Judy Malinowski was a cancer survivor who became addicted to painǩillers and turned to heroin after her medical insurance expired. Her boyfriend at the time, Michael Slager, supplied her with the drug and used it as a means of controlling her.
On August 2, 2015, Judy and Michael were arguing at a service station in Columbus, Ohio, when he poured fuel on her and set her on fire. 90 percent of her body was burnt, she was just 31.
Image: Judy before/after, and Michael
In 2016, Michael was sentenced to 11 years in prison for aggravated arson, which Judy felt was a great injustice. She decided to fight for justice and her testimony of the event was recorded on video, in anticipation of her eventual passing.
Slager was tried for m̃urdḛr after Judy passed in June 2017. He was sentenced to life in prison after Judy’s testimony was played in court. Making it the first time, a dḛậd person testified in court.
Inside the Brutal Story Judy Malinowski
Against all odds, Judy Malinowski was going to ensure that the man who burned her alive would receive a life behind bars.
The 31-year-old mother of two, who died in June 2017, spent two years in a hospital bed after an argument with her ex-boyfriend Michael Slager ended with him dousing her in gasoline and lighting her on fire outside of a suburban gas station.
Malinowski, a former homecoming queen who her mother Bonnie Bowes says was “friends with everybody,” needed to be revived seven times and required more than 50 agonizing surgeries to stay alive. The attack left 90 percent of body covered in burns.
But when Slager was only sentenced to 11 years in prison after he pleaded no contest to aggravated arson charges, Malinowski found a new purpose to hold on for life and make sure her voice would be heard.
“Judy said, ‘Mom, not even an ant should be set on fire. I got a life sentence and he didn’t,’“ her mother Bonnie says in this week’s issue of PEOPLE.
Shortly before her death in 2017, Malinowski spent weeks weaning off pain medication to a point where she could prove to a judge she was of sound mind. Then she spent three hours testifying against Slager, who she said refused her pleas for help after he lit her ablaze. “The look on his face was pure evil,” she says in the video that was taken from her hospital bed.
The cancer survivor knew how to fight from the hospital, her mother says, fueling her determination to cling to life and film a videotaped testimony that would be used against her attacker after her death. Malinowski's harrowing story is now the subject of MTV’s new documentary The Fire That Took Her, streaming on Paramount+.
The videotape was played for a courtroom in Franklin County, Ohio in 2018 after Slager was charged with aggravated murder, making Malinowski the first person in history to testify at their own murder trial. After hearing the Ohio mother’s testimony, Slager was sentenced to life in prison for murder.
Malinowski’s family — daughters Kaylyn and Madison, sister Danielle Gorman, brother Patrick Bowes, and mother Bonnie — haven’t stopped their fight for justice, however. The family pushed for tougher legislation for assaults using an accelerant that leave victims seriously disfigured. And on September 7, 2017, Malinowski’s family stood together at the Ohio Statehouse as “Judy’s Law” was enacted.
“She hung on and fought for justice,” her mother says now. “She suffered beyond measure to make a change for other women.”

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