Speaker 1: You're listening to a Mother Mea podcast. Mama Mea acknowledges
Speaker 1: the traditional owners of land and waters. This podcast was
Speaker 1: recorded on It's just after five PM on an August
Speaker 1: afternoon in twenty fifteen, and a nine one one call
Speaker 1: is coming through about a fire and a service station
Speaker 1: in Columbus, Ohio.
Speaker 2: I got, Okay, stop screaming because I can't understand you.
Speaker 2: I got you this I got.
Speaker 1: The man is still there too. According to the caller,
Speaker 1: he poured two Jerry cans of fuel over the woman's
Speaker 1: head and body and now he's just watching the flames.
Speaker 2: Golfer, can you tell me who did this?
Speaker 1: The woman is thirty one year old Judy Malanowski. The
Speaker 1: man is her partner, Michael Slager. Eventually, he tries to
Speaker 1: put her out with a fire extinguisher. As she's rushed
Speaker 1: to hospital, her family is warned that she likely won't
Speaker 1: survive more than a few hours days at most. Her
Speaker 1: injuries are catastrophic, but Judy survives years in a coma
Speaker 1: for some of it and in pain for all of it.
Speaker 1: But she lives long enough to do something never before
Speaker 1: seen in American history. Judy Malanowski is the first person
Speaker 1: to testify at her own murder trial. I'm Jemma Bass
Speaker 1: and this is True Crime Conversations a Muma mea podcast
Speaker 1: exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the
Speaker 1: people who know the most about them. Five months before
Speaker 1: her death, Judy gave harrowing testimony to be used should
Speaker 1: she pass away. In it, she described the moments before
Speaker 1: she was set on fire.
Speaker 3: After he poured the gasoline on you, what happens next?
Speaker 2: He rade away through me for about thirty seconds. I
Speaker 2: had fid so please help me and stop and I'm good,
Speaker 2: I'll get the chuck. I'll go with you. You know
Speaker 2: why I was, why would you do this? And I
Speaker 2: looked at him and he all later out of his
Speaker 2: pocket and he started walking towards me, and I just
Speaker 2: remembered krying of day for help. And he let me
Speaker 2: on fire and look into his eyes were his grayes
Speaker 2: went back.
Speaker 1: Literally, She described the pain my whole body suddly.
Speaker 2: It was like a thousand meals lay in, a thousand
Speaker 2: pass meels ionstrating my body. I can't tell you describe
Speaker 2: how waking up is a horrible thing. They say it's
Speaker 2: a little better than those fives. But it's one thing
Speaker 2: heals another thing hers.
Speaker 1: Then she told the judge exactly what she thought her
Speaker 1: killer deserved.
Speaker 3: I want you to tell a future a judge what
Speaker 3: you want to see happen in mister slayer. I would
Speaker 3: like to see in the church with murder and to
Speaker 3: a lesn, I think that he deserves that.
Speaker 1: Judy lived for nearly two years after being set on fire.
Speaker 1: She endured more than sixty surgeries, including excruciating skin grafts,
Speaker 1: and suffered seven cardiac arrests. She died on June twenty seventh,
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, with her family by her bed side. She
Speaker 1: was only thirty three. Judy's story has been told in
Speaker 1: detail in the documentary The Fire That Took Her directed
Speaker 1: by Patricia Gillespie. Patricia joins us. Now, Patricia, how did
Speaker 1: you become involved in this story and with Judy and
Speaker 1: her family.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I started looking at this story many years ago.
Speaker 3: Trump had just won the election in the US, and
Speaker 3: a lot of the energy that went into that was
Speaker 3: in the Midwest, and I was very interested. I felt
Speaker 3: like there weren't a lot of stories coming out of
Speaker 3: the Midwest of the United States, the heartland as it were,
Speaker 3: and so I started reading local papers there just to
Speaker 3: try to understand that part of the country a little better.
Speaker 3: I live in New York City, and I stumbled across
Speaker 3: Judy's story quite by accident, and I was so moved
Speaker 3: by it because I felt like it was the story
Speaker 3: not just of a victim, but a victim who took
Speaker 3: it upon herself to become the hero of her own story.
Speaker 3: And that was really engaging to me. So I got
Speaker 3: on Facebook and stocked her mom and drove out to Ohio,
Speaker 3: and over the course of a number of meetings, we
Speaker 3: decided to make the movie together me and her family.
Speaker 1: Can you give us an overview of Judy's life prior
Speaker 1: to meeting Michael. She was a mom, she'd recently beaten cancer,
Speaker 1: She'd lived quite a big life before all of this happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, I think there are many elements of Judy's
Speaker 3: story that are sort of all American. Right. She's born
Speaker 3: in this Ohio suburb. She wins a beauty contest in
Speaker 3: her town. I think she was the homecoming queen. She
Speaker 3: fell in love in her early twenties, got married, had
Speaker 3: a couple kids. That marriage unfortunately didn't work out and
Speaker 3: around the time the marriage was ending, she was diagnosed
Speaker 3: with ovarian cancer. And I believe she was pregnant already
Speaker 3: with her second daughter, Maddie, and she wanted to continue
Speaker 3: that pregnancy, so she couldn't take some of the therapies
Speaker 3: that were needed for the cancers. So she got on
Speaker 3: some level of pain management. Or maybe she was wanting
Speaker 3: to try for Maddie. I can't quite remember, but anyway,
Speaker 3: she couldn't have the full chemo hysterectomy at the moment
Speaker 3: she was diagnosed, and so they started to give her
Speaker 3: pain medication. And this was before the US really had
Speaker 3: a comprehensive understanding of the ovoid crisis and the role
Speaker 3: the pharmaceuticals play in that. And she got addicted to
Speaker 3: the medication, taking it exactly as the doctor prescribed, but
Speaker 3: once that prescription ran out, she was very dependent on it.
Speaker 3: That sort of transmigrified into a drug addiction, which eventually
Speaker 3: led to her using heroin. She was a really dedicated
Speaker 3: mom even when she was using. Her girls were a
Speaker 3: priority in her life, and she got herself clean. She
Speaker 3: had a good amount of time together sober by the
Speaker 3: time she met Michael, and then once her and Michael
Speaker 3: got together. That sort of went out the window pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: How did Michael come onto the scene, how did they meet,
Speaker 1: and how did that relationship become what it was.
Speaker 3: So they actually knew each other through her ex husband.
Speaker 3: He had been part of her husband's friend group. I
Speaker 3: guess Judy's mom, Bonnie might say that she became interested
Speaker 3: in Michael, perhaps to make her ex husband jealous initially,
Speaker 3: but it does seem like for a time they had
Speaker 3: a genuine relationship that maybe moved a little bit too
Speaker 3: quickly and those red flags might have been missed. So
Speaker 3: Michael himself was not an addict, but Michael had a
Speaker 3: history of dating women who were addicts and a number
Speaker 3: of women who were sober after having been addicted to opiates,
Speaker 3: and then for whatever reason, these women all ended up
Speaker 3: using again over the course of the relationship with him.
Speaker 3: And I think the feeling Judy's family has is that
Speaker 3: the drugs were reintroduced as a form of control, which
Speaker 3: is a kind of pathway to domestic abuse or domestic
Speaker 3: abuse in itself. That on the ground level I see
Speaker 3: is very common, but isn't necessarily something we talk about.
Speaker 3: But if you become the person supplying your girlfriend with drugs,
Speaker 3: you have a fair amount of power in that relationship.
Speaker 3: So that became the arrangement, I think fairly quickly after
Speaker 3: they got together, and then he started abusing her, but
Speaker 3: she was dependent on him for those drugs. So it
Speaker 3: was a really difficult situation to try to get out of,
Speaker 3: but she did within a couple months. Enough was enough
Speaker 3: and she was trying to leave that relationship. She called
Speaker 3: the police numerous times and once even told them that
Speaker 3: she thought he was going to kill her. But unfortunately,
Speaker 3: like in the States, unless the police are on the
Speaker 3: ground and see something going wrong actively or have some
Speaker 3: sort of forensic proof, there's not much that they can do.
Speaker 1: What about Michael, He has quite a lengthy criminal history,
Speaker 1: doesn't he?
Speaker 3: So Michael had I forget the exact number, but he
Speaker 3: had many, many, many prior charges related to domestic abuse
Speaker 3: or I believe there's some charges related to sexual assault
Speaker 3: in there. And really what that comes down to is
Speaker 3: that we just don't punish guys enough for that kind
Speaker 3: of thing. He would sort of come back to court,
Speaker 3: get a slap on the wrist, and leave. He served
Speaker 3: minor amounts of time, I think mostly in County Jail,
Speaker 3: but never really got a substantial sentence, And it's horrifying
Speaker 3: when you do read his record, you sort of see
Speaker 3: somebody amping up to progressively more violent crimes and it
Speaker 3: took him lighting a woman on fire to actually get
Speaker 3: any substantial prison time at all.
Speaker 1: Really, what was the state of Michael and Judy's relationship
Speaker 1: by the time we get to August twenty fifteen when
Speaker 1: the fire happened.
Speaker 3: I think Judy was in the process of splitting up
Speaker 3: from him. She knew she needed out of that relationship,
Speaker 3: but she was also wanting to go back to rehab
Speaker 3: to get clean again, because she understood that was part
Speaker 3: of leaving Michael. She had to be sober to get
Speaker 3: away from him because he was so involved in her
Speaker 3: drug life and the way that she in the quote
Speaker 3: unquote safest way possible, got drugs, So she needed to
Speaker 3: get sober to cut it off with him, and he
Speaker 3: was actually driving her to rehab that day when this
Speaker 3: incident happened.
Speaker 1: Can you walk us through what happened? Because the two
Speaker 1: of them were having a bit of an argument behind
Speaker 1: kind of a gas station, weren't they.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean they argued a lot throughout their relationship
Speaker 3: over everything, including some quite in stantial things. My understanding
Speaker 3: is they had stopped to get cigarettes at the gas
Speaker 3: station and Judy was talking about that she wanted to
Speaker 3: do a few more things before she went to rehab,
Speaker 3: that she wanted to go see her kids, and she
Speaker 3: had spoken to her mother, and her mother was wondering
Speaker 3: if she would come by the house to see her
Speaker 3: daughters before she went, and they got into an argument.
Speaker 3: I guess Judy sort of had had enough and threw
Speaker 3: a soda at him, and his response was to dowse
Speaker 3: her in gasoline and thirty forty seconds later come back
Speaker 3: and light her on fire. Michael's version of the story
Speaker 3: is that he was just dowsing her and gasoline to
Speaker 3: quote unquote get her back or throwing the soda on him. Obviously,
Speaker 3: that's pretty improbable, it's not really a normal response. And
Speaker 3: he says that she went up and plamee because less
Speaker 3: than a minute later he wanted to be a gentleman
Speaker 3: and light her cigarette for her. That was his story,
Speaker 3: and Judy's story was that he downstirring gasoline, went back
Speaker 3: to the truck and came up with I think she
Speaker 3: said he looked like the devil. His eyes sort of
Speaker 3: just went black and he lit her on fire and
Speaker 3: she blacked out.
Speaker 1: Well, there were several witnesses, weren't they who watched it
Speaker 1: all happened and then watched him kind of stand there
Speaker 1: and just watch.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there were, Indeed, there were a number of people.
Speaker 3: A veteran, a fellow who's in the Marines who actually
Speaker 3: took the keys away from Michael and stopped him from leaving,
Speaker 3: and a couple. And according to one of the members
Speaker 3: of this couple, he actually was just sort of staring
Speaker 3: at Judy burning until he realized people were looking, at
Speaker 3: which point he does go and get a fire extinguisher,
Speaker 3: but quite a bit of time elapses before he gets
Speaker 3: that fire extinguisher. I would like to think if it
Speaker 3: were me in that situation, I'd be running for the
Speaker 3: fire extinguisher right away. That isn't what happened, And these
Speaker 3: witnesses feel he started to really just make moves once
Speaker 3: he realized he was being observed.
Speaker 1: Judy obviously was taken to hospital. Michael was as well.
Speaker 1: Can you talk us through the extent of the injuries
Speaker 1: that Judy suffered.
Speaker 3: Yes, she was burned over ninety percent of her body.
Speaker 3: She lost her fingers, number of her fingers, her ears.
Speaker 3: She was just covered in open wounds from these burns
Speaker 3: that never healed. She survived seven hundred days after this incident,
Speaker 3: and she never healed completely, and the amount of swelling
Speaker 3: that you experience when you're burned like that. The earliest
Speaker 3: photos of her after the incident, many of which we
Speaker 3: didn't include in the film because if you can believe it,
Speaker 3: they're more graphic than what we did show. I'll use
Speaker 3: her sister's words. She hardly looked like a person. She
Speaker 3: was very, very badly injured. Michael also sustained some burns
Speaker 3: putting her out, which she really liked to talk about.
Speaker 3: In my line of work, I see a lot of
Speaker 3: images of injured people or maimed people, and this was
Speaker 3: by far the worst stuff I'd ever seen. And in fact,
Speaker 3: the marine who was one of the witnesses at the
Speaker 3: crime scene, who had been to war and seeing people
Speaker 3: really seriously Andrews, said it was the worst thing he'd
Speaker 3: seen as well. Well.
Speaker 1: Her daughters didn't even recognize her, and I recall that
Speaker 1: her sister vomited from the side.
Speaker 3: Look, there are some things that just aren't supposed to
Speaker 3: happen to a human body, and I feel like that's
Speaker 3: one of them. I mean, it's very hard to fathom.
Speaker 3: And then to see somebody alive after that. I remember
Speaker 3: seeing those photos and being like, I don't understand how
Speaker 3: she didn't die. The doctors didn't understand how she didn't die.
Speaker 3: That EMTs didn't understand how she didn't die. It was
Speaker 3: just such such a severe thing that happened to her.
Speaker 1: Listening to True Crime Conversations with me Jemma Bass, I'm
Speaker 1: speaking with director Patricia Gillespie about the case of Judy Melanowski,
Speaker 1: who was burnt alive by her boyfriend. You got to
Speaker 1: know Judy's mum, and you interviewed her about her version
Speaker 1: of seeing her daughter like that. What were her recollections
Speaker 1: of that day, about getting that call and about arriving
Speaker 1: at the hospital.
Speaker 3: You know, I think for Barney it was really kind
Speaker 3: of a blur. She gets this call. She's asked, first, hey,
Speaker 3: can we intubate your daughter? Like can we put her
Speaker 3: on a ventilator? And she says, well, yeah, of course,
Speaker 3: and then it takes a couple seconds to click, Oh
Speaker 3: my gosh, that's life support, Like something very serious has
Speaker 3: happened to her. This isn't just an accident or a burn,
Speaker 3: this is, you know, my kids on life support. And
Speaker 3: she describes the experience of going to the hospital, which
Speaker 3: is OSU as a hospital. She lives nearby and drives
Speaker 3: by all the time, and she got lost. She was
Speaker 3: just so dissociated. She rushes into the hospital and they
Speaker 3: finally led her back to see Judy. And this reaction
Speaker 3: that everybody else has sort of chock and horror, isn't
Speaker 3: the reaction that Bonnie has. She just sees her kid.
Speaker 3: She just sees her baby, and she's so happy she's alive.
Speaker 3: And she turns to the doctor and says, tell me,
Speaker 3: there's hope. Tell me there's hope. Tell me there's hope.
Speaker 3: And at that point, the percent of Judy's body that
Speaker 3: was burned, she was almost guaranteed to die. And that's
Speaker 3: not what happened, thanks to the amazing work of the
Speaker 3: doctors that always you and I believe Judy's desire to
Speaker 3: live and see her girls grow up as long as
Speaker 3: she could and try to get some justice for herself
Speaker 3: that kept her alive for that seven hundred days.
Speaker 1: Well, even in that really early period after the fire,
Speaker 1: she was able to give a very brief but a
Speaker 1: bedside interview to cops, wasn't she.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So she was very burnt, and when someone is
Speaker 3: that burnt usually you put them under pretty quickly, just
Speaker 3: because the pain is extremely severe and there's a risk
Speaker 3: of going in shot. So they had put her under
Speaker 3: a bunch of pain medication, but realizing that it was
Speaker 3: very likely she would pass away, the police and the
Speaker 3: doctor's decide together to back her off that a little
Speaker 3: bit so she could become more aware of what was
Speaker 3: going on around her. And the detective on the case,
Speaker 3: who's now a lieutenant, Chad Cohagen, came in and asked
Speaker 3: her if Michael had done this to her, and she
Speaker 3: nodded her head yes.
Speaker 1: And they also had a chat with Mircael, which is
Speaker 1: you can watch that. There's footage of it and it's
Speaker 1: quite eerie. He's very calm and tells that version of
Speaker 1: events you explained earlier.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Michael thought this was all very explainable. He was
Speaker 3: a pretty cool customer. So we got body cam from
Speaker 3: the police in Ohio. It's most American police officers now
Speaker 3: where a body camera and that stuff becomes part of
Speaker 3: the public record eventually in the case of a crime,
Speaker 3: and we were able to get that from the Gahanna Police,
Speaker 3: the investigating agency, and yeah, you see Michael. The thing
Speaker 3: that really shocked me about that is he seemed to
Speaker 3: feel bad for himself because of the burns he had
Speaker 3: sustained trying to save her, and that seemed to be
Speaker 3: his main concern, and he tried to explain how this
Speaker 3: was an accident. He tried to displace blame on Judy
Speaker 3: a little bit, I think for what had happened. And
Speaker 3: Detective kohg And I have to say he did a
Speaker 3: really incredible job. He walked a very fine line between
Speaker 3: hearing him out and not letting him wriggle Away just
Speaker 3: did some very good work. There got a cheek swab
Speaker 3: from him and all that, which I can't imagine being
Speaker 3: able to keep your cool like that and that kind
Speaker 3: of circumstance having just seen Judy.
Speaker 1: Even though there were witnesses, there was also CCTV footage,
Speaker 1: so you can actually watch it all unfold.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you see detective going and tell Michael that in
Speaker 3: the hospital, and I'm not sure that that was something
Speaker 3: Michael realized because the CCTV was actually from a bank
Speaker 3: next door. The drive through ATM had a camera on
Speaker 3: it that could see into the parking lot where this happened.
Speaker 3: So if you were to go into the parking lot
Speaker 3: of the gas station where this happened and look around,
Speaker 3: you wouldn't see a physical camera, but it was one
Speaker 3: parking lot over very close by. You can see the
Speaker 3: whole thing. And to that point, it doesn't really appear
Speaker 3: that Michael and Judy made up to any extent that
Speaker 3: he would be a gentleman and light her cigarette after
Speaker 3: dowsing her and gasoline on that video.
Speaker 1: So as morbid as it sounds, police were kind of waiting.
Speaker 1: They were waiting to see whether Judy would die, to
Speaker 1: kind of see what they would be charging Michael is
Speaker 1: whether it would be murder or something lesser. But Judy
Speaker 1: defied the odds and she woke up after seven months
Speaker 1: in a coma. In terms of her medical treatment, what
Speaker 1: did she endure, because it's not like she woke up
Speaker 1: and was okay. She had multiple surgeries.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she was constantly having surgeries and skin grafts. When
Speaker 3: you're burnt as badly as Judy was. Wound maintenance is
Speaker 3: also really important because One of the major things you
Speaker 3: can die of with burns like that is infection, because
Speaker 3: your skin is what protects you from the outside world,
Speaker 3: and she didn't really have it, so she would regularly
Speaker 3: have to get these wounds cleaned and bebreeded, kind of
Speaker 3: scraping out these wounds, and no amount of pain medication
Speaker 3: made that feel okay. You just can't give someone that
Speaker 3: amount of pain medication. And you also have to consider
Speaker 3: Judy had been she was on her way to rehab.
Speaker 3: She was addicted to opioids, so the doses that might
Speaker 3: work on you or I, they were not as strong
Speaker 3: as they would be for a person without a history
Speaker 3: of opioid abuse as well. So yeah, it was just
Speaker 3: it was a very tough time for her for sure,
Speaker 3: because they expected her to die. The detectives were sort
Speaker 3: of waiting to see. Had Judy died, Michael would have
Speaker 3: been charged with murder, but because she survived, they were
Speaker 3: unable to do that, so they charged him with aggravated arson, which, unfortunately,
Speaker 3: in the state of Ohio, letting your girlfriend on fire
Speaker 3: carries a very similar penalty to letting a car and
Speaker 3: fire like house on fire, So the maximum he could
Speaker 3: get in that instance was about eleven years.
Speaker 1: And the other thing to add to that was that
Speaker 1: there was a real possibility that she was going to
Speaker 1: be able to give testimony if it went to trial,
Speaker 1: but he changed his plate to no contest, so he
Speaker 1: effectively silenced too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so they're approaching this trial and Judy is not
Speaker 3: only able to testify, she really wants to testify because
Speaker 3: she is even though this is on video, her testimony
Speaker 3: is that sinks it. When your victim lives and can
Speaker 3: say that she knows you did this with malice and
Speaker 3: can provide an alternative story of what we all see
Speaker 3: on that tape, that was pretty much going to ensure
Speaker 3: a conviction. And I think Michael realized this that between
Speaker 3: the fact that there was a tape at all and
Speaker 3: that Judy, who had to be just about the most
Speaker 3: sympathetic person you could put on the stand, was going
Speaker 3: to explain what we were watching on that tape, Michael
Speaker 3: realized that he was definitely going to be convicted, and
Speaker 3: he took a lead deal, but he pled in this way.
Speaker 3: He took something called an Alfred plea. I'm not sure
Speaker 3: if you have this in Australia, but in the US
Speaker 3: you can plead guilty by essentially saying, well, I'm not
Speaker 3: saying I'm guilty, but I'm choosing to plead guilty because
Speaker 3: I think you have the evidence convict me, and I
Speaker 3: would rather get this lesser sentence. So that's where the
Speaker 3: eleven years came from.
Speaker 1: So he's not admitting fulk. That's a real slap in
Speaker 1: the face by doing that plea.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the alpha plea is very complicated because it's like
Speaker 3: the justice system here, like anywhere, is not perfect. And
Speaker 3: I've heard stories of innocent people who fled guilty because
Speaker 3: the optics of who they were and the crime they
Speaker 3: were charged with and where they were being tried. They
Speaker 3: were like, I would rather take a deal for seven
Speaker 3: years than a deal for twenty years, right, And So
Speaker 3: in some ways, I think it's good that exists so
Speaker 3: people can say their peace right. And part of the
Speaker 3: reason you can do that is because it's covered by
Speaker 3: free speech right. You can say whatever you want and
Speaker 3: take your plea. But on the other hand, I think
Speaker 3: in cases where the person is guilty, it's really painful
Speaker 3: for the victim's family, And I know it was painful
Speaker 3: for Judy because she just really wanted him to take accountability.
Speaker 1: Well, he did get eleven years initially, and the judge,
Speaker 1: she was very damning. Can you tell us about the
Speaker 1: scent or her sentencing remarks?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the judge was ticked off. She told Michael that
Speaker 3: she wished she could sentence him to more and that
Speaker 3: she couldn't because of the laws. And you know, it's interesting.
Speaker 3: Bonnie and I talked about this a lot where we
Speaker 3: were like, Okay, well, in what way should this law
Speaker 3: be expanded? Should you create a lot of expand sentences
Speaker 3: for people like this? How should you make sure people
Speaker 3: who commit this sort of crime get sentenced appropriately? And
Speaker 3: it's tough because I think in the States, we like
Speaker 3: to think of these crimes of like immolation or asset attacks.
Speaker 3: They think of these things as something that happens somewhere else,
Speaker 3: when in reality that's not true. There are many, many
Speaker 3: instances every year of intimate partners who intentionally disfigure their
Speaker 3: victims and also strangers. Right, we had it's a worldwide phenomenon.
Speaker 3: Now we've had intel murders where people are being killed
Speaker 3: or disfigured by disgruntled, in voluntary celibate person who sort
Speaker 3: of just goes off the rails and goes postal, and
Speaker 3: there's not really any specific law for that type of crime.
Speaker 3: And I think early in the process when Bonnie was thinking,
Speaker 3: she was like, well, why isn't that sort of a
Speaker 3: hate crime? Right? If you're like, you're a woman, you
Speaker 3: won't be with me. I'm going to essentially try to
Speaker 3: make you quote unquote ugly or I'm going to It's
Speaker 3: not just I'm going to kill you, it's I'm going
Speaker 3: to disfigure you. Why isn't that class as a specific
Speaker 3: kind of crime because statistically, you just don't see it
Speaker 3: happened to men nearly as much as women. But that
Speaker 3: was a little bit complicated. So once that decision came
Speaker 3: down and he got such a light sentence for something
Speaker 3: that had really changed Duty's entire life, her family started
Speaker 3: to pursue changing that law by adding time to the
Speaker 3: sentences of attackers who intentionally disfigure their victims. So, right
Speaker 3: after that court case went the way it did, Judy
Speaker 3: decided to launch a campaign alongside a number of state
Speaker 3: centers in Ohio to pass something called Judy's Law, which
Speaker 3: adds six years to the sentences of attackers who intentionally
Speaker 3: disfigure their victims using an accelerant. So it's pretty narrow,
Speaker 3: but it did lay the groundwork and set a precedent
Speaker 3: for a federal law, something that's nationwide as opposed to
Speaker 3: in the state of Ohio, and also a pathway to say, well,
Speaker 3: there are elements of an assault or an aggravated arson
Speaker 3: that push it past the base charges. Right, this is
Speaker 3: different than punching someone in the face and breaking their nose,
Speaker 3: and the sentencing should reflect that.
Speaker 1: We're skipping forward a bit. But they were successful in
Speaker 1: passing that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Judy's law was signed into law, unfortunately just
Speaker 3: a few days after she passed away, but it had
Speaker 3: passed in the House and Senate when she was still alive,
Speaker 3: and she got to understand that that law was moving forward,
Speaker 3: and I think that was one of the things she
Speaker 3: was most proud of, next to her girls.
Speaker 1: I think it's worth acknowledging just how strong Judy was
Speaker 1: as a person. She was enduring daily unimaginable pain, and
Speaker 1: she's fighting for this law as well as which we're
Speaker 1: about to talk about. She ends up giving testimony for
Speaker 1: her future murder trial, which is another incredible history making change.
Speaker 1: How did that come about?
Speaker 3: So it started to look like Judy's condition was not
Speaker 3: going to improve. A lot of time had gone by
Speaker 3: and it looked likely that though Judy wasn't dying imminently,
Speaker 3: After about a year, they saw that the skin graphs
Speaker 3: weren't taking and it was going to be a matter
Speaker 3: of time until she passed away. She would pass away
Speaker 3: prematurely from these injuries. And knowing that the das said
Speaker 3: that when she died they would take Michael up on
Speaker 3: murder charges. It becomes a new crime. She passed away,
Speaker 3: it's no longer just an assault. It's murdered. They're going
Speaker 3: to charge him with that. And they were going to
Speaker 3: petition the state of Ohio to allow her to pre
Speaker 3: record sworn testimony in advance of her death, which had
Speaker 3: never happened in a criminal court before. Warren Edwards, who's
Speaker 3: now a judge but at the time was the ADA.
Speaker 3: He adapted a civil statute that was actually designed for
Speaker 3: mesothelioma victims. It's a substance that people inhaled that ended
Speaker 3: up giving them lung cancer. And there were a number
Speaker 3: of civil lawsuits people suing the companies that gave them
Speaker 3: these mesothelioma related health conditions posthumously, so they would record
Speaker 3: a deposition in advance of their death, and then once
Speaker 3: they died, this would be played at the civil trial
Speaker 3: where they were where their family was suing. Right, And
Speaker 3: there's a law in the United States that says, if
Speaker 3: there is no specification whether you can or cannot do
Speaker 3: something in a criminal court a law, you can adapt
Speaker 3: civil law. And so Warren saw that, and he adapted
Speaker 3: this civil statute and presented this argument to the judge, saying, Hey,
Speaker 3: if we can do this in civil court, we should
Speaker 3: do it in criminal court. And we don't want to
Speaker 3: take just a deathbed statement from her. We want to
Speaker 3: be real testimony. We want her to be sworn in,
Speaker 3: put under oath, and both questioned by the DA and
Speaker 3: cross examined formally. And so they won the right to
Speaker 3: do that, and that's what they did. But Judy had
Speaker 3: to back off her pain medication in order to be
Speaker 3: considered of sound mind, which you have to be to
Speaker 3: testifying in the American courts. So she experienced a tremendous
Speaker 3: amount of pain. She had to learn to talk over
Speaker 3: and off the event. She was not speaking super clearly
Speaker 3: at the time. This decision was made. So she had
Speaker 3: to push herself to really be able to be heard
Speaker 3: and to come off that ventilater And yeah, she also
Speaker 3: had to practice to be cross examined, which any woman
Speaker 3: who's ever been in the American court system can tell you.
Speaker 3: It's not a friendly place for victims, particularly victims of
Speaker 3: domestic violence, partner violence, or offenses like that. There's a
Speaker 3: lot of victim lane that goes down. But she steeled
Speaker 3: herself and she did it, and she endured three hours
Speaker 3: of questioning and most of that was the defense.
Speaker 1: Watching some of that testimony, you can tell that she's
Speaker 1: in pain and she's struggling, but she does not waiver.
Speaker 1: She gives incredible testimony. Would you agree?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think she was a shockinging, reliable narrator for
Speaker 3: what happened to her and mosteole I think when they
Speaker 3: go through something like that, they can't recall the kind
Speaker 3: of detail that she could. And she could, but unfortunately,
Speaker 3: the defense attorney kept trying to poke holes in her
Speaker 3: memory because she didn't remember what she was wearing that day,
Speaker 3: or she didn't remember where they had stopped before the speedway,
Speaker 3: or she didn't remember and you know, there's this moment
Speaker 3: where she looks at him, and she says, you have
Speaker 3: to understand, I was dowse gazzling and set on fire
Speaker 3: like over ninety percent of my body, so I'm not
Speaker 3: going to remember every perfect detail. And I remember seeing
Speaker 3: that moment in her test when I was like, hell yeah,
Speaker 3: like you tell him she made him look awful and
Speaker 3: it was and she was mad, and it was a
Speaker 3: great moment. I think there's a lot of pressure on victims,
Speaker 3: especially female victims. Maybe this is unique to the US,
Speaker 3: but I think it's most places in the world. There's
Speaker 3: this pressure on them to be like kind of beaten
Speaker 3: down and soft and de mirror. And she just was
Speaker 3: not about it. So she let the defense attorney know
Speaker 3: she was not impressed with the questions she was asking.
Speaker 3: Also asked, you know, just even the question what were
Speaker 3: you wearing? It's just like, excuse me. She really stood aground.
Speaker 3: You have to also remember she's doing this not knowing
Speaker 3: that it will ever officially be admitted. So what the
Speaker 3: first ruling was that allowed them to record this testimony
Speaker 3: was just that you're allowed to record it, and then
Speaker 3: at a later time when Michael is charged, then the
Speaker 3: new court case begins and they have to argue about
Speaker 3: it all over again. They have to say, will we
Speaker 3: admit this? Okay, we gave you the right to record it,
Speaker 3: will we admit it. And so she recorded all this
Speaker 3: knowing she would never know whether it would be admitted
Speaker 3: into court. And when you think about coming off your
Speaker 3: pain meds, being interrogated about some of the weakest moments
Speaker 3: in your life, your drug use, a relationship you shouldn't
Speaker 3: have been in, what you did when, and who you
Speaker 3: might have interacted with in what ways, and just all
Speaker 3: that sort of victim blame and pressure and pain and
Speaker 3: to not even know if it'll count. And she did
Speaker 3: it anyway, you know, I think that's incredibly heroic and
Speaker 3: incredibly inspiring. And you know, I think when she showed
Speaker 3: up for that testimony, and they do try to poke
Speaker 3: a lot of holes in her life, right, they try
Speaker 3: to shatter the illusion of the perfect victim, which of
Speaker 3: course doesn't exist. And I think a lot of women
Speaker 3: are afraid to prosecute their abusers because they understand that
Speaker 3: will be part of the process. And I think that
Speaker 3: Judy showing up and doing that was not just for her,
Speaker 3: it was for them. And I think it shows that
Speaker 3: the justice system if you get the right people in
Speaker 3: the room, can work even if you're not perfect, and
Speaker 3: that pressure of the perfect victim or to be the
Speaker 3: perfect victim, that we can break that down slowly, and
Speaker 3: I think Judy did a lot of that for us.
Speaker 1: She was also able to use it as an opportunity
Speaker 1: to call out the police, call out the authorities and
Speaker 1: the systems that she tried to use again and again
Speaker 1: and again that didn't work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think he was really disappointed. It was one
Speaker 3: of those things where I went in there feeling before
Speaker 3: I did my research like the police had mishandled something.
Speaker 3: But the more I spoke to them, the more I realized,
Speaker 3: just like Michael sentencing, it's not so much that the
Speaker 3: police didn't care or didn't try to do their job,
Speaker 3: it's that the laws limited them so severely. Like Michael
Speaker 3: had been staying at her apartment for a period of time,
Speaker 3: he was not on the lease, but once he was
Speaker 3: there thirty days, she can't just put him out. He
Speaker 3: like lives there, right, So you know, there's like they
Speaker 3: kept bumping into all sorts of things like this, or
Speaker 3: Michael also did something that a lot of abusers do,
Speaker 3: and Michael started calling the police on her falsely, so
Speaker 3: that when the police would show up and she'd say, hey,
Speaker 3: this guy's beating me, they would look at the record.
Speaker 3: If they were able to look at the record, they
Speaker 3: would look at the record and they would see, oh, well,
Speaker 3: he's called on her, so it's he said, she said,
Speaker 3: when it's really not. This is a tactic abusers use,
Speaker 3: and that training isn't there, and nor is the law
Speaker 3: to really do anything about it. Abusers escalate, right, and
Speaker 3: the law doesn't necessarily account for that. And you see
Speaker 3: that in Michael's record. You see these numerous domestic violence
Speaker 3: charges and the sentence doesn't really escalate. There's no diversion program.
Speaker 3: There's nowhere for him to go or to send him
Speaker 3: on a legal basis to stop him. Right, there's no
Speaker 3: legal way to stop him, even though you see these
Speaker 3: repetitive charges escalating in the same way when someone's calling
Speaker 3: the police not once, not twice, but ten fifteen times
Speaker 3: seeing my boyfriend's beating me. Anyone who has half a
Speaker 3: brain in their head understands is eventually going to escalate.
Speaker 3: But there is no legal way to say, well, now
Speaker 3: you've done it ten times, so we think you really
Speaker 3: might killers. So we're going to escalate this to a
Speaker 3: new form of policing, or we're going to surveil you more,
Speaker 3: we're going to take you out of the house or
Speaker 3: take him out of the house. You kind of just
Speaker 3: have to wait for it to happen. And that's our law.
Speaker 3: That's how the law works here, and I think we
Speaker 3: should question whether there are smarter ways to police this
Speaker 3: kind of violence.
Speaker 1: Well, there's similar holes in our system, and we see
Speaker 1: the same stuff going through the courts, the same problems,
Speaker 1: and it's not easy to fix. That's the thing, because
Speaker 1: there's so many different elements that you kind of have
Speaker 1: to target. It's just so sad that we have to
Speaker 1: keep watching it happen again and again and again. After
Speaker 1: giving her testimony, Judy died five months later. So in
Speaker 1: June twenty seventeen, she was put into a hospice. There
Speaker 1: was basically nothing well that they could do, was there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean she sort of stopped responding in treatment.
Speaker 3: These skin grafts weren't going to work, and you can't
Speaker 3: live a normal lifespan with open wounds. So I believe
Speaker 3: most likelyhood she passed away from her autopsy, says it
Speaker 3: was a direct result of the burns, but you know,
Speaker 3: your organs kind of start to shut down. So you know,
Speaker 3: she fought for a very long time, and I think
Speaker 3: that testimony also, her condition declined very steeply after that testimony,
Speaker 3: and I think some of that was just the effort
Speaker 3: involved in giving that testimony, but also I think she
Speaker 3: felt she had to keep it together to get through
Speaker 3: that that that was a herculean effort, and afterwards she
Speaker 3: felt she'd set her peace and she could let go.
Speaker 3: But she would have hung in there if she could
Speaker 3: have in any condition, because she loved her kids. She
Speaker 3: really loved her kids and they loved her, and I
Speaker 3: think that's why she was able to go as long
Speaker 3: as she did.
Speaker 1: Well two years that is an incredible fate. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: Michael is charged with murder, as we expect after she dies.
Speaker 1: But then, like you also alluded to, comes the next
Speaker 1: fight where the defense is trying to exclude her testimony
Speaker 1: from the court.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so they had a number of hearings about whether
Speaker 3: or not that testimony should be admissible. This was precedent setting.
Speaker 3: It hadn't happened before, so you can challenge anything new
Speaker 3: in the court system. Quite a bit, but thankfully the
Speaker 3: judge did rule that he was going to admit this testimony,
Speaker 3: and that was really bad for Michael. So, you know,
Speaker 3: and this is a murder case in Ohio. He's facing
Speaker 3: the death penalty. His life is on the line, and
Speaker 3: the best case inn earra if he's convicted, is pretty
Speaker 3: much like in prison, and the worst case is they're
Speaker 3: going to give him the needle. But Michael was very
Speaker 3: insistent in the months leading up to this trial that
Speaker 3: he wanted to go to trial, go to trial. He
Speaker 3: was going to prove he was innocent. I think his
Speaker 3: lawyers were skeptical. Annie Judy's mom. It was very important
Speaker 3: to her that he be made to take accountability in
Speaker 3: whatever way that was. So when they started to talk
Speaker 3: about Michael potentially taking a plea deal, Bonnie was really
Speaker 3: clear that if he was going to plead, he would
Speaker 3: need to plead guilty. He could not plead no contest
Speaker 3: because she would not accept anything else. And so as
Speaker 3: they moved up to the court date, was a little
Speaker 3: unclear whether or not they were going to go for
Speaker 3: a full trial or whether he was going to plead.
Speaker 3: And the morning of that first hearing, I was there,
Speaker 3: and we really didn't know. We went into that court
Speaker 3: room and we didn't understand if we were going to
Speaker 3: be hearing some pre trial motions and then showing up
Speaker 3: the next day for jury selection, or if the whole
Speaker 3: thing was going to end right there. And thankfully he
Speaker 3: did decide to plead, apparently because his attorneys brought his
Speaker 3: daughter to the jail the night before and she was like, Dad, like,
Speaker 3: please please plead guilty, because at least you'll be alive.
Speaker 3: Even if you're in jail, at least you'll be alive,
Speaker 3: and I don't want you to die. And that is
Speaker 3: supposedly the turning point for him. After he pled, one
Speaker 3: of the conditions of his fee was that they would
Speaker 3: play Judy's testimony in court in order to cement the
Speaker 3: legal precedent she had set by testifying in advance of
Speaker 3: her death. That sort of finalized the things, so now
Speaker 3: anyone in the States can use that ruling to testify
Speaker 3: if if they find themselves in an analogous situation. So
Speaker 3: they played the testimony, which was a very powerful moment.
Speaker 3: She was sort of like alive as this ghost on screen,
Speaker 3: finally able to tell her stories. She literally had to
Speaker 3: die before anyone could hear her version of the story
Speaker 3: in public. And then it comes time for the sentencing,
Speaker 3: and they had asked her in the testimony to give
Speaker 3: a victim's impact statement, which she has a right to do.
Speaker 3: She has the right to say what sentence she wants
Speaker 3: them to get, and she had said she did not
Speaker 3: want him to get the death penalty. I forget exactly
Speaker 3: how they said it. They were like, and if he
Speaker 3: is convicted of this crime, what would you like to
Speaker 3: seem get And she said, I'd like to see Hm
Speaker 3: get life. I think he deserves that. And she had
Speaker 3: the power to say kill him, and she didn't. And
Speaker 3: I really think that's says a lot about her character.
Speaker 3: She understood in that moment she could hold that man's
Speaker 3: life in her hands after everything he did to her,
Speaker 3: and she decided to show mercy.
Speaker 1: I think a really interesting part of your documentary was
Speaker 1: the inside a look we got at her kids struggling
Speaker 1: with everything that happened. They gave you incredible access where
Speaker 1: you kind of saw the girls who were still kind
Speaker 1: of teenagers or young women when you were speaking to them,
Speaker 1: struggling to come to terms with their mum's addiction. Which
Speaker 1: they didn't know about because they were too young, and
Speaker 1: then also struggling to come to terms with the fact
Speaker 1: that Michael would be in prison, but he'd still get
Speaker 1: to see his family and they wouldn't. They don't get
Speaker 1: to see their mums, So why why does he get
Speaker 1: to see his family? I thought that was such an
Speaker 1: incredibly powerful insight to be able to give the public.
Speaker 3: You know, one of the things that I'm preoccupied by
Speaker 3: and almost all my work is this idea of like
Speaker 3: the shrapnel of violence, right, Like when somebody is killed
Speaker 3: or severely harmed, or forced in or any of the
Speaker 3: bad stuff, right, it's not just that victim that's hurt.
Speaker 3: It's like everyone who loves them, everyone in their orbit,
Speaker 3: people in their community, people in their work life. Like,
Speaker 3: it's just these things have a ripple effect. And I
Speaker 3: was struck when I met Bonnie by like how her
Speaker 3: and Judy and the girls had sort of they were
Speaker 3: like this island of women, right, like supporting each other,
Speaker 3: getting each other through. And I related to that because
Speaker 3: I was raised almost exclusively by my mom, who had
Speaker 3: a very close relationship with their mom, and we were
Speaker 3: the island of women, right. And I think when it
Speaker 3: comes to domestic violence, it is so felt not just
Speaker 3: by that victim, but by the victim's mother and by
Speaker 3: the victim's children. And I was very preccupied with the
Speaker 3: children because they're girls, they're young girls. This is happening
Speaker 3: at a time in their life where they're deciding what
Speaker 3: is the future going to look like for them when
Speaker 3: they start dating? What will that look like? Will they
Speaker 3: be able to trust someone enough, Will they be able
Speaker 3: to trust a man enough after seeing what happened to
Speaker 3: their mom that they can have the healthy relationships they deserve,
Speaker 3: Or if they saw too much of the wrong thing,
Speaker 3: will they accidentally unconsciously repeat unhealthy patterns? And how do
Speaker 3: they reckon with this while they're just trying to figure
Speaker 3: out how to be women and they're seeing their mom
Speaker 3: undergo a lot of these things that, let's just be real,
Speaker 3: their gender based crimes. I'm not saying that domestic violence
Speaker 3: doesn't happen to men. It certainly does. I'm not saying
Speaker 3: it's an exclusively female problem, but there is a lot
Speaker 3: of sexism surrounding whether she was listened to when she
Speaker 3: was first reporting it, whether she was believed in court,
Speaker 3: how people looked at her addiction, how people listen to
Speaker 3: Michael when he would counter her story right, I was
Speaker 3: just very preoccupied with how that would shape those girls.
Speaker 3: And thankfully they're very strong like their mother, and they're
Speaker 3: all doing great. They have very normal young adult lives
Speaker 3: and they're thriving. Kiki is in Kreli at a university
Speaker 3: not far from where her grandmother lives. And Maddie is
Speaker 3: finishing up high school and she's on the cheerleading team
Speaker 3: and doing while in school and has a really sweet,
Speaker 3: nice boyfriend, and it's just great to see.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Patricia Gillespie for assisting us to tell this story.
Speaker 1: You can find the guests film The Fire that took
Speaker 1: Her in our show notes. True Crime Conversations is a
Speaker 1: Muma mea podcast hosted and produced by me Jemma Bath
Speaker 1: and Tarlie Blackman, with audio design by Scott Stronik. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much for listening. I'll be back next week with
Speaker 1: another true Crime Conversation.