What to Know
- NYPD detectives say Donna Francis fled to the UK after she gave a woman a deadly butt injection in a Queens basement
- The detectives say it will take months or even years to get her extradited back to the U.S. to face justice
- The FDA has launched a campaign against illegal silicone, an industrial lubricant banned for cosmetic purposes in the U.S.
NYPD detectives know who she is, but they say getting an accused killer back to Queens to face justice is another matter.
Donna Francis is charged with criminally negligent homicide in the death of a young television producer in a botched cosmetic procedure in New York City several years ago.
She fled to London and is now fighting extradition, detectives say.
Francis allegedly posed as a medical doctor and injected 34-year-old Kelly Mayhew with silicone in the basement of a Far Rockaway house in May of 2015.
Silicone is an industrial lubricant commonly used on the underground market to plump up body parts, particularly lips and rear-ends. It is banned for cosmetic purposes in the U.S.
Detectives told the I-Team that Mayhew’s mother was an eyewitness to her daughter’s death and begged Francis for help when the young woman stopped breathing.
“On the third injection the daughter turns purple,” said Lt. Richard Rudolph, Commanding Officer of the Queens South Homicide Squad.
Rudolph said that after Mayhew went into shock, Francis cleaned up her supplies and took off.
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NYPD detectives obtained an arrest warrant for Francis and a Queens grand jury indicted her. British police ultimately arrested her more than a year after Mayhew’s death, but she was released on a monitoring bracelet and refused to speak to the I-Team at a court appearance.
Detectives say that even though Francis is due back in court in London on March 10, it could take months or even years before she is sent back to the U.S. to stand trial. “But we’re not going to give up,” Rudolph said.
Customers were lined up to get into the Far Rockaway home where the botched cosmetic procedure occurred, detectives said, and police believe there may be additional victims.
The Food and Drug Administration is so concerned about illegal silicone that it recently launched a nationwide warning campaign with the hashtag: #CheckBeforeYouInject. No legitimate doctor would ever inject silicone.
