A Queens murderer done in by her broken fingernail may have killed her boyfriend by burning him alive, cops said Tuesday.
“A woman kills her boyfriend because she thinks he is cheating on her and then gets her son to drag the body out into an alley, and together the two of them set him on fire. We’re not even sure if he was dead at the time they set him on fire,” NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton said.
Suspect Dawn McIntosh, 46, was arraigned on murder charges Tuesday for allegedly killing her beau, Sh-Ron McWhorter, 43.
She was held without bail.
Her son, Donte Watkins, 21, who is accused of helping her dispose of McWhorter’s body, also was arraigned on a charge of tampering with evidence and held on $5,000 bond.
The pair appeared together in Queens Criminal Court, looking stoic and not saying a word, as their relatives sobbed in the room. Attending the hearing were McIntosh’s mother and the suspect’s three daughters.
McIntosh’s lawyer, Henry Ramirez, claimed during the hearing that McWhorter was being abusive to his client before his death.
“There is a history of physical abuse between the decedent and Ms. McIntosh. What happened during the late evening hours was proceeded by this,” Ramirez said.
McIntosh is accused of firing two bullets into McWhorter’s torso as they fought at her home in Astoria sometime before Saturday morning.
Then she allegedly tried to move him but couldn’t. It’s unclear if he was dead yet, cops said.
So McIntosh called her son, Donte Watkins, 21, who, with an unidentified relative, came to help her, cops said.
The mom and son tried to hoist the shot man into the cargo area of the victim’s Jeep — leaving telltale smears of his blood on the rear bumper as they struggled, law-enforcement sources told The Post.
But the body was too heavy, so they switched to Plan B, allegedly dousing McWhorter with lighter fluid and setting him on fire in an attempt to cover their tracks.
McWhorter’s vehicle was found about 100 feet away from his charred remains, according to the sources.
By the time authorities got to the scene, the corpse was so badly burned that they could identify him only by a “Sugar Sha” tattoo on his left arm.
One other critical clue was also left behind — a broken fake fingernail, which cops believe McIntosh lost during the struggle to lift the body.
As police were questioning McIntosh, they noticed she was missing one fingernail, and they confronted her, authorities said.
She confessed to the murder on the spot, cops said.
“It’s a very unusual case,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said Monday. “On his body, we find a fingernail.
“We notice that when we talk to his girlfriend, she is missing a fingernail. We take her into custody and start speaking to her, and she makes the admission that she actually killed him.’’
McIntosh’s neighbors described her as caring more about her appearance than her manners.
“She did keep her nails done,” said a woman who asked not to be named. “She always looked angry. She would look at you and turn her head real quick.”
The disposition of the third suspect was not clear.
Additional reporting by Sarah Trefethen and Chris Perez