Man who set woman on fire pleads guilty, to get 50 years

November 7, 2012 Brooklyn Eagle Staff
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Kings County District Attorney Charles J. Hynes on Wednesday announced the guilty plea of Jerome Isaac, 48, for the December 2011 murder of a woman that he lit on fire inside her apartment-building elevator.  

Isaac pled guilty to the top charge of murder in the first degree, for acting in an especially cruel and wanton manner, intentionally causing death while inflicting great physical pain as a course of torture, and arson in the second degree.  

He will be sentenced on Nov. 30 before Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Vincent Del Giudice to 25 years to life for the murder charge and 25 years for the arson, which will run consecutively.  

On Dec. 17, 2011, Isaac doused 73-year-old Deloris Gillespie with gas inside the elevator of Gillespie’s apartment building at 203 Underhill Ave. and set her on fire as she was about to exit.

He then doused her again with an accelerant and threw a Molotov cocktail inside the elevator.  The victim was pronounced dead at the scene.  Isaac claimed he was mad at the Gillespie because she owed him money.  

Several minutes later, Isaac went to his brother’s building at 315 Lincoln Place and set his brother’s apartment door on fire using an accelerant.  Nobody was injured during that incident.

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