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Dolly Mae Clapp


Inmate Name: Dolly Mae Clapp Charge: first-degree manslaughter Sentence: 15 years Prison: Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, New York Dolly Mae Clapp was born in Lackawanna, New York in 1959. When Dolly was very young, her father died, and Dolly and her three brothers were put in foster care for several years. When she was 12, Dolly went back to live with her mother who enrolled her in a strict boarding school for troubled girls. She finished high school a year early, but struggled to find a career she could stick with. Dolly had her first child at age 27 and decided to raise her son as a single mom. She then gave birth to three more children with a close friend, over the next five years. But, as Dolly raised her children, she began to experiment with drugs. Her children then went to live with their paternal grandmother. Dolly says she met 47-year-old Harold Bonner in 2000. She denies knowing that Bonner was pimping women at the time but authorities contend she played a key role in his prostitution ring. Bonner often used Dolly to help him control the other women. One of the women who worked for Bonner as a prostitute was Mechelle Hicks. According to court testimony, on the evening of January 3, Mechelle Hicks was at Bonner’s house with three other prostitutes--and Dolly. On January 4, 2006, sometime in the early morning hours, Harold Bonner caught Mechelle Hicks trying to leave his home. Bonner dragged her back and punched her until she fell on the floor. Then he called Dolly and his prostitutes, Candy and Diamond, to help him beat and kick her. The girls allegedly tied her up as Mechelle was begging for her life, Bonner found some liquid heat and poured it, as well as other chemicals, down her throat. At some point, it was decided that because Mechelle would go to the police, she was suffocated to death. Her body was wrapped in blankets, and taken to another location until the next nightfall. Dolly claims, however, that she was at Bonner’s home that evening, but that Bonner drove her home just before 4 a.m. before Mechelle was tortured and suffocated. Dolly also claims that she heard the murder taking place from her home on the phone. That next night, around 2 a.m., Bonner and a male friend of Bonner’s picked up Dolly to help them dispose of the body. They drove to an abandoned lot. Bonner and the other man took out a trash bin containing Mechelle’s body and dumped Mechelle in the field, covering her body with cardboard. Dolly claims she didn’t see what they were dumping or even know the trash bin held a body. Bonner dropped Dolly back off at her home, but called her minutes later to return to the dumpsite and pick up the cardboard that had Bonner’s fingerprints on it. The body of Mechelle was found the next day on January 6, but the case remained unsolved for two months until investigators got a break. Police called Dolly in for questioning and eventually Dolly confessed. Dolly now claims that she made up the details of her confession, and that the confession was a way to get back at Bonner because he had asked her to prostitute for him. But detectives assert that Dolly’s statements were too detailed and concrete to be fiction. After her confession Dolly was arrested and held at the county jail. Enough evidence was found to arrest Harold Bonner as well. Prosecutors offered Dolly a plea deal in exchange for her testimony against Bonner, which she accepted. But the District Attorney’s office soon discovered that Dolly and Bonner were writing to each other in jail. Thus, Dolly lost her chance for a lesser prison term, and was sentenced to 15 years in prison for first-degree manslaughter. Bonner was convicted of two counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to 57 years to life in prison. Dolly still maintains she had nothing to do with the murder, and that her only crime was not calling the authorities when she should have.