N.Y./Region
December 19, 2011
Cornered by Attacker in Elevator, Fire
Victim, 73, Had No Way Out
December 19, 2011
By the time Deloris Gillespie saw him, waiting
on the other side of an elevator door, it was too late to escape.
With her shopping bags
in hand, she pushed open the door. There stood a man she knew, Jerome Isaac. He
set upon her immediately, the authorities said, armed with a tank of fuel and a
barbecue lighter, wearing white gloves and a surgical mask. He was angry, he
would tell the police on Sunday, because he believed she owed him about $2,000
for odd jobs.
But there was no way Ms. Gillespie, 73, could
have been prepared for what happened.
Mr. Isaac, 47, methodically set the woman
aflame, burning her alive in the elevator of her building in Brooklyn on
Saturday, only a few feet from her apartment door, the police said. He
sprayed the flammable liquid in the woman’s face and over her cowering
body, and then lighted a Molotov cocktail to ignite the fire. Jerome
Isaac (Left) faces charges of first-degree and second-degree murder
and arson in the death of Deloris Gillespie
Within minutes, Ms.
Gillespie was burning to death in the narrow cab, and her assailant had fled
down the stairs. The attack lasted only a few minutes, all of it captured by
surveillance cameras; the sheer, calculated brutality
stunned even the most hardened of homicide detectives.
Several hours later, Mr. Isaac, “reeking of
gasoline,” turned himself in Sunday morning at a transit police station, and by
the afternoon, the police said, he had confessed to the attack. He faces
charges of first-degree and second-degree murder and arson.
Ms. Gillespie and Mr.
Isaac lived less than two blocks apart in the Prospect Heights neighborhood.
She had a reputation for trying to help people who were down on their luck. She
gave food and shelter to the homeless and welcomed strangers into her
apartment, sometimes hiring them for small tasks and chores, according to
friends and relatives. That was how she came to know Mr. Isaac, they said.
Mr. Isaac was less
known to neighbors. Some described him as being intelligent, well dressed and
well spoken. But Mr. Isaac was mostly known for his penchant for collecting
cans and bottles in the neighborhood; he was called “the recyclist.”
He hails from a large
family from Trinidad, with seven siblings, according to his sister Janet Isaac,
who lives in Maryland.
Ms. Isaac had not
heard about her brother’s arrest when contacted by a reporter on Sunday
evening. “My Lord,” she exclaimed. She said that she had not been in touch with
him lately and did not know how he supported himself.
To those who knew him,
Mr. Isaac did not seem like a troublemaker; the police said he had no criminal
record in New York.
Rickey Causey, a nephew of Ms. Gillespie’s who
had been living with her since he arrived in June from Louisiana, where he said
his home burned down, said that Mr. Isaac had posted a typewritten bill on her
door for his work clearing clutter from her apartment months before. Total due:
more than $300.
Despite Mr. Isaac’s
insistence on the money, Mr. Causey said that his aunt had not feared Mr.
Isaac. “She wasn’t scared of no one,” Mr. Causey said.
He said Ms. Gillespie,
whose apartment was filled with items she had collected over the years, had
caught Mr. Isaac stealing things, including a VCR and a cake pan. “He was
taking the good stuff,” Mr. Causey said. So, he said, she dismissed him.
Whatever transpired
between Ms. Gillespie and Mr. Isaac, the detached way in which he carried out
the attack was extraordinary, according to police officials who watched the
surveillance footage.
While Ms. Gillespie
was out buying groceries, he rode the elevator to her floor and, outfitted like
an amateur exterminator, waited for her to return, the police said. As soon as
the elevator delivered her, Mr. Isaac was blocking her exit.
He sprayed her face with liquid from the hose
that snaked around his torso. As she turned and shrank back into a corner of
the narrow cab, he doused her with it. Then he went through with his plan: He
lighted the fuse on the bottle bomb in his other hand and set Ms. Gillespie
aflame. She dropped to the floor, engulfed and screaming.
But Mr. Isaac was not finished yet, the police
said. To ensure that Ms. Gillespie did not survive, he tossed the long-necked
bottle into the elevator with her. He sprayed more of the fuel on her. Only
then did he run away.
Mr. Isaac told the
police that he hid out on a rooftop near his apartment and fell asleep. After
he woke and wandered the streets, he learned that he was wanted, so he went to
a transit police station about two and a half miles from Ms. Gillespie’s
apartment building.
Paul J. Browne, the
chief spokesman for the New York Police Department, said that Mr. Isaac
initially admitted to having set a fire, but later confessed to the immolation
of Ms. Gillespie. They found some of the equipment he had used on the roof of
571 Lincoln Place, where he said he had hidden, Mr. Browne said.
He said that Mr. Isaac had also set a fire at
his own apartment a few blocks away, at 315 Lincoln Place, on Saturday
afternoon. Mr. Isaac suggested to the police that he may have suffered burn
wounds to his face, hands and neck in that fire, which left the top and bottom
of the door to Mr. Isaac’s second-floor apartment scorched and the hall
smelling of gasoline.
A next-door neighbor,
Eric Charles, 42, said Mr. Isaac had lived in the building for several years
and often rode a bicycle around the neighborhood collecting cans and bottles.
Mr. Charles said he was shocked when he learned his neighbor had been charged
with murdering Ms. Gillespie.
“I would never think
he was capable of that,” Mr. Charles said.
Vernon J. Geberth, a retired commander of the Bronx Homicide Task Force,
said that the way Ms. Gillespie was killed was “extremely rare” and especially
torturous.
“The
worst way of dying is by fire, because every nerve ending is assaulted
simultaneously in the most horrific way,” Mr.
Geberth said. “You have someone with pent-up anger and rage that’s so
intense they don’t only want to kill, they want to see the victim suffer.”