I testified in my own murder trial — and sent my ex to prison for life

Judy Malinowski was a dead girl talking. 

From the grave, the slain Ohio mother-of-two testified against ex-boyfriend Michael Slager in her 2018 murder trial. 

Clinging to life on a hospital bed with burns covering 95% of her body, an amputated arm that had been scorched to the bone and bolts of pain surging through her frame, Malinowski, then 33, told the courts via video that Slager had doused her in gasoline and set her on fire during an argument on August 2, 2015. 

“Evil. Just completely evil,” says Malinowski of Slager in her pre-trial deposition. The 3-hour attestation was recorded just five months before she died due to complications from the burn on June 27, 2017. 

She became one of the first people in the U.S. to posthumously testify in their own murder trial.

Haunting footage from her poignant account of the attack is featured in MTV documentary, “The Fire That Took Her,” out Tuesday on Paramount+. 

“He got these cans of gasoline that he had kept in the back of his truck,” Malinowski says in the film of the incident, which occurred in broad daylight at a Speedway gas station near Columbus, Ohio. 

“He ran around me and started pouring gasoline. He started at my head and worked his way down,” she continues, adding that gasoline had gone down her throat amid the soaking. 

“I looked at him and he pulled a lighter out of his pocket, and he started walking towards me,” says the charred woman, whose pain medications had to be lowered in order for her to testify. “I just remember crying and begging for help, and he lit me on fire.”

Eyewitnesses called the police, prompting Slager to grab a fire extinguisher in attempts to quell the flame. 

Per ATM surveillance footage of the event, Malinowski is seen stumbling to the ground as an orange blaze shrouds her body. 

Moments prior to the assault, Malinowski, then 31, and Slager — a then-40-year-old career criminal, who’d previously been charged with domestic violence, sexual battery, child endangerment, stalking and rape — were locked in a heated argument. (The nature of their disagreement remains unclear). 

Slager had stopped at the gas station to purchase a carton of cigarettes while en route to Parkside addiction treatment center, where Malinowski was scheduled to undergo in-patient drug rehabilitation.  

Years before the attack, when Malinowski was 26, the then-newly divorced mom struggled with an addiction to prescription painkillers after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer.  

At the time, Malinowski, sent her young daughters, Kaylynn and Maddie, to live with her mother Bonnie Bowes and sister Danielle Gorman, respectively. 

By early 2015, Malinowski had officially kicked her habit and regained custody of her girls. However, after she began dating Slager in April of that year, he introduced her to heroine. 

“[Michael] is the one that got [heroine] for me the first time,” says Malinowski to Slager’s defense attorney, Bob Krapence, during cross-examination. “He bought it for me everyday. He would bring home a gram of heroine.”

In the doc, Bowes says Slager, who did not abuse drugs, used narcotics to manipulate her daughter.

“That was his was of controlling her so that he could abuse her,” Bowes explains. “If he was bringing the drugs, he had power over her.” 

Malinowski never made it to the addiction treatment facility that day. 

Instead, she was rushed to Ohio University Wexner Medical center, where healthcare workers doubted she’d live. 

“I’ve seen plenty of burns to her degree. I can’t say I’ve seen many that survive past a few days,” says Malinowski’s nurse, Stacey Best, in the doc.

“In the burn world we have an equation for mortality, which is based on the patient’s age and percent burn,” she adds, “In Judy’s case, she was 31 and approximately 80% burned. So that made her 110% mortality.”  

Slager, who was also taken to the hospital, told authorities that the burning was an accident. He claimed he’d dumped gasoline on Malinowski in retaliation to her drenching him in soda. 

Slager said after their messy exchange, Malinowski sat on the grass near the gas station, and asked him for a cigarette. He then alleged that when he bent down to light the cig, her entire body ignited. 

“I walked over to give her a light and that was it,” he told detectives in police body-worn camera footage featured in the film. 

“She went up [in flames] and I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I didn’t think it was going to be like that.”

Slager was immediately placed under arrest and charged with felonious assault and aggravated arson. He was handed 11 years in prison, which was then the maximum sentence for the crime in Ohio. (Slager’s conviction and sentence was ultimately changed upon Malinowski’s death).

But Malinowski, who miraculously regained consciousness after being in a coma for 8 months, wasn’t satisfied with the punishment.

With the help of Bowes and her daughters, she petitioned the state to pass House Bill 63, now known as Judy’s Law. 

The legislation moved to increase the maximum sentence for felonious assault by 5 to 20 years for people who intentionally maim or disfigure others. 

“House Bill 63 should be passed because it destroyed my life, my family’s life, my kids’ life, everyone around us’ life,” argues Malinowski in her film from her virtual address to lawmakers. “And the laws of justice are just not fair.”

Judy’s Law was officially passed in September 2017, three months after Malinowski’s death that June. 

Shortly after her passing, Slager, who was facing the death penalty, entered a plea of guilt in her murder.  

Video of Malinowski’s testimony was played at his sentencing hearing. 

“I live with horrible pain every day, I would never wish upon anybody,” she says. 

“I would like to see [Slager] charged with murder and do a life sentence,” she tells the court in the recording. “I think that he deserves that.”

The judge agreed and ordered Slager to serve life in prison without parole. 

He is carrying our his sentence at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. 

And while Malinowski’s daughters, now teenagers, argue that life behind bars isn’t a strong enough penance for his heinous transgression, they’re proud that their late mother’s voice was the key that locked away her murderer. 

“My mom taught me that you can stand up to anybody,” says Kaylynn in the doc.