Woman Set on Fire Dies in Elevator

Surveillance Tape of Murderer Posing as Exterminator-AP photo

Deloris Gillespie, a 73-year-old resident of an apartment building in Prospect Park, died Saturday after her assailant sprayed her with an accelerant, doused her with the remaining flammable liquid, and set her ablaze using a lighter to ignite a Molotov cocktail. After a brief pause, he tossed it in the elevator and then left her to die.

Dressed in a homespun version of an exterminator's uniform, the man, later identified as Jerome Isaac, confronted Ms. Gillespie when the elevator doors opened on the fifth floor where she lived.  She crouched on the floor in a defensive posture but couldn't fend off her attacker as he systematically carried out his plan. Neighbors reported the elevator fire but didn't realize that Gillespie was burning to death inside.

Jerome Isaac-Robert Mecea/AP photo

Isaac turned himself in Sunday morning at a transit police station and confessed to the attack. Paul J. Browne, the chief spokesman for the New York Police Department, said he admitted only to setting a fire at first, but later confessed to burning Ms. Gillespie. He told police his motive for burning her alive was a purported $2,000 she owed him for some work he had done for her.  He faces charges of first-degree and second-degree murder and arson.

This crime resembles a horror story of the worst kind.  At any point, Isaac could have stopped before throwing the rag burning in a bottle into the elevator.  He didn't.  He chose a tortuous method of murdering her that would cause pain of the worst magnitude.  No amount of money owed warrants that kind of brutal attack, if  Ms. Gillespie, in fact, owed him anything. Building residents described her as a kind woman who was always helping others, including her assailant.