Hylton was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison after she participated with six other people in the brutal kidnapping, torture, and murder of Long Island, New York, real estate broker Thomas Vigliarolo, 62-years-old, in 1985.
The New York Times, in 1985, reported that Hylton and six others had kidnapped Vigliarolo and held him for a $435,000 ransom for about two weeks before murdering him. His body was found locked inside a trunk in an apartment in Manhattan.
The Washington Post reported on the case in 2018, noting Hylton’s links to the Women’s March:
In 1985, a Long Island real estate broker, Thomas Vigliarolo, was brutally killed. Seven people were arrested on charges of kidnapping and second-degree murder. One was Donna Hylton, 20, who was sentenced to 25 years to life for her participation in the crime, during which the 62-year-old victim was starved, burned and beaten over the course of more than two weeks. His body was later put in a footlocker to decompose.
Many of the details of the case were revealed in a July 1995 report from Psychology Today. During the group’s torture of Vigliarolo, they squeezed his testicles with pliers, shoved a metal rod into his anus, and would beat him periodically.
Psychology Today reported:
Vigliarole believed the three girls were prostitutes who were going to have sex with him. Instead, they picked him up on March 8 in Elmhurst, Queens, at Maria’s home, and drugged him to make him drowsy. Then they drove him to Selma’s apartment in Harlem. The apartment had already been prepared for an extended torture session: The closet door had been cut, a pot put in it for use as a toilet, the windows boarded.
For the next 15 to 20 days (police aren’t sure just when Vigliarole died), the man was starved, burned, beaten, and tortured. (Even 10 years later, Spurling could recall Rita’s chilling response when they questioned her about shoving a three-foot metal bar up Vigliarole’s rear: “He was a homo anyway.” How did she know? “When I stuck the bar up his rectum he wiggled.”)
…
[New York City Detective William] Spurling himself interviewed Donna: “I couldn’t believe this girl who was so intelligent and nice-looking could be so unemotional about what she was telling me she and her friends had done. They’d squeezed the victim’s testicles with a pair of pliers, beat him, burned him.
