The Murder of Dorothy Dow

On August 2, 2016, two days before the fatal attack, Dorothy Dow's home was burglarized while she was away. Her purse was taken. ATM security footage at a bank captured the individuals who used her debit card, completing two separate withdrawals of $600 each. Investigators identified three of them from the footage: Cortavious Heard, Angela Harmon, and Mina Ellery. Heard and Grady were former seasonal workers who had picked blueberries at the Dow farm and had been inside her home.

In the early morning hours of August 4, 2016, Dorothy was asleep when she was awakened by someone kicking in her back door. Four people entered the home demanding cash. When Dorothy told them she had none, they asked about the whereabouts of her son, who was known to keep a large amount of cash and also lived at the property. The attack lasted approximately one hour. Dorothy sustained two broken arms, broken fingers, lacerations to her face and head from being pistol-whipped, and third-degree burns to the back of her head and down her back after the group poured lighter fluid on her and set her on fire.

Before leaving, one of the perpetrators ripped her medical alert device from her body. After they left, Dorothy used water from a container kept near her sleep apnea machine to extinguish the flames. She made her way to her landline but found it had been ripped from the wall. She reached 911 using her cell phone. She was airlifted to the burn unit at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. The group took no money or items from Dorothy's home during the attack.