The Carlos Diaz Attempted Murder-Arson Case

     Carlos Diaz and Cathy Zappata were married in 2007. He worked at W. D. Auto Repair at Tenth Avenue and 207th Street in Harlem, New York. A year later the couple had a son. In 2010 Mr. Diaz lost his job at the body shop and shortly after that his marriage fell apart. He became homeless, moving from one parking lot to another where he slept in his van.

     Although estranged from his wife, Carlos Diaz refused to accept the fact they were finished as a couple. He resented it when she, to improve her looks, had cosmetic breast surgery and liposuction. She also made him jealous by going out with other men.

     On January 15, 2013 Diaz became enraged when he discovered that his estranged wife had sent a nude photograph of herself by cellphone to another man. The next morning, at eight o'clock, Carlos Diaz asked Cathy to meet him at a Pathmark parking lot on Ninth Avenue at 207th Street where he spent the night in his van. The lot was a block from the auto body shop where he had once worked.

     As Cathy sat behind the wheel of her car her estranged husband sprayed the 38-year-old's face, head and neck with lighter fluid then ignited the accelerant with a blowtorch. With her entire head engulfed in flames Cathy managed to exit the vehicle and extinguish the fire by rolling in a puddle of water. The victim was rushed to Harlem Hospital's burn unit with second-degree burns on her lips, eyelids, nose, cheeks and neck. Her hair had been burned off to the scalp. Doctors listed her condition as critical.

     After setting his estranged wife on fire Mr. Diaz, in possession of a can of gasoline, entered the W. D. Auto Repair garage. He found the owner, Helson Marachena, the man who had fired him, in his office. Diaz doused the room with the accelerant, but when he tried to set fire to the place his lighter wouldn't work. The malfunctioning lighter gave Mr. Marachena the opportunity to escape.

     Later in the day the 35-year-old arsonist turned himself in to the New York City police. When questioned by detectives he said, "I had to teach her a lesson. To give her a little pain. Now she can worry about our kid and get serious instead of focusing on going out with other men." In relating how he felt when he discovered the nude photograph on his wife's cellphone, Diaz said, "I couldn't think straight. I wanted to pass out. I had to do something. I had to be a man about it. She hurt my pride." Mr. Diaz described his perception of his marriage this way: "She was my right arm. I did everything for her. I forgot all about my own life. I just worked to support her and to pay the rent. And this is what she does."

     Charged with attempted murder, arson, assault and attempted assault, Diaz was held at the city jail on Riker's Island. A magistrate denied him bail.

     On December 15, 2015 a jury in New York City took just four hours to find Carlos Diaz guilty of attempted murder and the other charges. Three weeks later the judge sentenced Diaz to 35 years to life in prison.

     Jealous boyfriends, discarded husbands and rejected suitors can be dangerous. In the annals of crime men like Carlos Diaz have done terrible things with fire, including mass murder. It's extremely difficult for women to protect themselves from angry, sociopathic losers who can justify their acts of violence. 

The Anthony Baye Arson-Murder Confession

     Between December 27, 2009 and January 4, 2010 an arsonist in Northhamton, Massachusetts torched more than 40 homes. It was the biggest crime spree in the history of the town. One of the Ward 3 neighborhood fires took the lives of 81-year-old Paul Yeskie and his son Paul Jr. who was 39. Police officers patrolling Ward 3 during the early morning hours on four of the arson fire nights pulled over a vehicle driven by 26-year-old Anthony P. Baye. These investigative stops did not result in Mr. Baye's arrest.

     Anthony Baye was brought in for questioning on January 4, 2010 by Massachusetts State Police sergeant Paul Zipper and Trooper Michael Mazza. After he was warned of his Miranda rights to remain silent and his right to an attorney, the suspect asked to speak to a lawyer. The officers, instead of terminating the interrogation at that point informed Anthony Baye that he would be better off speaking to them first. They assured him that if he took responsibility for setting the fires the judge would go easy on him. Utilizing this confession inducing technique (developed by Fred Inbau in the 1930s) of minimizing the seriousness of the crime (referring to the arsons as "tomfoolery"), the troopers got Mr. Baye to admit setting 15 of the fires.

     While Anthony Baye didn't come out and admit setting the fire that killed Mr. Yeskie and his son, he did say he never meant to do them any harm. In soliciting the arson-murder confession one of the interrogators misrepresented the criminal law when he assured Baye that if he hadn't intended to kill the Yeskies he could not be charged with felony-murder. (This was not true. Under Massachusetts law, if Mr. Baye intended to set the fire which inadvertently led to their deaths he was guilty of criminal homicide under the felony-murder doctrine.)

     Following the ten hour videotaped interrogation the state troopers took Anthony Baye into custody. The local prosecutor charged him with two counts of first-degree murder and several counts of arson. Given the seriousness of the crimes Mr. Baye was not granted bail.

      Anthony Baye's attorneys, Thomas Lesser and David Hoose, on grounds the state interrogators had violated their client's Fifth and Six Amendment rights by not discontinuing the interrogation and providing him with an attorney when he requested one, filed a motion to suppress the confession.

     On September 21, 2011 Hampshire Superior Court Judge Constance B. Sweeney heard arguments on the defendant's motion to suppress. At the conclusion of the pre-trial hearing Judge Sweeney, while expressing reservations regarding the troopers' interrogation techniques, ruled Baye's confession voluntary and therefore admissible. The defense appealed Judge Sweeney's ruling to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court which agreed to rule on the admissibility of the confession before rather than after his trial.

     On May 21, 2012 the Massachusetts Supreme Court Justices ruled the Baye confession had not been given voluntarily and was therefore inadmissible as evidence against him. Although the justices didn't specifically rule on the issue of whether continuing the interrogation after Baye requested an attorney rendered it inadmissible, the constitutional law on this issue was settled. In the Baye case the state interrogators had clearly violated his Miranda rights. Under Miranda a confession can be inadmissible even though it was given voluntarily. Once a suspect exercises his Miranda rights the interrogation must stop. Anything said by the suspect after this point is not admissible evidence regardless of the fact no coercion was involved.

     One year after the state supreme court ruled Anthony Baye's confession inadmissible, the defendant, pursuant to a plea agreement, pleaded guilty to two counts of manslaughter. On May 15, 2013 the Hampshire Superior Court judge sentenced Anthony P. Baye to twenty years in prison followed by fifteen years of probation.

The Michael Marin Poison Pill Arson Case

     Former Wall Street trader Michael Marin lived alone in a $3.5 million 10,000 square-foot mansion in Biltmore Estates, a high-end neighborhood in Phoenix. The attorney and art collector who owned original Picasso sketches among other valuable paintings had scaled six of the world's seven tallest mountains. In May 2009 he reached the summit of Mt. Everest. The 51-year-old had four grown children.

     While Michael Marin had been able to climb Mt. Everest he had not been able to climb out of debt. Besides falling behind in his Biltmore Estates mortgage, Mr. Marin couldn't keep up the $2,500-a-month payments on a second home and owned $34,000 in back taxes. He had amassed numerous other debts as well.

    During the early morning hours of July 5, 2009 flames broke out in Marin's Biltmore Estates mansion. Wearing scuba gear to protect himself from the smoke and toxic gases, Marin escaped through a second-story window of the burning house by climbing down an emergency rope ladder.

     The fire insurance pay-out to a policy holder who was in deep financial trouble raised suspicion the blaze had been intentionally set and motivated by insurance fraud. Marin's convenient, well-prepared and bizarre escape from a dwelling engulfed in flames added to the suspicion he torched the dwelling. (There aren't too many inhabitants in houses consumed by flames who escape down a rope ladder in scuba gear.) This financially-strapped man was either very lucky, extremely prepared for a fast-developing fire or an arsonist.

     After fire scene investigators found several points of origin and traces of accelerants at these separate fire starts, arson investigators declared the fire incendiary. Since Michael Marin was the last person in the dwelling before the blaze and had a rather obvious motive for burning the place down, the Maricopa County prosecutor charged him with arson of an occupied structure, a felony that carried a 10 to 20 year sentence. When taken into custody in August 2009 the former high-roller and adventurer said he was "shocked" that anyone would accuse him of such a crime.

     On Thursday, June 28, 2012 a Maricopa County jury found the 53-year-old defendant guilty of arson. Just seconds after the verdict was read Michael Marin popped something into his mouth then took a swig from a sports bottle. His face turned red, he started to cough then convulsed and collapsed to the floor. Fire personnel who happened to be in the courtroom (it was an arson case) rushed him to a local hospital where he died a few hours later.

     The quickness of Marin's demise after putting something into his mouth led to speculation he took some kind of poison pill.

     On July 27, 2012 a spokesperson for the Maricopa County Medical Examiner's Office revealed that Mr. Marin had lethal traces of cyanide in his system. Investigators also found a suicide note Marin had written shortly before his death.

     In the annals of crime there is rarely anything new. It's all been done before. But Michael Marin's dispatching of himself with a poison pill like a captured cold war spy added a new line to the history of crime. 

Peter Keller: The Survivalist Who Didn't Survive

     On Sunday morning April 22, 2012, firefighters responded to a house fire in North Bend, Washington, a Cascade foothills town 30 miles east of Seattle. When they tried to enter the dwelling through the front door firefighters realized someone had blocked the entrance from the inside with a couch and an easy chair.

     Once the fire had been extinguished, firefighters discovered the bodies of 18-year-old Kaylene Keller and her mother Lynnettee who was 41. The victims were in their bedrooms, and both of them had been shot in the head at close range with .22-caliber bullets. Arson investigators found seven empty gasoline cans at the site. (The fire had been started by placing a skillet on the stove containing a plastic container of gasoline, then turning on the burner.)

     Peter A. Keller, the 41-year-old husband and father of the victims, was nowhere to be found. He and his wife had been married 21 years, and for the last seven years lived in the rented house in this unincorporated community. Mr. Keller's red Toyota pickup truck was missing, and a week earlier he had withdrawn $6,200 from a local bank. Friends of the family told the police that Mr. Keller, a reclusive man interested in guns, body armor and trains, was an avid outdoorsman who spent weekends hiking on the logging trails in the rugged Cascade Mountain foothills. Over the past eight years, Keller, fearing that the end of the world was near, had been building and stockpiling a wilderness fortress/hideout dug into the side of a hill. The cave-like structure he called Camp Keller featured three levels, a wood stove, a sophisticated ventilation system, a generator and several hidden entrances and exits. Although Keller had no history of violence, he owned several guns and a large supply of ammunition.

     On April 25, 2012, the King County prosecutor charged Peter Keller with two counts of first-degree murder and one count of arson.

     The police searching for Peter Keller caught a break on Friday, April 27 when a tipster gave them the location of his pickup truck abandoned on a Rattlesnake Ridge trailhead. From this location expert trackers picked up his trail of deep foot impressions made by someone carrying a heavy backpack. The boot marks led them to Keller's wilderness refuge.

     At five o'clock Saturday evening, April 28, 2012, a group of Seattle police officers and a 30-member SWAT team surrounded the bunker. They figured Peter Keller was inside because they could smell wood smoke coming from his stove. The fugitive didn't respond when ordered out of the structure. Rather than enter a possibly booby-trapped structure to encounter a heavily armed inhabitant, the police pumped teargas into the fort, then waited.

     Following a 23-hour standoff, the officers, equipped with explosive devices, blew the top off Keller's bunker and found him dead inside. He had shot himself in the mouth with a Glock pistol. Among the stockpiled provisions the police recovered 13 rifles and handguns.

     Keller's wife Lynnette, disabled several years ago from a workplace accident, had been receiving a monthly state disability check. Because her husband had been so controlling and tight with money, she often had to borrow money from relatives. 

A Bad Day For David Sturdivant

     David Sturdivant, a 64-year-old ex-Marine (Purple Heart/Vietnam) was doing okay in Atlanta, Georgia. He lived alone in a two-story house and worked in his own engine repair shop attached to his dwelling. Mr. Sturdivant had recently been the victim of neighborhood burglars who had broken into his shop and stole his HAM radio, various electronic items, a couple of riding mowers and his tools. Thieves had also stolen his two antique Thunderbirds.

     After awakening from a nap at one o'clock in the afternoon on April 8, 2011 Mr. Sturdivant looked out his second-story window and saw a pickup owned by Dennis Alexander. With its tailgate open, the vehicle was parked near a riding mower in Mr. Sturdivant's shop for repair. To Mr. Sturdivant it looked like Mr. Alexander, a man with a criminal history of burglary and theft, was about to steal the mower. David Sturdivant stepped out onto his balcony and yelled, "Get off my property and stop stealing my stuff!" When Denish Alexander mocked the property owner Mr. Sturdivant entered his house and returned with a commercial grade M-14 rifle. From the balcony he fired one bullet into the ground to frighten Mr. Alexander off the property.

      Atlanta police officers in the neighborhood working with a television crew filming a segment for the reality TV show "Bait Car" heard the shot. In less than two minutes they were on the scene shouting at Mr. Sturdivant to drop his rifle. Without taking the time to fully comprehend the situation, three officers fired fourteen shots at Mr. Sturdivant. One of the bullets tore into his stomach. Mr. Sturdivant had not shot at the officers and had not pointed his rifle at them.

     A week after the shooting Mr. Sturdivant was discharged from the hospital. He had lost a kidney and was missing several inches of his colon. Police officers immediately took him into custody and hauled him to the Fulton County Jail in his wheelchair. The district attorney charged David Sturdivant with four counts of aggravated assault for pointing his gun at the police officers. He also stood accused of aggravated assault for shooting at the suspected thief and for possession of a weapon in the commission of a crime. If convicted of all charges Mr. Sturdivant faced up to 105 years in prison.

     While Mr. Sturdivant recovered from his bullet wound in the jail's hospital, looters cleaned out his house and business then burned the dwelling and shop to the ground.

     At a preliminary hearing on October 27, 2011 the suspect turned down the district attorney's offer of a probated sentence in return for a misdemeanor plea. Claiming total innocence Mr. Sturdivant rejected the plea bargain.

     On November 11, 2011 a judge tossed out the prosecutor's case against Mr. Sturdivant. After serving seven months in the county jail Mr. Sturdivant was free. But he had nowhere to go except to the local VA hospital. Mr. Sturdivant lost his freedom, his house, his business, his household belongings, his antique cars, his tools, his kidney and a piece of his colon. He was the victim of criminals and the police.

Professor Rainer Reinscheid's Revenge

     Rainer Klaus Reinscheid was an Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. The 48-year-old lived in the Orange County city of 223,000, thirty miles southeast of Los Angeles with his second wife, two stepchildren and his 14-year-old son from his first marriage.

     In March 2012, Reinscheid's son, Klaus Stubbe, a student at Irvine's University High School, got in trouble for stealing something from the student store. As punishment the assistant principal assigned the boy trash pick-up duties during the school's lunch hour. Shortly after this mild disciplinary action a worker at the Mason Park Preserve adjoining the high school campus found the boy hanging from a tree in a wooded area of the park.

     Professor Reinscheid blamed his son's suicide on the assistant principal who disciplined the boy. On April 26, 2012 the distraught father, on his cellphone, emailed his wife details of his intention to take out revenge on his son's death. His plan, in general, included shooting 200 students at University High School, murdering the assistant principal and raping as many high school girls as he could. Once he had accomplished his mission he'd kill himself.

     In one of two emails to his wife that day, the revenge-minded professor wrote: "I need a gun, many guns and then I have the ride of my life. I will give myself a wonderful ending with Klaus very soon. I like this plan, finally a good idea." Two days later, in another email, Reinscheid said that while he was casing out the high school campus, he had fantasized about having sex with every girl he had seen.

     On July 4 and 19, 2012 a series of small fires broke out in Mason Park Preserve. Fire fighters also responded to a fire someone set outside the home of University High School's assistant principal. Following the two fires in the park the Irvine police beefed up patrols at the preserve. At 12:45 in the morning of July 24 police officers patrolling the park caught Professor Reinscheid igniting newspapers soaked in lighter fluid. He was starting the fire not far from where his son committed suicide. The officers arrested him on the spot. The next day, charged with arson, Professor Reinscheid posted his $50,000 bond and was released from custody.

     Police investigators, after linking Reinscheid to three incendiary fires at the high school and the one at the assistant principal's house charged him with four additional counts of arson and a count of attempted murder. By now detectives discovered the emails Reinscheid had sent to his wife detailing his intent to seek revenge for his son's suicide. Although the content of these emails--private musings rather than threats sent to targeted individuals--were not considered chargeable criminal offenses, police re-arrested the professor on the additional arson and attempted murder charges. (Whether or not the professor's very specific revenge emails is a crime poses an interesting legal question. Had the emails suggested a conspiracy and he acted upon that plan by buying a gun, it would have been an offense. Had there been an agreement with a fellow conspirator to carry out the crimes the fires would have been acts in furtherance of that conspiracy.)

     The Orange County prosecutor, using the revenge emails as evidence that Rainer Reinscheid was a danger to society asked that he be held in custody without bail. The judge granted the professor bond.

     On July 27, 2012 the Irvine police re-arrested Professor Reinscheid in his office at the University of California. When they took him into custody he was drafting a document on his computer giving his wife power of attorney over his finances. When searching his car officers found a red folder containing a newly drafted and signed last will and testament.

     Reinscheid pleaded guilty in July 2013 to six counts of arson, three counts of attempted arson and resisting or obstructing an officer. He faced a maximum sentence of 18 years behind bars.The Orange County prosecutor dropped the attempted murder charge. A month later, on the first day of his sentencing hearing, Reinscheid said, "I lost my son, and then I lost myself. Now, I am asking you, your honor, and many other people, to forgive me and show mercy." Reinscheid said he wanted to return to his native Germany where he could find work to support his family. The ex-professor acknowledged that his career in academia was over.

     School superintendent Tracy L. Walker in a statement read aloud at the hearing, wrote: "That tragedy [the boy's suicide] cannot serve as justification for terrorizing a school community and staff members who have dedicated their lives to helping others."

     On the second day of Reinscheid's sentence hearing the judge heard from the University High School assistant principal whose house Reinscheid tried to burn down. The school administrator said that his life will never be the same.

     In an effort to mitigate his client's criminal rampage, defense attorney Joshua Glotzer noted that his client had been "self-medicating" with drugs he ordered online. The professor had also been drinking a lot of wine. The drugs and the alcohol, according to the attorney, led to a "perfect storm" that provoked the arsons.

     On August 22, 2013 the judge sentenced the former professor to 14 years and 4 months in prison.

The Marcel Melanson Arson/Theft Case

     In 1998 22-year-old Marcel Melanson joined the fire department in Los Angeles County's Compton California. While the ambitious and popular firefighter succeeded at his job, he wasn't good at managing his financial affairs. In 2005 the state of California filed a $29,000 tax lien against him. Two years later the IRS hit him with a $80,240 tax lien.

     Melanson became a minor celebrity in 2009 as a regular participant in a BET Network reality TV series called "First In." A TV crew followed the fire battalion chief as he led a rescue team that came to the aid of victims of traffic accidents and street crime. About this time Inked Magazine featured Melanson's elaborate tattoos on his back, arms and neck.

     The crime-ridden city of Compton, like its celebrity firefighter, had run into financial problems. The municipality, due to a revenue shortfall and bloated budgets disbanded its police department. In June 2010 members of the Compton City Council in anticipation of bringing back the police force authorized the purchase of $1.7 million in communications equipment from the Motorola Corporation. Melanson, an emergency communications expert, sat on a three-person technology committee that oversaw the purchase of this equipment.

     By 2011 the city of Compton was on the verge of insolvency. As a result the police department was not coming back and the city was stuck with hundreds of radios that cost $2,500 a piece. The city stored the excess communications equipment at the Compton Fire Department.

     In December 2011 a fire broke out and quickly spread at the Compton Fire Department in the area housing the surplus radio equipment. Arson investigators determined that the fire had been intentionally set and that Marcel Melanson was the only person in the station at the time of the fire. Detectives with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Office discovered that prior to the blaze someone had stolen thousands of dollars worth of the radios. Further investigation revealed that over the past several months the thief had been selling the stolen property, one radio at a time, on Internet sites like eBay. Theft detectives by 2013 recovered fifty of the stolen communication units.

     In February 2013 Mr. Melanson, the prime suspect in the thefts and the arson, was fired. Deputies with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Office at eleven o'clock on the morning of May 15, 2013 arrested the 37-year-old at his home in Torrance California. Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Renee Rose charged the former celebrity firefighter with arson, grand theft and embezzlement. If found guilty as charged he faced up to ten years in prison. A judge set his bail at $350,000.

     Investigators believed that Melanson set the fire to cover his radio equipment thefts. The suspect's attorney, Robert Rico, publicly insisted that his client was innocent. According to the defense attorney a Long Beach Fire Department arson investigator initially reported that the Compton fire was not arson then later changed his mind.

     While a firefighter committing arson is not that unusual, firefighters rarely torch a fire station. Due to the celebrity element in this particular case Melanson's arrest attracted a lot of southern California media attention. People who knew him and worked with the former high-ranking firefighter had a hard time believing he was guilty as charged.

     In April 2014 Marcel Melason pleaded no contest to felony arson and embezzlement by a public official. In June the judge sentenced him to three years and four months in prison and ordered him to pay $517,477 in restitution. 

The Young Female Arsonist

     Arson-for-profit is generally an adult male crime while serial, pathological fire setting is often committed by teenage boys. The rare female arsonist is likely to be a 30 to 50-year-old woman who sets the fire in her dwelling to attract attention and sympathy. It's even rarer when a young girl intentionally sets a fire that causes extensive property damage. Because fires set by females are generally not motivated by financial gain, they are by definition pathological offenses. This doesn't necessarily mean that these fire setters are legally insane. In cases of  young female arsonists the perpetrators set the fires because they are angry with their parents, their teachers or the world in general. 

     On May 14, 2014 someone set a fire north of San Diego that raged for eight days and burned 2,000 acres and destroyed 40 buildings, including homes in the towns of San Marcos and Escondido, California. The so-called Cocos Wildfire threatened several schools including California State University in San Marcos.

     The Cocos Wildfire cost $28 million to extinguish and destroyed $30 million worth of property. According to cause and origin investigators the fire had been intentionally set.

     In July 2014 arson investigators identified an unnamed 13-year-old girl as the suspected Cocos fire starter. She resided near the point of origin with her parents who schooled her at home. She was also a top competitor in the San Diego area junior cycling program. 

     Rather than being placed into a juvenile detention facility the authorities released the suspected arsonist to the custody of her parents. Under the terms of this arrangement she was not allowed out of the house from six in the evening to six in the morning. The rest of the day she was accompanied by a parent when she left the house.

     Superior Court Judge Aaron Katz ordered that the young defendant undergo psychological evaluation to determine if she was mentally competent to stand trial on the charges of felony arson. On August 20, 2014, following a three-week evaluation process, Juvenile Court Judge Rod Shelton found the suspect mentally competent to stand trial. She had, according to the psychologists, the capacity to understand the nature of the charges against her as well as the ability to help her attorney plan a defense.

     At the suspect's arraignment on the felony arson charges she pleaded not guilty.

     In March 2015 the young fire setter was found guilty of several counts of arson. The judge sentenced the juvenile to 400 hours of community service.

The Charles Smith III and Tonya Bundick Serial Arson Case

     The incendiary fires started on November 12, 2012 in Hopeton, a town 100 miles east of Richmond on Virginia's Eastern Shore, a peninsula along the Chesapeake Bay. Over the next four months volunteer firefighters in the county responded to 77 intentionally set fires involving abandoned houses, barns, camper trailers and various out-buildings that included a chicken coop.

     Arson investigators with the Virginia State Police and the Accomack County Sheriff's Office suspected that the serial fire-setter was either a disgruntled firefighter, a teenage boy sexually aroused by flames or a young man committing arson simply for the thrill and excitement of causing havoc. Given the nature of the places burned financial gain was not a motive. These were pathologically motivated fires.

     Since the vast majority of arsonists are men, fire investigators were not looking for a woman. Female arsonists usually have histories of mental illness and set fire to their own property. A vast majority of the fires set by women are motivated by the need for sympathy and attention.

     On April 2, 2013, forty-five minutes after midnight, a Virginia State Trooper near the Eastern Shore community of Melfa pulled over a vehicle with an expired inspection sticker. (This was probably not the real reason for the stop.) The traffic stop occurred shortly after a nearby abandoned house had been torched. Later that morning a local prosecutor charged the occupants of the car, 38-year-old Charles Smith III and Tonya Bundick, his 40-year-old girlfriend, with setting the Melfa house fire.

     Smith (also known as Charlie Applegate) and Bundick were held without bail at the Accomack County Jail. They were both from Accomac, Virginia. Smith, the owner of a body shop was once captain of the Tasley Volunteer Fire Company. Smith and Bundick had planned to get married within a month.

     A Virginia State Police spokesperson at a press conference on April 2, 2013 said, "We are confident that Bundick and Smith are guilty of the majority of fires."According to reports, arson investigators had watched Smith set the Melfa house fire. He started the blaze with a towel soaked in gasoline.

     Tonya Bundick resided in a dwelling that sat next door to a shed that had been set on fire in December 2012.

     The authorities did not identify the motive behind the arson spree. Since the couple received no monetary gain from the fires their motives were probably pathological. Perhaps they were bored or simply angry at the world.

     In October 2013 Charles Smith III pleaded guilty to 67 counts of arson. He faced life in prison and $5.6 million in fines. As part of the plea deal Smith agreed to testify against Tonya Bundick.

     Bundick's arson trial got underway in Virginia Beach in January 2014. Smith took the stand against the defendant as the prosecution's star witness. Following his testimony Tonya Bundick entered an Alford plea to one count of arson. (She faced dozens of other arson charges.) By this plea Bundick did not admit guilt but acknowledged that the prosecution had enough evidence to convict.

     On September 15, 2014, the judge sentenced Tonya Bundick to ten years in prison. The judge, on April 23, 2015, sentenced Charles Smith III to fifteen years behind bars. Exactly why the arsonists set these fires remained a mystery.

The Serial Arsonist

     Robbers and thieves commit their crimes for financial gain. Arsonists, on the other hand, set fires for a variety of reasons. As a result, motive and criminal profiling is an important lead in an arson investigation. Regarding motive, unlawful fire setters generally fall into one of two categories: rational and irrational. The rational arsonists can be put into two groups: people who set fires for direct gain, and those who do it for indirect benefit or gain. Direct gain arsonists torch their homes, cars and businesses for the insurance money. The indirect gain fire is set, for example, as retaliation, revenge, competitor elimination or to cover-up another crime such as homicide. People who set fires for reasons that make sense are usually not repeat offenders. If they do repeat their crimes it's rarely more than twice.

     Arsonists who are irrationally or pathologically motivated are almost always young men. They are often powerless losers who are mad at the world. They set fires to get even with society, to experience feelings of power, to play the role of hero and in a small percentage of cases for sexual gratification. Many of them have had problems at school, with their parents and with the police. Some are mildly retarded, others have mental health problems. Older pathological fire setters often have drug and/or alcohol addictions. 

     Because the vast majority of serial arsonists are pathological fire setters who have no regard for human life, they are the most dangerous. Unlike rational fire setters they often hang around fire scenes soaking up the excitement they have created. When taken into custody they should be interrogated by arson investigators trained and experienced in questioning this type of suspect. For the pathological arsonist the bigger the fire the bigger the rush. Serial arsonists have been known to set several fires in one night.

The Laquanta Chapman Chainsaw Murder Case

     On the afternoon of October 30, 2008, Aaron Turner, a 16-year-old high school student in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, a Chester County town in the southeastern part of the state, walked home from a community service program for juvenile delinquents. He wore an electronic ankle monitor. Before he reached his parents' house Turner encountered 28-year-old Laquanta Chapman and another man. Chapman, who lived across the street from Turner, lured the boy into his house. 

      When Chapman, his cousin Bryan Boyd who was visiting him from Newark, New Jersey and Aaron Turner were in Chapman's basement, Chapman told his 19-year-old cousin to go upstairs and turn the music on as loud as possible. After he did this, Boyd returned to the basement where Chapman was screaming at the terrified teen. (Turner either owed Chapman drug money, or had stolen marijuana from him.) Chapman ordered Turner to undress. Once he was nude, Chapman, shot him. Aaron Turner died on the spot.

     When Aaron Turner didn't come home that day a member of his family called the Coatesville Police Department and reported him missing.

     Five days after the cold-blooded murder, with Aaron Turner still missing and his decomposing body still lying in Laquanta Chapman's basement, he decided it was time to dispose of the corpse that was starting to give off a telltale odor. With his cousin's help, Chapman laid Turner's body on a makeshift table. Bryan Boyd and Chapman used a pair of chainsaws to cut the body into pieces small enough to fit into trash bags. Chapman, in an effort to destroy DNA evidence left in the chainsaws, used the tools to chop up his pet pit bull. (Chapman, a man with a history of animal abuse, killed his dog for nothing because the evidence destruction ploy didn't work.) Chapman placed several trash bags containing Turner's body parts on the street for refuge pickup.

     More than a year had passed since the murder and the police still hadn't recovered Aaron Turner's body. (The teen's dismembered remains had been hauled by trash pickup workers to a local landfill. It was never recovered.) In the meantime Laquanta Chapman became a suspect in Turner's disappearance and presumed murder.

     On November 15, 2009, Coatesville police officers armed with a search warrant raided Chapman's house. Officers recovered the two chainsaws which contained DNA evidence that linked Chapman to Turner's murder and dismemberment. This provided the prosecutor, in the no body case, with circumstantial evidence of Aaron Turner's death. 

     Laquanta Chapman and Bryan Boyd were charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and abuse of corpse. The Chester County prosecutor also charged Chapman with a cruelty to animals offense. Under Pennsylvania law, because the prosecutor claimed that Chapman had an arrest record in New Jersey that included felony convictions, the defendant was eligible for the death penalty.

     On November 20, 2011, Bryan Boyd pleaded guilty to third-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and abuse of corpse. While Mr. Boyd avoided the death sentence, he was sentenced to 97 years in prison. As part of his plea deal he agreed to testify against his older cousin.

     Laquanta Chapman went on trial on October 24, 2012 in West Chester, Pennsylvania. On November 9, following the testimony of Bryan Boyd, the jury of seven men and five women found him guilty of first-degree murder. He was also convicted of the lesser offenses. The jurors deliberated less than three hours before delivering their verdict.

     A week after the guilty verdict the judge sentenced Laquanta Chapman to death. 

     In March 2016, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court reduced Laquanta Chapman's death sentence to life on grounds the prosecutor misidentified Chapman's previous New Jersey convictions as felonies. 

Spontaneous Human Combustion

     Soak a rag in linseed oil, ball it up and throw it into a bucket. This rag, as a result of a chemical reaction that creates heat, will eventually catch on fire and burn. Fire scientists call this reaction spontaneous combustion. Under the right conditions all kinds of material will self-combust. So, can the human body, under the right conditions, catch on fire from within? People who believe that a body can self-generate ignition temperature heat call this phenomenon human spontaneous combustion.

     For decades fire investigators around the world have been baffled by fire death scenes involving a badly burned corpse lying in bed or sitting in a stuffed chair. In these cases the middle section of the body has been almost completely consumed by fire suggesting high, localized temperatures. In the immediate vicinity of the body, and in the room, there is very little burning. This fire pattern seems out of joint with normal fire spreading behavior. To add to this cause of origin mystery, investigators at these sites--encountered mostly in Great Britain--find no traces of fire accelerants such as gasoline. Are these fires accidental, arson/murder or something else altogether?

     In December 2010 fire fighters in Ireland discovered a 76-year-old man dead in his sitting room. It looked as though someone had lit him up, but there seemed to be no source of heat other than the blaze in the fireplace. Except for some charring on the ceiling above his chair, the room did not burn. Although the man's body was almost completely consumed by the fire, investigators found no evidence that an accelerant had been used to jack-up the heat.

      The Irish coroner, having ruled out accident and arson as the manner of death, declared the cause as spontaneous human combustion.

     In the 1980s the American fire scientist, Dr. John de Haan, conducted an experiment in which he set fire to a pig wrapped in cloth. The low-heat, long-burning fire almost completely consumed the hog without creating high ambient temperatures. Dr. de Haan called this the "wick effect." The cloth held the flame like a wick while vapors from the pig's heated fat slowly burned like candle wax.

     As it turns out, most so-called spontaneous human combustion fire scenes have involved people who had been drinking in bed or in their chairs while smoking. They fall asleep and their clothing catches on fire. In the Irish case a spark from the fireplace had probably ignited the man's clothing.

The Baby Rahul Case

     In May 2012, Rajeshawri Kamen, a 23-year-old farm worker, gave birth to a son named Rahul. The mother and her 26-year-old husband Karnan Perumal already had a 2-year-old girl. The couple resided in a village in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

     The baby was a month old when his parents rushed him to the hospital. According to their account of what happened they were outside of their hut when they heard Rahul scream. They ran to him and found the baby on fire. They saw flames on his belly and right knee. The father put out the fire with a towel.

     After being treated at the local hospital and released, Baby Rahul, during the next two months, caught on fire at least three more times. The child was badly burned but survived. The couple's neighbors, believing that the baby was haunted by an evil spirit that caused the combustion, and that the fire could spread to their huts, forced Rajeshwari and her husband to move to a nearby village where Rahul caught on fire again.

     Dr. Naarayan Babu, the head of pediatrics at the Kilpaul Medical Hospital in the city of Chennai told a reporter with The New York Times that "We are in a dilemma and haven't come to any conclusion [regarding the cause of the fires]. The parents have said that the child burned instantaneously without any provocation. We are carrying out numerous tests. We are not saying it was spontaneous human combustion until all investigations are complete."

     On August 20, 2013 the Times of India reported that upon completion of the hospital tests doctors found no evidence of spontaneous human combustion in Baby Rahul's case. Dr. Jagan Mohan, head of the burn unit at the Kilpauk Hospital, told reporters that "There is no such thing as spontaneous human combustion. The possibility of child abuse exists and needs to be explored."

     Baby Rahul's parents denied setting fire to their baby. The boy's father, in speaking to a reporter with The New York Times, said, "Some people don't believe us, and I am scared to return to my village and am hoping for some government protection. There is also the fear that our child could burn once again."

     On April 15, 2015, Baby Rahul was discharged from the hospital and sent home to his parents. Police and child welfare authorities were told to monitor the child's health. After that, this mysterious case dropped out of the news.

     Since Baby Rahul was not the victim of spontaneous human combustion, he was either burned accidentally or on purpose. It's hard to image how a baby could be accidentally burned on four or more occasions. Moreover, if there was something in the home that caused the fires why wasn't the baby's sister also burned?

     Notwithstanding forensic evidence to the contrary there are those who believe spontaneous human combustion is real. This is not surprising since strong opinions are not always based on what people know but what they want to believe.

Crematorium Fires

     Crematoriums are all about fire, that's where they incinerate bodies. So, a fire at a crematorium is nothing unusual. However, if an overweight corpse burns too hot the excessive lava-like body fat can leak out of the incinerator and take the fire to places it doesn't belong. That's when the fire department, as strange as it sounds, is called out to extinguish a crematorium fire.

Henrico County, Virginia

     In October 2014 a 500-pound corpse was being burned at Southside Cremation Services not far from Richmond. The body was not burned slow enough (it should take five hours to incinerate a 300-pound corpse) and the body fat melted too quickly and leaked out of the fire chamber. By the time firefighters arrived the building's roof was engulfed in flames.

Cincinnati, Ohio

     In April 2017 a fire broke out at the Hillside Chapel Crematory when an obese corpse's body fat leaked out of the chamber onto the floor. The body fat, acting like a combustion accelerant, seeped into the flooring and started a hot-burning fire that had to be put out by the fire department.

Nitro, West Virginia

     On October 25, 2019, at ten-forty-five in the morning, a fire broke out at the Cooke Funeral Home just outside of Charleston. The cause: the super-heated body fat from an overweight corpse. Employees called 911 and kept the fire from spreading to the rest of the building by using a pair of  fire extinguishers.

Detecting Arson Accelerants

Arsonists hardly ever simply strike a match to light a fire, using any combustible material at hand such as a piece of paper or a curtain. Such a course of action is too uncertain, since a fire lit in this way may burn itself out very quickly. Usually, an accelerant is used. A flammable liquid such as kerosene [or gasoline] is poured over a wide area of carpets and furnishings, before the match is applied. This ensures that a hot fire will follow and that the building be ablaze long before any firefighters arrive. However, what most arsonists do not know is that traces of such accelerants can be detected, even after the fire has destroyed the building. Small amounts of accelerant will seep into carpets, floorboards, plaster, brickwork and other materials and will not be consumed by the fire. The cooling effect of the water used to quench [extinguish] the fire will slow down the rate of evaporation of the accelerant and enough will usually remain to be detected.

Dr. Zakaria Erzinclioglu, Forensics, 2012 

The Darrin Campbell Triple-Murder-Suicide

     In the mid-1980s, Darrin Campbell, a business major at the University of Michigan, met his future wife Kimberly, a student at Central Michigan University. They both worked in Lansing as aides in the Michigan state legislature. She graduated from college, and he went on to earn a master's degree in business administration.

     In 2004, the couple and their son Colin and daughter Megan moved from San Antonio, Texas to Tampa, Florida where Darrin had an executive position in finance with a large corporation. In 2012, Darrin and Kimberly sold their house for $750,000. They moved into a $1 million rental mansion owned by a former professional tennis player named James Blake.

     The Blake-owned estate featured a 6,000-square foot, five-bedroom house, a swimming pool and spa, and several tall palm trees. Located in Avila, a gated community known for its resident sports figures and CEO's, the mansion rented for $5,000 a month. At this point in his career, Darrin Campbell worked as a business executive for VASTEC, a Tampa based digital records company.

     Darrin and his family settled into the lavish lifestyle expected of residents of this exclusive community. They drove fancy cars, the children attended an expensive private school, they bought all-year passes to Disney World, and spent a lot of money decorating their home for Christmas.

     While on the surface, the Campbell family represented prosperity and the American dream come true, Darrin had plunged them deep into debt. He owed back taxes on a vacant lot in Odessa, Texas that he had purchased for $294,000 in 2006. The tuition cost of sending Colin and Megan to the Carrollwood Day School amounted to $37,000 a year. Darrin had maximized his credit card limits, and couldn't see a way out of the financial hole. The stress of living a lie broke him down. His American dream had become a nightmare.

     In July 2013, Darrin purchased a .40-caliber Sig Sauer handgun from Shooters World, a gun store and shooting range in Tampa. Less than a year later, on May 4, 2014, he purchased $650 worth of fireworks at a Tampa area Phantom Fireworks outlet. He told the fireworks clerk he was filling out his Fourth of July shopping list. Shortly after picking up the fireworks, Darrin bought several gasoline containers.

     At five-forty-five on the morning of Wednesday, May 7, 2014, a resident of the Avila community called 911 to report a fire and explosion at the Campbell home. The fire and subsequent explosion almost completely demolished the structure. In the course of determining the cause and origin of the blaze, investigators discovered the charred remains of two adults and two children. The bodies were presumed to be Darrin and Kimberly Campbell and their 18-year-old son Colin, and their 15-year-old daughter, Megan.

     The Hillsborough County medical examiner, a few days after the fire, confirmed the identifies of the victims. According to the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsies, all of the victims had been shot to death.

     On Friday, May 9, 2014, Hillsborough County Sheriff's Colonel Donna Lusczynski held a press conference in which she characterized the four Campbell deaths as a case of murder-suicide. According to officer Lusczynski, Darrin Campbell, after murdering his wife and two children with the Sig Sauer handgun, had placed fireworks around the house, poured gasoline on the bodies, then lit a match. At that point he shot himself to death. 

Vehicle Arson

     Automobiles seem to be very combustible…they contain flammable liquids, have many electrical circuits, and their interiors are made of combustible material. Combine that with a careless smoker and you have a vehicle fire, or so you would think. But actually, with new technology, most interiors are fire resistant--a cigarette will seldom ignite a seat cover or a floor mat, the fuel systems are designed with safety in mind, and the electrical circuits are shut off by fuses and other interrupt devices.

     Accidental vehicle fires do occur, but the fire generally remains in one compartment, i.e. engine, trunk, glove compartment or interior.

     There are two types of vehicle arsonist: amateur and professional. An amateur is usually behind on his car payments and desperate to rid himself of the car. He knows that the vehicle must be declared totaled by his insurance company, so he will go for mass destruction. The professional criminal uses vehicle arson to conceal other crimes: stolen cars used during the commission of a crime, or a homicide, for example.

     In general, after driving a car to a remote location, the arsonist will completely dowse the interior and exterior of the vehicle with a combustible material such as gasoline and set the fire. A one-to five-gallon gas can is generally found at the scene. Using five gallons is quite dangerous, and the arsonist may end up like the car if the flammable vapors have saturated the area.

     The arsonist might make what are known as trailers by pouring a stream of gasoline from the vehicle to a location he feels is far enough away from the vehicle to ignite it safely. These types of fires are easily tagged as arson because of the evidence left behind.

Mauro V. Corvasce and Joseph R. Paglino, Modus Operandi, 1995 

Potato Chips As a Fire Accelerant

Crime laboratories do not always detect accelerants used in an incendiary fire. Accelerant-sniffing dogs, whose sniffers are more sensitive than even the most sophisticated laboratory equipment, don't always, either. If it is believed that an accelerant was used in the fire, it might be that the accelerant itself is undetectable. One such accelerant could be a bag of potato chips. It is possible to set a bag of chips on fire and throw it on a couch, creating an accelerant-like effect. The fat in the chips make them extremely volatile when ignited (think of a kitchen grease fire). An accelerant-sniffing dog won't even detect the chips, and the labs won't be testing for them, either. The crime scene investigator should always question finding a couch with too many crumbs in the cushions.

Jarrett Hallcox and Amy Welch, Bodies We've Buried, 2006

Arson Motives

   The identification of the fire setter's motive can help establish if the fire was a single event of fire setting or a series of fire setting behavior. Repetitive fire setting is broken down into three classifications: serial arson, spree arson and mass arson. Serial arson is as many as three fires set at different locations with a cooling off period in between. Spree arson is as many as three fires at different location with no cooling off period between fire sets. Mass arson is many fires set at the same time at the same location.

     There are six motive classifications for arson:

l. Vandalism [includes many school fires]
2. Excitement [which includes sexual gratification]
3. Revenge [also referred to as anger fires]
4. Crime concealment [murder, embezzlement]
5. Profit [usually insurance fraud]
6. Extremism [environmental extremists who set fire to saw mills]

Robert Disbrow Jr., Firehouse Magazine, December 13, 2010 

California Burning

As of late August 2020, 7,000 wildfires have burned trees, brush, and structures over an area of 1.5 million California acres. By this time in 2019, 4,292 wildfires burned 56,000 acres across the state. These fires are caused by camp fires, tossed cigarette butts, sparks from trains, lightening, and arsonists. California is on fire.

Arson Amid the Historic Australian Brushfire Catastrophe

   
     Since September 2019, hundreds of out-of-control brushfires have burned millions of acres in Australia. The fires have killed 25 people, millions of wild animals and livestock, and have destroyed more than 2,000 homes.

     In January 2020, prosecutors in the state of New South Wales charged 24 people with deliberately setting bushfires amid the historic fire catastrophe. Most of those charged were juveniles. Hundreds of others have been charged with violating the country's fire burning ban.