Woman Sets Boyfriend on Fire for Cheating: Police

The neglected backyard area where Shawn McWhorter was allegedly set on fire in Queens. Photo via Google Maps

UPDATE: A fingernail left on McWhorter’s burning body led cops to their prime suspects, according to NBC New York. NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce reportedly said that while investigators were talking to his girlfriend, Dawn McIntosh, they noticed she was missing a fingernail. Police took McIntosh into custody, where she allegedly admitted to killing her boyfriend and setting his body on fire.

Queens resident Dawn McIntosh, 46, confessed to police that she fatally shot her boyfriend — then set him on fire — for “infidelity, treating her badly and owing her money,” an NYPD source told Patch.

Police said they found McIntosh’s boyfriend, 43-year-old Brooklyn resident Shawn McWhorter, unconscious and engulfed in flames in a backyard field area behind 14th Street in Astoria, Queens, early Saturday morning around 7 a.m.

The mother and son live a couple blocks away from the crime scene, at the Astoria Houses, according to police.

“Responding FDNY personnel distinguished the fire, and EMS pronounced the male deceased at the scene,” the NYPD said in a statement. “There was trauma observed to the left side of the male’s body. The Medical Examiner will determine the cause of death.”

By Monday morning, McIntosh and her son, 21-year-old Donte Watkins, had been arrested and charged in connection to McWhorter’s death.

McIntosh was charged with murder, criminal possession of a weapon and tampering with physical evidence, police said.

Her son was charged with tampering with physical evidence. He is believed to have aided his mother in attempting to get rid of McWhorter’s body.

The 21-year-old son stated to police that after his mother shot McWhorter, the two of them tried to load his body onto a vehicle, but he was too heavy, a police source told Patch. That’s when his mom allegedly decided to set her boyfriend on fire.

The victim was a resident of New Lots, Brooklyn, according to police.