‘GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER’
She killed a woman with an illegal butt-lift. Her sentence: 1 year in prison. Queens judge calls it:
“I have to say that the phrase ‘ getting away with murder’ certainly applies to you,” said Judge Kenneth Holder, as he sentenced Donna Francis (above) to just one year in a plea bargain for killing Kelly Mayhew (left) with a botched butt injection in 2015.
A Queens resident who was sentenced on Thursday to a year in prison for killing a woman in a botched butt lift “got away with murder,” family members said — and even the judge agreed.
“I have to say that the phrase ‘getting away with murder’ certainly applies to you,” Queens Supreme Court Judge Kenneth Holder told phony butt doc Donna Francis at a hearing Thursday.
Holder was forced to issue the light sentence under an extradition agreement brokered by a judge in the United Kingdom, where Francis, a UK citizen, fled after the crime and refused to leave until she received the deal.
“What [the family] is not getting, in my opinion, is justice,” Holder told Francis. “If you have a conscience, this is going to haunt you much longer than the one-year sentence you’re going to serve.”
Victim Kelly Mayhew, 34, was found lying on the floor of Francis’ Far Rockaway basement in 2015 after Francis attempted to give her silicone gel injections she had purchased on eBay, prosecutors said.
The day after the bungled butt lift, Francis, 39, hopped a plane to London — and stayed for four years before being hauled back to the US in August on charges of criminally negligent homicide and unauthorized practice of a profession after prosecutors agreed to a maximum one-year sentence.
With time served, Francis could be free by mid-April, Assistant District Attorney George DeLucaFarragia said.
The maximum she could have gotten was four years. After she is freed, she is likely to be deported to Britain, the judge said.
After the proceeding, the family expressed outrage at the deal.
“If you can sleep on the fact that you just killed someone . . . then you don’t care,” Mayhew’s mother, Latrice, told The Post. “She got away with murder.”
During the hearing, DeLuca-Farragia told the judge that Francis was “nothing short of a coward” who “left Kelly Mayhew dying on a floor, holding her mother’s hand.”
When Mayhew began showing signs of distress after the injections, Francis panicked and ran, leaving Mayhew’s mother to call 911, authorities said.
“Kelly died for greed. A life lost for money,” said Mayhew’s brother Richard Lane, who read a statement on behalf of their mother. “Donna Francis said ‘no’ when I asked her to call 911. Kelly was clearly in need of emergency services and she said, ‘No, she’s going to be OK.’ ”
When the mom frantically asked Francis for an address to give to responders, the woman refused.
In the statement, Latrice Mayhew called her daughter’s death “devastating.”
Lane told the court that his mother still has nightmares about the death, which the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled was caused by “systemic silicone emboli” — the result of silicone seeping into the bloodstream.
“Kelly’s last words to my mother were, ‘Mommy, hold my hand,’ ” Lane said.
Francis, who got $1,600 for the botched job, sobbed in court, saying: “I’m sorry for everything. It wasn’t my intention to hurt anyone. I’m sorry for all the years this has been going on. I’m just sorry.”
After the proceeding, Mayhew’s mother — who plans to take her case overseas — called Francis “villainous” and “cold” and said she didn’t buy Francis’ apologies.
“She’s sorry she got caught,” Mayhew said.