora, N.Y. He complained of poor health earlier this week and was transferred to Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital in Plattsburgh. Within hours he was moved to the Albany Medical Center, where he died Thursday.
