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There are muggers, there are killers, and then there are heinous monsters like Michael Slager, who on August 2, 2015, set his girlfriend, 31-year-old Judy Malinowski, on fire. The Franklin County, Ohio resident suffered burns to over 95% of her body and yet, amazingly, she survived. And it is his story – and his agency – that is restored by The fire that took her awaydirector/producer Patricia E. Gillespie’s maddening and heartbreaking documentary about Judy’s unthinkable ordeal, and the courage and strength she has shown in trying to make a difference while she could.
A heartbreaking film whose October 21 theatrical debut coincides with National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, The fire that took her away begins in horror, with footage – from two ATM cameras – of a character engulfed in flames behind a Speedway gas station. The frantic 911 call playing over these images only heightens the horror of the spectacle, and Gillespie’s subsequent extended revisiting of this material doesn’t make it any easier to digest. When played in full, it depicts Michael’s black truck driving to the Speedway, Judy and Michael arguing to the point that she throws a cup of soda at him, and Michael spraying her with a can of gas and – after leaving the frame for 30 seconds – returning to use his lighter to ignite the liquid.
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Even at a blurry distance, this action is the stuff of nightmares. Detective Chad Cohagen admits that for a long time he didn’t stop dreaming about Judy. Immediately after the incident, however, Cohagen and his fellow officers went to the hospital where Judy and Michael were taken, and The fire that took her away features body camera scenes of Cohagen interviewing Michael in bed, his neck, arms and torso covered in tattoos and his face plastered with a grimace. Michael tries to sell a selfish version of reality in which he poured gasoline on Judy in retaliation for her bombarding him with soda, then accidentally burned her when he went to light his cigarette. Cohagen doesn’t buy that, telling him bluntly, “We know what happened.”
Right off the bat, there’s no question that Michael deliberately inflicted this misery on Judy, which is as unthinkable as Judy’s condition is downright upsetting. Through photos and videos – first of Cohagen questioning him about Michael’s guilt, then his torment in the hospital –The fire that took her away portrays Judy after the attack in unwavering close-ups. Even the most avid viewers will find it extremely difficult to avoid shedding tears at its ruined state. Her face charred and scarred to the point of appearing skeletal, her ears missing and her eyes distant and stricken, Judy is a vision of untold pain and suffering, and as her nurse Stacy Best puts it, it’s a “miracle” that she managed to survive at all – especially after being in a coma for seven months – let alone regaining consciousness and communicating with those around her.
A lot of The fire that took her away is narrated by Bonnie Bowes, Judy’s grief-stricken mother and sister Danielle Gorman, with additional commentary from her two young daughters Kaylyn and Maddie, prosecutor Warren Edwards and defense attorney of Michael, Bob Krapence, who unsuccessfully tries to argue that Michael didn’t mean to hurt Judy. That said, Krapence is well aware that any jury hearing Judy’s story would immediately want to throw the book at their client. So when he was given the opportunity to make a plea deal that would have earned him 11 years behind bars – the maximum sentence allowed in Ohio for aggravated arson and felony assault – he pounced on it, while knowing that if Judy died, a murder trial would ensue.
The fire that took her away is an indictment of a criminal justice system that offers inadequate sentences to domestic abusers, just as it is a scathing censure of law enforcement’s refusal to do more to protect women from boyfriends and brutal spouses. On top of that, the fact that Judy, post-ovarian cancer surgery, became addicted to Oxycontin (and eventually turned to heroin) makes the film a condemnation of Big Pharma, not to mention an all-too-familiar portrait of the sprawling mess caused by substance abuse. As soon to be revealed, Michael was a dangerous criminal with a mile-long criminal record who allowed and exploited Judy’s drug problem in order to control her before the attack, and used it to discredit and destroy her. slander in court. What emerges, then, is not just the story of a nasty crime, but of the various unjust and misogynistic forces that conspired to beat and besiege Judy.
The big twist in this horrifying saga is that Bonnie and Edwards, recognizing that Judy would not live and desperate to restore her voice, convinced a judge to allow Judy to testify by deposition. Indeed, she became the main witness in his future murder trial. In this footage, Judy – in total agony from her painkillers running low – recounts the events of that fateful day in August, describing Michael’s ‘completely evil’ behavior as he poured gasoline on her head , in his back and in his throat. “I just remember crying and begging for help, and he set me on fire and the look in his eyes was… his eyes went black. Literally,” she moaned, later confessing, “it’s terrifying to feel that, and it’s also terrifying to be twisted in certain ways. My whole body hurts.”
Judy’s story is so damning and heartbreaking that it’s no surprise that Krapence convinced Michael to plead guilty and accept life in prison – which Judy wanted for him – rather than face the possibility of the death penalty at trial. In this regard, justice was served and, more hearteningly, Judy’s efforts at reform proved successful; in September 2017, Judy’s Law came into effect, adding additional prison terms to offenders who deliberately disfigure victims. Nevertheless, there is little improvement to be found in The fire that took her awaywhich illustrates the abject horror of domestic abusers, the unjust systems that ignore and protect them, and the individual, family and societal carnage wrought by the abuse of women – a notion ultimately hammered home, poignantly, by a reverse timeline montage of home movies that turns into red-hued celluloid ruin.
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