Police are questioning the heartless brute who allegedly mugged an elderly woman and stole her heirloom wedding ring in the Meatpacking District, authorities said.
The suspect has been linked to three other elevator robberies and will undergo lineups later today, police said.
Petite former Shakespearean actress Yvonne Sherwell-Demakopoulos, 85, said she was coming home from a night out with friends Saturday at around 10:50 p.m. when the creep followed her into the elevator of her West 13th Street building in the Meatpacking District.
The hulking thug can be seen on surveillance video waving to the older woman as if he were a friend in the lobby of her well-heeled building. He “asked for [a resident] by their name, and I didn’t recognize it,’’ she said.
“I said I would go check, and he followed me into the elevator.
“He was trying to trick me,’’ she said. “He got in and pushed me down. I fell on my arm, but luckily my coat is like a blanket.”
The brute then demanded that the startled woman hand over her black shoulder bag — at which point he noticed the wedding ring, she said.
“My hand was out, and he saw it. He took it off me. I said, ‘Please, it’s my wedding ring.’ He took it. Dirty dog.
“It was Greek. It was an heirloom,’’ she said of the ring. “It belonged to my husband’s great-grandmother. [The robber] won’t get much for it, but it meant . . . the world to me.”
Sherwell-Demakopoulos said her beloved husband, Christos, 80, is in a nursing home after having suffered a massive stroke last month. He also suffers from Parkinson’s disease and is in his last days, she said.
She said she was out that evening to get her mind off of her hubby.
“I was indulging myself that night with friends because I was so upset with my husband being in the hospital,” she said.
The brute is also suspected of robbing a 58-year-old woman at gunpoint in a Far Rockaway building on Dec. 4 at 10:30 p.m., police said.
Then on Saturday, the same day he mugged the Sherwell-Demakopoulos, he followed a 28-year-old woman into the elevator of an apartment building in the East Village, cops said.
Most recently, he targeted a 22-year-old woman in a Gramercy park building on Sunday, police said.