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Death by Divorce? Fire, Custody Dispute Yield Death Sentence

November 2nd, 2009 No comments

Daniel Dougherty of Philadelphia has suffered many bad events in his life. He’s a former auto mechanic with alcohol addiction problems. He has had two broken marriages. But two of the tragedies stand out from the rest. In 1985, his girlfriend’s house burned down, killing his two sons who were asleep upstairs. In 1999, his second ex-wife was involved in a nasty child custody dispute with him. She reported to police that Dougherty set the 1985 fire which killed his children. She reportedly later retracted her claims, but it wasn’t enough to save Dougherty from a miserable fate.

The wheels of law enforcement whirred, people “changed” (falsified) their testimony to match the new story, and 14 years after that tragic fire, Dougherty was arrested. In his trial in 2000, he was sentenced to death for what appears could be a false allegation made by a nasty woman who couldn’t accept sharing child custody and was perhaps willing to see her ex-husband dead rather than accept joint custody.
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