Woman set afire in elevator of her NYC building

Sick.

I really don't understand the urge to kill another human being.

And no one deserves to die like that.

Just horrible.

This looks like it was a hit. Somebody wanted this woman dead and wanted her to suffer and was willing to pay to have it done.

gulliver

it said the man knew the woman..

she probably was divorcing him or some @!$%#.

regardless.....just horrible...just horrible.

no one deserves to go out like that.....disgusting

The NY Daily News has a more detailed story about this incident, and it names the victim. It says the assailant is "unknown."

I think that the idea that the victim knew the assailant was speculation based on the fact that there wasn't a struggle. The description of the crime, however, doesn't make it sound like it was the sort of thing that would necessarily involve a struggle. The woman had groceries in her arms and was trying to protect herself from being sprayed with the accelerant. Next thing you know, the assailant is lighting a Molotov cocktail.

Supposedly she was mentally ill and her son was mentally ill. She had lived in the building for years and was making paranoid complaints about the upstairs neighbors - accusing them of stealing things from her.

Just an observation, but it seems like she might have been driving down property values and making enemies close to home.

noted

This is the worst crime I've come across. I can barely type and I'm a bit stunned that you, Gulliver, are able to. I can barely think, certainly not coherently, about this story.

it seems like she might have been driving down property values and making enemies close to home.

Oh please don't let that be the reason!! There is a lot of criminal behavior in NYC but this is over the top. Way over!!!

I doubt someone would put a hit out like that for someone causing them trouble in their building....

breaking a leg...and arm......I can see.....other types of harassment.

but setting on fire?????

that is full of hate.....its one of the worst ways to go...and to do that means you HATE the person ....pure hate...nothing else. revenge for a molestation could warrant this kind of response.......

regardless...this was someone with some serious mental issues....or she was one evil woman who had one too many victims.

I'm pretty horrified by it.

I hope they catch whoever did this and lock him away in a miserable little closet for the rest of his miserable life. I hope the food is horrible and the weekly showers are cold. I hope the room is filled with ghosts.

I'm not a death penalty supporter, but if I was one, this would be the sort of crime that definitely deserved it.

I can barely type and I'm a bit stunned that you, Gulliver, are able to

This story is too horrible for me to think about unless I put in a layer of abstraction, like wondering about who was guilty of doing it (or hiring it out).

Too much preparation went into this for it to be a random act of violence. I'm thinking that somebody had the idea if it was a horrific crime it would distract people from the fact that it was motivated by simple greed.

Do you mean that he might have done that just to rob her?

Some people don't need to know someone to be sadistic. Remember these two crimes in the metro?

Or this one in New York?

But could robbery be a motive, sure, other people haven't needed any reason at all.

Another story says the guy is an ex-boyfriend though.

Look at comment 12.3.

She was living in that building with mental problems maybe other people with mental problems were too and the attacker was one of them?

I don't think it was a robbery.

I think it was either a random act of violence perpetrated by a monster to amuse himself, or that someone wanted her dead and out of the way for some reason.

She was apparently a nuisance in her apartment building, suffering from mental problems and her son (who also had mental problems) was living with her. It is difficult to evict people with disabilities from their apartments in New York city. Tenants who live in rent stabilized housing have legal rights that many other renters don't.

Narrowing the speculation down to a likely suspect would be just plain wrong for me to do. I'm just commenting on whether this was a random act of violence or a crime with a purpose. I could see how a crime like this could have either been random or purposeful. It's up to the police to get to the bottom of it.

The attacker was obviously mentally ill.

Or REALLY depraved.

Wow. A re-reg troll minus the clever comments.

He is trying to be offensive to get who ever he considers his "Enemy" to make a CoH violation so he can proudly proclaim I got them. Don't fall for his childish antics. I've already reported him as an Offensive User and a possible Re-reg.

I believe the US has the highest rate of diagnosed cases of mental illness.

Disregard. That was another woman who was killed in an elevator on the 14th.

Darrah,

That woman was killed several days ago by the elevator car suddenly moving while the doors were still open. It was speculated that the safety switch had been turned off by a technician who had been working on it earlier. That woman, the ad exec, is not the same woman as the one in this story who was burned alive. These incidences happened days apart.

edit: just saw your disclaimer.

That's the photo of the attacker up there at the top of this page.

He looks so damn casual as if he does it every day.

This page we're on won't let me copy and paste a paragraph from NY Times but here's more info about her (for sure.) The last couple of paragraphs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/18/nyregion/woman-burned-alive-in-brooklyn-elevator.html

They said he was around 40 yrs. old.

IMO, it seems like a very personal crime and he wanted to kill her.

Darrah:

It might be personal but personal murders tend to be stabbings. Slice and dice stuff like with a machete or large edged weapon. Setting someone on fire seems like someone was trying to send a message or make an example of someone. Mighty powerful message because look at the reactions we're seeing just from this thread alone. But...if it was personal then this person was awfully disturbed.

The unidentified attacker - reportedly the woman's ex-boyfriend - was waiting outside the elevator in a Brooklyn, New York apartment block for Delores Gillespie, 64, to return to home.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2075668/Delores-Gillespie-Woman-doused-flammable-liquid-set-alight-elevator-Brooklyn-New-York.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Of course I have no way of knowing if it was her former boyfriend or not but that is what is being reported from NY papers.

Fejj

There have been a lot of women who have been set on fire and killed by ex's.

Very true, Darrah. Can't rule it out. We just don't know enough about anything because the case just started. More will come out hopefully to catch this person. Hopefully the cops will do everyone a favor and shoot him down like a dog.

Ex's who set fire to women and use chemicals on their faces want to disfigure them. Those who go this far have already planned it out and it's premeditated murder. The guy obviously felt rage for this woman. And look at the third pic of him. He's in that zone. I worked in a prison for 11 yrs. and I've seen it before.

All of it fits but you're right. They can't rule out anything.

Well, a former boyfriend would be the sort of person one would suspect.

I personally think that the newspapers have been speculating about the suspect, amplifying the speculation of one particular person that the press talked to.

The security cameras caught this guy in the act and they got a decent shot of his face, so we should know soon enough whether this guy was a former boyfriend or not.

You don't find animals doing this to each other. Of course they fight and sometimes kill each other but it's because of defending themselves, food, and sometimes mating, But they rarely kill their rivals. Premeditated murder rarely happens but sometimes it will in some very primal chimp colonies. The stronger colony will plan on overtaking the smaller, weaker colony, but it rarely happens

Animals could teach us how to be humans.