Speaker 1: On January seventeenth, nineteen ninety three, a fire ripped through
Speaker 1: two adjacent apartment buildings in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Many onlookers, including
Speaker 1: a man named Dan Carnivali, witnessed the mayhem that took
Speaker 1: three lives. Soon information was released to the media that
Speaker 1: two blank checks and a set of keys had been
Speaker 1: taken from the apartment building. Dan Carnivali's roommates once found
Speaker 1: a number of old checks from that apartment complex under
Speaker 1: his bet, so they reported him to the police. After
Speaker 1: Dan convinced police that he had come upon the blaze
Speaker 1: after the fact, he was released and he moved to California.
Speaker 1: The case went cold for nearly fourteen years until an
Speaker 1: eyewitness came forward with a different account of Dan's whereabouts
Speaker 1: that night. Dan was dragged back to Pennsylvania, where he
Speaker 1: allegedly confessed to a fellow inmate while awaiting trial, saying
Speaker 1: that he was in fact the culprit all those many
Speaker 1: years ago. But this is wrongful conviction. Wrongful conviction has
Speaker 1: always given voice to innocent people in prison. Now we're
Speaker 1: expanding that voice to you. Call us at eight three
Speaker 1: three two O seven four six sixty six and leave
Speaker 1: us a message, tell us how these powerful, often tragic
Speaker 1: stories make you feel outraged, inspired, motivated. We want to know.
Speaker 1: We may even include your story in a future episode.
Speaker 1: Call us A three three two O seven four six
Speaker 1: sixty six. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction, where we've got
Speaker 1: an alleged arson case out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, again involving
Speaker 1: ATF agents William Patritis and Jason Wick, as well as
Speaker 1: ATF chemist William Kinnard. And you may remember one or
Speaker 1: all of them from the cases of Greg Brown and
Speaker 1: Christine Bunch, and of course we'll have both of those
Speaker 1: stories linked in the episode description. But now we're going
Speaker 1: to hear from another one of their victims, Dan Carnivale. Dan,
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry for the reason you're here and for
Speaker 1: what you went through, but we're so happy and honored
Speaker 1: to have you here today. Thank you and joining him.
Speaker 1: You may recognize her from our coverage of Greg Brown's case.
Speaker 1: She's the managing attorney of the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, Liz Deloso.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Glad to have you, and last but not least, Dan
Speaker 1: civil attorney Alec Right, Alec, Welcome, to wrongful conviction.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Now, Alec. My understanding is that you're also from Pittsburgh.
Speaker 1: But this fire happened way back in ninety three when
Speaker 1: you were still just a kid, while Dan at the
Speaker 1: time was already twenty nine. But crazily he didn't get
Speaker 1: prosecuted until weeen years after that. But before we unpack
Speaker 1: all of that, Dan, I want to hear more about
Speaker 1: what it was like growing up in Pittsburgh and being
Speaker 1: a teenager in the Steel City at that time. You
Speaker 1: were raised in Polish Hill, right.
Speaker 4: Yes, I grew up on Polish Show in Pittsburgh. I
Speaker 4: mean I did everything every other teenager did, drank Bear
Speaker 4: in the Woods.
Speaker 1: Well, if I grew up there, I pretty much can
Speaker 1: guarantee I would have been right next to you.
Speaker 4: That makes all of us separality.
Speaker 5: My house, Dan, just so you know, had the woods
Speaker 5: behind it where we stashed the beer Steel City reserved. Dan,
Speaker 5: Was that a beer that you guys had at Polish Hill?
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I derailed the night train a few times too.
Speaker 1: During his twenties, Dan moved across Pittsburgh to the tightly
Speaker 1: knit Italian neighborhood of Bloomfield, where he was familiar with
Speaker 1: the buildings in which the nineteen ninety three fire occurred.
Speaker 4: I made some mistakes growing up, and I had some
Speaker 4: hard times in my twenties. I was a male thief.
Speaker 4: That was what linked me to the building, because I
Speaker 4: was still in their mail from their mailboxes. I would
Speaker 4: get the checks from the building and take them to
Speaker 4: poll the show and have somebody cash them for me.
Speaker 4: I mean, I drank out every night practically. I just
Speaker 4: I like to buy drinks and make myself look like
Speaker 4: I had money, And that night was no exception. I
Speaker 4: just went to the Luna that of karaoke to have
Speaker 4: a DJ whatever, and I'd hang out there until they closed,
Speaker 4: and then I'd walk back to Bloomfield, where I lived.
Speaker 4: Most of that night I don't remember, but I do
Speaker 4: remember being at the sandwich shop and I was with
Speaker 4: other people watching the fire. There was just a load
Speaker 4: of people there and people hanging out the windows, people
Speaker 4: screaming and yelling. Just that's I remember that.
Speaker 1: During the early morning hours of January seventeenth, nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: while Dan was closing down the Lunar Bar and headed
Speaker 1: to a local sandwich shop, a fire began at the
Speaker 1: nearby Columbia Apartment Building and spread next door to an
Speaker 1: apartment building called the Regal.
Speaker 2: Emergency calls started to come in around four am. By
Speaker 2: five thirty, it's a six alarm fire. The fire has
Speaker 2: moved from where it began in the basement all the
Speaker 2: way to the roof, and the northwest corner of the
Speaker 2: Columbia Apartment building collapses. Three apartment residents are killed. One
Speaker 2: visitor is very severely injured.
Speaker 1: That was twenty year old Linda McCutcheon who was staying
Speaker 1: with her friend. Twenty two year old Christopher Stallman who
Speaker 1: leaped to his death to escape the flames. Sixty three
Speaker 1: year old Lawrence Lychkoe and thirty one year old Anita
Speaker 1: Emery died from smoke in elation. Thankfully, twenty nine other
Speaker 1: residents managed to survive, and they all reported the same thing.
Speaker 2: In the weeks prior to the fire. Witnesses would later
Speaker 2: tell investigators that they had like buzzing and clicking and
Speaker 2: banging within their radiators, that some apartments were really hot
Speaker 2: and some apartments were not receiving heat at all, and
Speaker 2: then justin the hours prior to like these nine to
Speaker 2: one one calls coming in we have a hissing, a buzzing,
Speaker 2: and banging within the radiators. You know, later in litigation,
Speaker 2: as we are investigating Dan's case, or expert Douglas Carpenter,
Speaker 2: one of the things that really stood out to Doug
Speaker 2: was the fact that a manual boiler, so a boiler
Speaker 2: that really required someone to keep up with it and
Speaker 2: to manually feed the water into that boiler to make
Speaker 2: sure that it wasn't overheating. That boiler would have had
Speaker 2: all of these signs or symptoms if it was malfunctioning
Speaker 2: in the days and weeks prior to the fire. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: these apartment residents were not interviewed until days and weeks
Speaker 2: after the arson determination.
Speaker 1: Before speaking with these folks, the Pittsburgh Arson Squad had
Speaker 1: called in the ATF to assist with the investigation.
Speaker 2: These are two ATF agents that investigated the Greg Brown case,
Speaker 2: William Patritis and Jason Wick, and they're doing the same
Speaker 2: thing right. They're making this arson determination very quickly after
Speaker 2: the fire has been suppressed on visual inspection alone, without
Speaker 2: the use of any other experts, without ruling out any
Speaker 2: additional accidental causes, without all of the chemical analysis having
Speaker 2: been even sent to the ACF laboratory without witness interviews
Speaker 2: being completed, and they're not using the NFPA nine twenty one,
Speaker 2: which at that point in nineteen ninety three was in
Speaker 2: its first publication.
Speaker 1: The NFPA nine twenty one is the National Fire Protection
Speaker 1: Association's investigation guide that signaled a paradigm shift towards the
Speaker 1: scientific method and away from the myths and folklore nonsense
Speaker 1: that have been handed down by arson investigation predecessors visual
Speaker 1: cues that were believed to indicate that a fire had
Speaker 1: been intentionally set with accelerants. Modern science has proved that
Speaker 1: none of that stuff is true, but it was relied on,
Speaker 1: and sadly in some places it still relied on for
Speaker 1: generations and generations and generations. We'll have our coverage of
Speaker 1: arson investigation on wrongful conviction junk science linked in the
Speaker 1: episode description as well. But anyway, these ATF agents totally
Speaker 1: ignored this paradigm shift from myth to science and instead
Speaker 1: search for support for that determination that they had already made,
Speaker 1: and they interviewed some of the people who worked at
Speaker 1: these buildings.
Speaker 2: So the Regal Apartment building and the Columbia Apartment Building
Speaker 2: are connected in the basement via several locked doors. In
Speaker 2: the Regal apartment building, there was a can of laquer
Speaker 2: thinner near kind of like the back end of the basement.
Speaker 2: One of the maintenance men tells investigators, I can't find
Speaker 2: that can. It may have been moved. Later, they find
Speaker 2: a can of lacquer thinner in the maintenance room of
Speaker 2: the Columbia Apartment building, and that starts to turn the
Speaker 2: wheels for investigators that that must have been the can
Speaker 2: of lacker thinner that was originally stored in the Regal
Speaker 2: Apartment building. Although there are lots and lots of chemicals
Speaker 2: in this maintenance room, there is a insecticide, there's gasoline,
Speaker 2: there's a charcoal grill, there's lacquer thinner, there's no reason
Speaker 2: to believe that like this can of lacker thinner was
Speaker 2: intentionally moved by a perpetrator. It simply could have been
Speaker 2: moved by one of the maintenance men, of which there
Speaker 2: were several, or just a different can of laquer thinner.
Speaker 2: But that piques the investigator's interests.
Speaker 1: Then Patritis and Wick sent fifteen samples from the building
Speaker 1: to their boy in the ATF Lab William Canard.
Speaker 2: William Canard has a conversation with William Patritis prior to
Speaker 2: finalizing his report, and he says that in samples three, nine, ten,
Speaker 2: and six, there are elements that lead into believe that
Speaker 2: there was a presence of Lacquer Center, which was used
Speaker 2: as an accelerant to start this fire.
Speaker 1: And now what they needed was the right suspect. At
Speaker 1: this point, they had heard from a guy named Chris
Speaker 1: palm Mary who found two sets of keys and blank
Speaker 1: checks from the Columbia in front of one of the
Speaker 1: building owners's homes, and this information was leaked to the
Speaker 1: local media, which piqued the interest of Dan's roommates Keith
Speaker 1: Playtech and Tammy Mancini.
Speaker 5: The only thing that attached him to the Columbia apartment
Speaker 5: buildings at the time was Tammy Mancini and Keith Playtech saying,
Speaker 5: you know that they found these checks.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they found checks under the mattress of the bed
Speaker 4: I slept in, but they were old. They just happened
Speaker 4: to have that address on them.
Speaker 5: So when Dan was interviewed about that, you know, he
Speaker 5: readily admitted, yes, this was my cash cow. I stole
Speaker 5: checks from this place. So the police say, he needs
Speaker 5: your jacket for testing. He says, take my jacket for testing.
Speaker 5: They says, sit down for a polygraph test.
Speaker 3: He sits down for a polygraph test.
Speaker 4: Oh, add they lost the coat and they losched a
Speaker 4: polygraph test.
Speaker 1: Both items cleared Dan, but if they hadn't, surely they
Speaker 1: would have been saved. Additionally, Dan had his alibi and
Speaker 1: no way of having been able to get into these buildings.
Speaker 5: Every exterior door to this building was locked. The maintenance
Speaker 5: room where they say the fire started was locked. The
Speaker 5: office where two blank checks and keys that are later
Speaker 5: found on the owner of the building's doorstep after this
Speaker 5: fire was locked. The room in the regal building where
Speaker 5: Liz was describing, you name your accelerant, that's in this.
Speaker 3: Room, okay. Locked.
Speaker 5: The access to the regal building is an l two
Speaker 5: by four over the door. Can't get into it. Everywhere
Speaker 5: down of this basement locked, and everybody tells them this.
Speaker 5: August Paluso, the owner of the building, Orlando Syrium Belly,
Speaker 5: who is the person who actually goes in and locks
Speaker 5: the doors that night, and Ronald t who is one
Speaker 5: of the maintenance people at the time, all say everything's locked.
Speaker 5: Dan has only ever taken checks from an outdoor courtyard.
Speaker 1: So if this had been arson, the assailant either had
Speaker 1: to have had keys or have broken in somehow. So
Speaker 1: the when this interviews continued and one building resident, Paul Parter,
Speaker 1: said that he had heard a party going on that night,
Speaker 1: which corroborated a statement from a guy named Sean Maxwell.
Speaker 5: On January eighteenth of nineteen ninety three, the day after
Speaker 5: this fire, Sean Maxwell comes forward and says, the guy
Speaker 5: named Larry Steele shows up to my house a few
Speaker 5: hours after this fire. He's covered in soot, talking about
Speaker 5: how he broke into this Columbia apartment building with some friends.
Speaker 5: They were drinking, and he says, we burned down the
Speaker 5: building by accident. If you tell anybody about it, I
Speaker 5: will kill you and I will kill your grandmother. Sean
Speaker 5: Maxwell tells police investigators, I know who did it, and
Speaker 5: I know the name of the guy that he was with.
Speaker 5: His name was Rob Zacharias. While this is going on,
Speaker 5: a couple other witnesses in the neighborhood, and you have
Speaker 5: to understand Pittsburgh to really grasp this. Bloomfield is an
Speaker 5: old Italian town in Pittsburgh, and everybody knows everybody in
Speaker 5: the neighborhood, and one of the things that these individual
Speaker 5: residents are talking about is that there is an individual
Speaker 5: with long sandy blondehair's shoulder length in an army field
Speaker 5: jacket that we don't know who's watching this fire. They
Speaker 5: actually create a composite sketch, and this individual matches one
Speaker 5: of two people, First Rob Zacharias, who was the same
Speaker 5: individual that Larry Steele said earlier he was with that night. Second,
Speaker 5: a former maintenance man by the name of Glenn Spoon,
Speaker 5: who is fired from the property a year ago, but
Speaker 5: Paul Potter says, is spotted a day or two before
Speaker 5: this fire, and one of the only individuals other than
Speaker 5: the owner of the building who have keys to those
Speaker 5: locked rooms. He matches the description of the composite sketch.
Speaker 1: Two more individuals were identified who also matched this description. However,
Speaker 1: who even knows if this stranger had anything to do
Speaker 1: with the fire or if Larry Steele had ever even
Speaker 1: made this confession about him or about Rob Zacharias. Considering
Speaker 1: that this fire in all likelihood was a tragic accident,
Speaker 1: the presence of this alleged suspect with sandy blonde hair
Speaker 1: and an army field jacket had both dubious value and
Speaker 1: was also definitely not Dan. The description set five to
Speaker 1: ten and Dan is six ' four, so that's not
Speaker 1: even close. And it appears that yet another witness named
Speaker 1: Shane Evans, confirmed that.
Speaker 5: Shane Evans grew up with Dan CARNIVALI would know him
Speaker 5: from one hundred yards away, would know him from one
Speaker 5: hundred inches away. Shane Evans is watching the fire happen
Speaker 5: on January seventeenth, nineteen ninety three, four am, four fifteen,
Speaker 5: around five am, he leaves the fire. He finds a
Speaker 5: fire personnel and he says to them, I was walking
Speaker 5: by the Columbia about five minutes before the fire broke out.
Speaker 5: I heard a door close of the Columbia apartment building.
Speaker 5: I turned around in a very well lit area, could
Speaker 5: not see his face. The person was unknown to me,
Speaker 5: but had sandy long blonde hair shoulder length.
Speaker 3: And an army field jacket.
Speaker 5: And fire personnel say go tell police investigators.
Speaker 1: So Shane Evans did exactly that. He told three investigators
Speaker 1: what he had seen.
Speaker 4: Wait do you hear what he said? Thirteen years later?
Speaker 1: You're listening to wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this
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Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts. After Dan cooperated to the fullest with
Speaker 1: law enforcement, his jacket tested negative for accelerant. He passed
Speaker 1: a polygraph, which has limited value, but still he was
Speaker 1: released and he grew a bit cold on Pittsburgh.
Speaker 4: Pittsburgh was bad for me. All my friends were dying
Speaker 4: of overdoses. Everybody was dying of China White and Iroin
Speaker 4: and in this and that. I just I had to
Speaker 4: get away. I couldn't take it any where. The police
Speaker 4: were at my parents' house every other day about something stupid.
Speaker 4: Most of it I knew nothing about. About a month
Speaker 4: or or so after that, I moved to California. I
Speaker 4: have a friend who lives out there in Humble County.
Speaker 4: I called the police from California and told him I
Speaker 4: was there. That you know, if you need me for
Speaker 4: any further questioning, this is where I'm at. It wasn't
Speaker 4: like I was living in the mountain siding from anybody.
Speaker 4: I just wanted to start over, so I left.
Speaker 1: The case went cold for nearly fourteen years, and during
Speaker 1: that time Dan had built himself a happy, comfortable life.
Speaker 4: I had a family. I had a wife, I had
Speaker 4: step kids, I had a house. I had a good job.
Speaker 4: I was working in a lumber mill eighty eighty five
Speaker 4: thousand a year. I finally was doing good in my life, finally,
Speaker 4: and then everything went down hill.
Speaker 1: In early two thousand and six, Pittsburgh Police cold case
Speaker 1: detective Scott Evans and Jr. Smith inexplicably reopened. In nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety three Columbia fire investigation.
Speaker 5: They do a huge press release where Scott Evans and Jr.
Speaker 5: Smith release all of the information that we've talked about
Speaker 5: so far out to the news. Then they put a
Speaker 5: ten thousand dollars reward in the paper for anybody for information,
Speaker 5: and thirteen years later on a ten thousand dollars reward.
Speaker 5: In this press release, they talked to Shane Evans, who says, now,
Speaker 5: in this well lit area, I saw six foot four
Speaker 5: Dan CARNIVALI face to face leaving that Columbia apartment building.
Speaker 5: They asked Shane Evans in nineteen ninety three, did you
Speaker 5: know who Dan CARNIVALI was? And Shane Evans, of course says,
Speaker 5: I grew up with him my whole life. One hundred
Speaker 5: percent it was him, and I was watching the fire
Speaker 5: later and he came up to me unsolicited, unprovoked and
Speaker 5: screamed out loud. I was at the sandwich shop. And
Speaker 5: when he testifies at trial, he says those same things,
Speaker 5: except he also says, and by the way, Dan Carnivali
Speaker 5: was covered with soot. Now, let's remember some of the
Speaker 5: things that we've talked about so far. Dan Carnivali had
Speaker 5: told everybody his alibi that he was at the sandwich
Speaker 5: shop after being at the lunar bar. We also know
Speaker 5: from the criminal investigation file that Larry Steele, in his
Speaker 5: confession was covered in soot. Shane Evans is receiving information
Speaker 5: somewhere from someone to add those two pieces of information
Speaker 5: into this situation. When he told everybody in nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 5: when the fire was still going, that he did not
Speaker 5: recognize the person.
Speaker 4: All of a sudden, in two thousand and six, it
Speaker 4: was me. He saw me.
Speaker 1: Ten grand can be pretty persuasive. And meanwhile, the state
Speaker 1: disposed of those original statements from nineteen ninety three in
Speaker 1: which Evans had said he could and identify the suspect,
Speaker 1: only sharing this two thousand and six David which goner
Speaker 1: the arrest wererant.
Speaker 4: I was coming home from Warp one day, riding up
Speaker 4: to my house, and I knew there was a helicopter
Speaker 4: following me, and it was driving all the way up
Speaker 4: through fifty until I got close to my house, and
Speaker 4: then the car pulled out beside me and the lights
Speaker 4: went on, and then I seen the Pennsylvania badges, and
Speaker 4: then I was like, oh, what the hell. So then
Speaker 4: they started questioning me about the fire. I told them
Speaker 4: a million times I did not do this, You're making
Speaker 4: a mistake. But all they kept doing was yelling at me, well,
Speaker 4: think about the people that are dead, Well, think about
Speaker 4: what you're doing. You're a resting or wrong person, so
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. That's all they kept telling me.
Speaker 4: I didn't know what to tell them. Finally I said,
Speaker 4: let me have an attorney. I don't want to talk
Speaker 4: to you'all anymore. Next thing you know, I'm sitting in
Speaker 4: the county jail.
Speaker 5: And now emerge as a jail house informant by the
Speaker 5: name of Sean Burns. Here's what Sean Burns tells everybody
Speaker 5: in all of this time, Dan CARNIVALI explains to Sean burns.
Speaker 5: This individual in protective custody the Alleghany County Jails that
Speaker 5: I didn't mean to burn down the building, but what
Speaker 5: happened was I was at the bar and somebody told
Speaker 5: me that it's possible that in the future they might
Speaker 5: put video surveillance on the Columbia Apartment building, and so
Speaker 5: in order to get ahead of them setting up video surveillance,
Speaker 5: I'm gonna break into the Columbia and I'm gonna go
Speaker 5: into the office, but I don't find any video surveillance.
Speaker 3: It's not there.
Speaker 5: But just out of an abundance of caution, I'm gonna
Speaker 5: take this can of lacquer thinner and I'm gonna douse
Speaker 5: the office, not the maintenance, from the office with this
Speaker 5: whole can, and then i'm gonna light a match. I'm
Speaker 5: gonna throw it behind me, and I'm gonna walk out
Speaker 5: with the can of lacquer thinner, get rid of it,
Speaker 5: and hopefully that fire will contain itself in that office
Speaker 5: and burn the video surveillance equipment that I couldn't find
Speaker 5: in that I don't know exists. And in the process,
Speaker 5: I'm gonna take two blank checks in instead of on
Speaker 5: the owner, and then go set them down on the
Speaker 5: doorstep of the owner building.
Speaker 1: The allegend motive was as far fetched as it was
Speaker 1: inconsistent with the ATFS theory, which if their theory is
Speaker 1: to be believed, then why was Burn's alleging that Dan
Speaker 1: burned the office, not the maintenance room and then left
Speaker 1: with the lacquer thinner when the can was in fact
Speaker 1: found in the building. Either way, Sean Burns did not
Speaker 1: make this statement for free.
Speaker 4: Sean Burns had gun charges. He also had some kid charges,
Speaker 4: some child rape things, and if he would have went
Speaker 4: to state prison he wouldn't have made it through. So
Speaker 4: he was doing anything he could do to come up
Speaker 4: with getting himself out of jail, and he got out
Speaker 4: of jail four days after my trial.
Speaker 2: What we later find out, Sean Burns has not only
Speaker 2: testified in Daniel Carnivali's case during two thousand and seven,
Speaker 2: He's testified on behalf of the commonwealth as an informant
Speaker 2: in two other cases just.
Speaker 5: That year for the same prosecutor, for the very.
Speaker 2: Same prosecutor, they got the deal of a century for
Speaker 2: cerial cooperation.
Speaker 1: So it seems like this prosecutor, Jennifer di Giovanni was
Speaker 1: willing to overlook the inconsistencies in Burns's statement to try
Speaker 1: to close the Columbia fire case, and with Shane Evans
Speaker 1: and Sean Burns in her back pocket, she offered Dan
Speaker 1: three and a half to seven years. Pretty incredible deal
Speaker 1: if you think about it. If she really thought he
Speaker 1: was guilty of a triple murderer, I.
Speaker 4: Wasn't taking a plea. I wouldn't care what they were
Speaker 4: giving me. I didn't do it, and I'm not taking
Speaker 4: a plea. I really thought that there was no way
Speaker 4: they could find someone guilty that wasn't guilty. I just
Speaker 4: I found out the hard way. I was roam.
Speaker 1: Dan went to trial in August two thousand and seven
Speaker 1: with his attorney Frank Walker, and in addition to Evans
Speaker 1: and Burns, ATF agent William Patritis testified from memory. Right
Speaker 1: fourteen years removed from the investigation and testified from memory
Speaker 1: the physical evidence had all been destroyed, making it impossible
Speaker 1: to do a full reinvestigation. Meanwhile, Patritis was sure that
Speaker 1: an alleged assailant started the blaze with lacquer dinner in
Speaker 1: the maintenance room, backing his claims up with ancient arson gobbledegook.
Speaker 2: He says that the thing that really stood out to
Speaker 2: him was the low burn patterns that were present on
Speaker 2: like the doorway of the mechanical room, which today we
Speaker 2: know low burn patterns are not indicative of an unnaturally
Speaker 2: or an accelerant set fire. We know that if the
Speaker 2: structure reaches full room involvement, meaning flashover, that low burn
Speaker 2: patterns are absolutely naturally occurring. But Patritis's testimony, you know,
Speaker 2: led the jury to believe that these low burn patterns
Speaker 2: were unnaturally occurring, were indicative of only a fire that
Speaker 2: could have been set through the use of an accelerant.
Speaker 1: And this non scientific observation was then backed up by
Speaker 1: allegedly scientific analysis from ATF chemist William Cannard, whose credibility
Speaker 1: was falling apart in the lead up to Dan's trial.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and six, three fire scientists were hired
Speaker 1: to examine his analysis of an alleged arson in Indiana,
Speaker 1: the notorious Christine Blench case, in which he said there
Speaker 1: was presence of an accelerant in her son's bedroom when
Speaker 1: in fact there was none.
Speaker 2: And William Canard is really exposed as having falsified report.
Speaker 2: We know that in August two thousand and seven, the
Speaker 2: ATF is asked to reevaluate William Cannard's original chemical analysis
Speaker 2: in Dan's nineteen ninety three case. Chief Julia Dolan real
Speaker 2: evaluates all of the gascarmatographs and she says that the
Speaker 2: levels of lackarthinner are so low as to be meaningless.
Speaker 2: She disagrees with every single finding. Canard has reported that
Speaker 2: report that Julia Dolan does is not shared with defense counsel.
Speaker 5: But the Julia Dolan memo is dated August of two
Speaker 5: thousand and seven, and Dan was tried August twenty sixth.
Speaker 5: In August twenty seventh of two thousand and seven, so
Speaker 5: somebody knew. Somebody had the information. But Jennifer Digivanni gets
Speaker 5: Frank Walker croml defense attorney to just stipulate, Hey, you
Speaker 5: don't want.
Speaker 3: To go get an expert.
Speaker 5: Let's just accept the ATF just stipulate, don't get an expert.
Speaker 3: This is legit.
Speaker 2: And then Petritis just reads in William Connard's original chemical
Speaker 2: analysis telling the jury that lacquer thinner has been found
Speaker 2: in all of these samples.
Speaker 5: And so that evidence was always just assumed to be
Speaker 5: one hundred percent true.
Speaker 2: And then with all of the information that was withheld
Speaker 2: from defense counsel, any of the alternative perpetrators, the steel
Speaker 2: alleged confession, and Julia Dolan ATF report saying that the
Speaker 2: lack of Thurner conclusion was meaningless.
Speaker 1: Dan was convicted of arson, burglary, aggravated assault, and three
Speaker 1: counts of second degree murder. So instead of three and
Speaker 1: a half years, he got three consecutive life sentences.
Speaker 4: My trial lasted one day, by the way, I mean,
Speaker 4: I had a triple homicide. I picked the jury one day,
Speaker 4: which found guilty the next I was just shocked. I
Speaker 4: was in shocked for probably the first year. My personality
Speaker 4: got me through prison. I could be a comedian because
Speaker 4: I had to make it to where I wasn't going
Speaker 4: to get in trouble in jail, or have enemies or
Speaker 4: or whatever. I just did the best I could. I
Speaker 4: was in a supermax prison. You know, I had three
Speaker 4: life sentences. It's bugging me right now. I can't get
Speaker 4: it out of my fucking hay, just hearing all the
Speaker 4: stuff that they did to me over and over. It's
Speaker 4: you know why, they had enough stuff to prove me innocent,
Speaker 4: but they lost it. All a little strange, ain't it?
Speaker 2: Like, Let's just recap. They alleged to have lost the
Speaker 2: jacket that Dan turned over for testing as to whether
Speaker 2: he had any kind of like trace of accelerants on
Speaker 2: his jacket. They do not have the polygraph that Dan took,
Speaker 2: which you know, indicated that he was not being deceptive.
Speaker 2: At trial, they testified that they lost any indication that
Speaker 2: Shane Evans had come forward on the night of the
Speaker 2: fire and made original police statements.
Speaker 1: Yet the original statements turned up years later, and with
Speaker 1: Shane Evans, who knew Dan CARNIVALI could not identify the
Speaker 1: man he saw. Rather, Evans had described someone who did
Speaker 1: not match Dan's profile. But before those statements were discovered,
Speaker 1: Dan's earlier appeals focused on the information Dan had received
Speaker 1: about Sean Burns.
Speaker 4: This guy sent me a message to my self saying
Speaker 4: that he wanted to talk to me out in the
Speaker 4: yard about something really important. I'm starting to stress out
Speaker 4: what the hell is wrong now? So I go out
Speaker 4: in the yard and he tells me, hey, did you
Speaker 4: ever hear of David Dixon? I said no. Then he goes, well,
Speaker 4: do you know Jennifer di Giovanni. I said yes, why
Speaker 4: And then he started explaining that she put him in jail,
Speaker 4: and they had Sean Burns as also as the jail
Speaker 4: how's informant, blah blah blah, and he ended up getting
Speaker 4: twenty years and he just wanted to let me know
Speaker 4: that it happened.
Speaker 1: To him to David Dixon, who had spent time with
Speaker 1: Sean Burns, swore an affidavit that Burns had admitted fabricating
Speaker 1: Dan's alleged confession, which became part of a post conviction
Speaker 1: relief motion. Along with the sweetheart deal. Burns had received
Speaker 1: fourteen months and immediate parole eligibility. He was released four
Speaker 1: days after Dan's trout. However, both Dan's post conviction motion
Speaker 1: and his habeas were denied by twenty sixteen, by which
Speaker 1: point the Pennsylvania Innocence Project had reviewed Dan's case and
Speaker 1: Liz paid him a visit.
Speaker 4: Once Liz came to see me for the first time,
Speaker 4: everything changed. I knew that something was going to happen
Speaker 4: because I was innocent. I don't even know what the
Speaker 4: Saydal is anymore, because she's just like the best thing
Speaker 4: that ever happened to me.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I love you too, and our first step
Speaker 2: was to retain our expert, Douglas Carpenter, and he did
Speaker 2: that review pro bono, even though we were missing quite
Speaker 2: a bit of documentation. He really laid out for the
Speaker 2: court the evolution of the NFPA nine twenty one of
Speaker 2: how fire sigence and fire investigation what would have been
Speaker 2: done in twenty seventeen that just was not done in
Speaker 2: Night eighteen ninety three, was not even conceptualized in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety three, and alleged that this fire should not have
Speaker 2: been determined an arson or intentionally set, that at the
Speaker 2: very least, it should have been undetermined. And his theory
Speaker 2: was that it was an accidental fire and that the
Speaker 2: boiler overheated, causing superheating within the joists, and he, you know,
Speaker 2: talked very much about like the steam pipes and how
Speaker 2: they ran throughout the building, how they ran straight up
Speaker 2: into that northwest corner that collapsed, the ways in which
Speaker 2: witness statements afterwards really supported the fact that this could
Speaker 2: have been an accidental boiler overheating.
Speaker 1: But the state argued that this was just a battle
Speaker 1: of experts and their petition was denied. However, Liz's work
Speaker 1: on Greg Brown's case another Canard victim, by the way,
Speaker 1: appears to have been the catalyst that brought the Julia
Speaker 1: Dolan report in Dan's case to light in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: I can't say exactly what happened here, but if I
Speaker 2: had to assume, that assistant US attorney in Greg Brown's
Speaker 2: case requested all of the ATF files arson files that
Speaker 2: were conducted in Alleghany County through a specific time period,
Speaker 2: so nineteen ninety to nineteen ninety five. Right one of
Speaker 2: those case files was Dan Carnivali's and within that ATF
Speaker 2: case file was that Julia Dolan report saying that the
Speaker 2: Lacquer thinner results that were originally reported in Canards nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety three report were meaningless. That was then turned over
Speaker 2: to the PCRA attorney that was working on Dan Carnivali's case.
Speaker 2: And thank goodness for the ethics of that PCRA prosecutor,
Speaker 2: because they turned it over to US as they have
Speaker 2: a constitutional duty to do. And because of that report,
Speaker 2: the Alleghany County District Attorney's office agreed that Dan deserved
Speaker 2: a new trial.
Speaker 1: While the DA was deciding whether to even bother with
Speaker 1: a new trial, Liz reached out to Julia Dolan.
Speaker 2: I was able to interview Julia Dolan and ask why,
Speaker 2: in two thousand and seven, very coincidentally, in the same
Speaker 2: month as Dan's trial, did you reevaluate Cannard's report? And
Speaker 2: the only response I was able to achieve was I
Speaker 2: cannot recall. And I was like, was it a specific
Speaker 2: request from Alleghany County to reevaluate this analysis or were
Speaker 2: you doing a more systemic review of like analysis from
Speaker 2: this time from this particular chemist because he had been
Speaker 2: discredited in the Bunch case, and she says, I have
Speaker 2: never done a systemic review of one of my colleagues.
Speaker 1: In addition to this Brady violation that should have prevented
Speaker 1: Dan's two thousand and seven trial from ever happening at all,
Speaker 1: Liz was now able to locate even more evidence.
Speaker 2: In the District Attorney's response to our PCRA petition. One
Speaker 2: of the attachments was a document from the insurance agency
Speaker 2: that represented the owner of the Columbia building, and it
Speaker 2: gave me the actual name, which was Northwestern National Insurance.
Speaker 2: Many times, especially in these Arson cases, the insurance company
Speaker 2: will do a much more in depth investigation in order
Speaker 2: to determine whether they should pay the claim than sometimes
Speaker 2: the Arson squad will. When I tried to locate how
Speaker 2: many Northwestern National insurance companies there were, there was like
Speaker 2: over two hundred. So I just made a list and
Speaker 2: started down this list. I think I got to probably
Speaker 2: seventy five, maybe one hundred calls when finally I spoke
Speaker 2: with this woman and I gave her the insurance claim number,
Speaker 2: and she said, yes, that reflects a claim number. That
Speaker 2: would have been a claim number that we used at
Speaker 2: the time. But they were in the process of destroying
Speaker 2: all of these old documents, and I was like, stop
Speaker 2: where you are. If you have these old documents, I
Speaker 2: need them, And so immediately sent her a subpoena and
Speaker 2: she located six thousand pages of insurance documents and within
Speaker 2: that box were those original police reports from Shane Evans
Speaker 2: that the cold case detectives said were lost, and there
Speaker 2: were three police reports. He did in fact speak with
Speaker 2: three police officers on that night, but despite his trial
Speaker 2: testimony saying it was light, I immediately recognized it as
Speaker 2: Daniel CARNIVALI his police report said unknown white male did
Speaker 2: not see face all three. And so when I presented
Speaker 2: this a district attorney's office finally said we're going to
Speaker 2: nol prost. We're going to pititition the court to withdraw
Speaker 2: all charges, and Dan was finally released and exonerated.
Speaker 4: I got released March eighteenth, the first day of COVID
Speaker 4: that nobody was.
Speaker 2: Allowed out of the house the very first day of
Speaker 2: like everybody was being kind of like sent home from
Speaker 2: your work.
Speaker 4: I went out anyway I used to. I was walking
Speaker 4: all over Pittsburgh. I was taking money and giving fight
Speaker 4: older bills the homeless people down town Pittsburgh. So I
Speaker 4: haven't been in Pittsburgh for twenty six, twenty seven years.
Speaker 4: So I'm back in Pittsburgh. I'm living with my brother,
Speaker 4: and he's taking good care of me. Like he bought
Speaker 4: me a motorcycle. He let me use his car, He
Speaker 4: helped me get my driver's license. KK Radio station, helped
Speaker 4: me get the job. I mean, there was a lot involved.
Speaker 4: I just oh, and I had a house something in
Speaker 4: Pittsburgh that my parents had and they had squatters and
Speaker 4: stuff living in it. So I just went there and
Speaker 4: cleaned it and we sold that. And it was pretty
Speaker 4: crazy when I got out, But life got so good.
Speaker 4: Then I met my wife, Donna, who's sitting next to
Speaker 4: me right everything changed. We're on our second home since
Speaker 4: I got out. You know, just I work ten hours
Speaker 4: a day, six days a week sometimes and just I'm
Speaker 4: loving life.
Speaker 2: I will say that when I first met Dan, just
Speaker 2: the sweetest, most sincere man. And you know, Dan's case,
Speaker 2: Greg's case, every case that I work on is the
Speaker 2: best thing that I could possibly do with my jurse doctorate.
Speaker 2: But like knowing that I never have to have a
Speaker 2: conversation with Dan in those orange uniforms in that mind
Speaker 2: green room.
Speaker 3: That's enough.
Speaker 2: That's enough that I have done with my career.
Speaker 3: I could stop today.
Speaker 5: Dan is the most incredible person that I've ever met.
Speaker 5: He I have a four year old boy, my oldest boy.
Speaker 5: Dan is a very successful baker. He loves the bacon
Speaker 5: he bakes for one of the probably the most famous
Speaker 5: bakery in all of the Pittsburgh.
Speaker 4: Areia, third best in the country, third best.
Speaker 3: In the country.
Speaker 5: On his own dime, Dan surprised my four year old's
Speaker 5: junior pre kindergarten class with Halloween cookies that he made
Speaker 5: for them. And then on Thanksgiving and we you know talk,
Speaker 5: if not every day every other day, said Alec, you
Speaker 5: gotta try my homemade pumpkin pie.
Speaker 4: I do it.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna get there, Dan, I'm gonna get there. And
Speaker 5: I said, I love pumpkin pie and he said it's cheesecake,
Speaker 5: but I do a special sauce on top. And so
Speaker 5: my family, my two boys, my wife, we all met
Speaker 5: Dan and he gave us this homemade pumpkin pie. And
Speaker 5: then we called Dan and I said, Dan, let's go
Speaker 5: to Eaton Park, sort of this well Owneditzburg dive. And
Speaker 5: we get there and Dan's talking about the super Burgers
Speaker 5: rave it about a super Burger.
Speaker 2: You're so obsessed with Bidnax and Superburger.
Speaker 3: Obsessed with it.
Speaker 5: And I'm like, Dan, fuck the super Burger. I'm getting
Speaker 5: turkey dinner. And Dan looks at the waitress and he
Speaker 5: goes give me the exact same thing. And then this
Speaker 5: woman walked over unsolicited. Dan had a Steelers tattoo on
Speaker 5: the side of his head and said, sir, I love
Speaker 5: your tattoo. And Dan made a joke to her.
Speaker 3: She lit up. He he is a guy that just
Speaker 3: makes everything better. You make everything better.
Speaker 1: Okay, So just in case I find myself in Pittsburgh
Speaker 1: anytime soon, what's the name of this bakery.
Speaker 4: Oakmont Bakery number one in Pittsburgh for sure.
Speaker 1: Well shout out to Oakmont Bakery. We're gonna have them
Speaker 1: linked in the episode description as well. But meanwhile, we
Speaker 1: wish you all the best in the civil suit as
Speaker 1: we go now to closing arguments, where first of all,
Speaker 1: I thank you guys so much for sharing this story.
Speaker 1: And then I'm just gonna take these next few minutes
Speaker 1: to sit back in my chair and listen to anything
Speaker 1: else you feel is left to be said. So let's
Speaker 1: start with Alec, then Liz, and of course finally Dan.
Speaker 5: There's nothing really for me to add except to reiterate.
Speaker 3: You know, Dan, you know we all love you. This
Speaker 3: is about you.
Speaker 5: Others are hurt, but you know we're in your fight
Speaker 5: and you really do make life better. You made my
Speaker 5: life better, You made my family's life better.
Speaker 4: Thank you. I'll bring you some work cook.
Speaker 5: Well, those compliments will only continue as long as you feed.
Speaker 4: Me, right, Okay, Liz, what do you guys to say?
Speaker 2: By takeaway? And I expressed this to Alec quite a bit,
Speaker 2: is I just don't understand why Dan was targeted, and
Speaker 2: not even in nineteen ninety three, right, it was years
Speaker 2: later in two thousand and six, it feels like more
Speaker 2: of an effort to target Dan as opposed to actually
Speaker 2: following the tangible leads that they had. And I feel like,
Speaker 2: you know, when you lie, when you cover up, you
Speaker 2: not only have to remember the lies and the cover
Speaker 2: up that you did, but the lies and the cover
Speaker 2: up that you asked others to do, which seems much
Speaker 2: much more difficult than just conducting a really straightforward and
Speaker 2: logical investigation. And so I just will I will never
Speaker 2: understand this case. I will never understand why Dan was targeted,
Speaker 2: especially because he was out of state. You know, he
Speaker 2: wasn't in our state, he wasn't in our community, he
Speaker 2: wasn't causing a problem, he wasn't making enemies. And so
Speaker 2: I hope someday, Dan, you have an answer to that.
Speaker 2: I would like to have some answers, and to have
Speaker 2: those particular people who cost you thirteen fourteen years of
Speaker 2: your life and all of the trauma that you experienced
Speaker 2: while you were in prison answer for that.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I don't even know what to say. I just
Speaker 4: thank god things had happened the way they did. At
Speaker 4: the end, you know, I'm just happy to be living
Speaker 4: my life not inside that hole anymore. I can't understand it.
Speaker 4: I will never understand it. So that's about all I
Speaker 4: got to say. Thank you for having me on this show, Liz,
Speaker 4: thank you for being here analog. You know, I don't
Speaker 4: know what else is. I thought i'd ever eat a
Speaker 4: big bac again. I think that's why I like big
Speaker 4: macs much.
Speaker 3: You know, I'll lead a big back with you.
Speaker 4: Dan. All right, well, yeah, we could just do super burgers.
Speaker 5: No, let's we'll get distracted by a turkey dinner.
Speaker 3: Let's go get a big Mac.
Speaker 4: They got double ones.
Speaker 5: Oh, Chris.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
Speaker 1: to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one
Speaker 1: week early by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our production team, Connor
Speaker 1: Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow executive
Speaker 1: producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Cliburn. The music
Speaker 1: in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated
Speaker 1: composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across all
Speaker 1: social media platforms at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 1: You can also follow me on Instagram at it's Jason Flamm.
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
Speaker 1: and association with Signal Company.
Speaker 2: Number one
Speaker 4: Was the wind that work and many dream