Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
Speaker 2: should know. And before we start, Chuck, I want to
Speaker 2: take a moment to take the opportunity to take the
Speaker 2: chance over wishing you a happy birthday.
Speaker 1: Oh, thank you.
Speaker 2: I did March same day Caesar was stabbed. Can't get
Speaker 2: over there.
Speaker 1: Anyone, anyone famous gets stabbed on your birthday. I don't
Speaker 1: think so.
Speaker 2: No, definitely not.
Speaker 1: All right, Well we'll have to change that by stabbing you.
Speaker 2: That was sinister. I even wished you happy birthday and
Speaker 2: look what I get? I get a stabbing throw. I
Speaker 2: know what has become of us?
Speaker 1: Chuck, thanks man, the Big five to three. Such a
Speaker 1: notable birthday.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like, Also does it feel any different
Speaker 2: than the No? I feel like. Also we need to
Speaker 2: give a retroactive happy birthday to Jerry too from last month.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2: Happy birthday, Jerry.
Speaker 1: You know I did the ultimate fifty three year old
Speaker 1: guy thing for my birthday. I went to Athens, Georgia
Speaker 1: for two Bob Dylan shows. Wow, that were exactly alike.
Speaker 2: Were they really he played the same show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Bob Dylan does it say like, oh, let me
Speaker 1: mix it up for if anyone wants to come the
Speaker 1: second night.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm actually surprised. I could totally see him playing
Speaker 2: different shows depending on his mood or whatever he felt
Speaker 2: like that night.
Speaker 1: No, well that, I mean there is something to that.
Speaker 1: But he's eighty three, has got his set locked in right.
Speaker 2: Really, he's thirty years older than.
Speaker 1: You, I know, and he's still playing live music.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. Could you understand a word? He said? Uh?
Speaker 1: Yeah. It was very a vocal forward set actually, like
Speaker 1: some real quiet music, and his voice was out front
Speaker 1: in the mix. I've seen him dyling a lot. It's
Speaker 1: always you never know what you're gonna get, so it's
Speaker 1: always That's part of the fun being a Dylan fan
Speaker 1: is like, Ooh, I wonder what he's going to be
Speaker 1: like this time.
Speaker 2: Is he in a bad mood tonight? No?
Speaker 1: He was great. He's old though, man, But yeah.
Speaker 2: Eighty three is very old to beginning on stage and
Speaker 2: playing how long of a set.
Speaker 1: Like an hour and a half seventeen eighteen songs he played?
Speaker 1: He plays piano full time now, which is sort of
Speaker 1: the new change. Okay, but he stands. I've never seen
Speaker 1: anyone do this. I've seen people stand at a keyboard,
Speaker 1: but I've never seen anyone stand behind a grand piano
Speaker 1: the entire time.
Speaker 2: Basically, that is unusual.
Speaker 1: He would sit a little bit, but he'd sit for
Speaker 1: like six or seven seconds that he popped right back up. Wow,
Speaker 1: that was really.
Speaker 2: Interesting going on with him. That's very it's interesting.
Speaker 1: Anyway, we're here to talk about Arson Investigation, and big
Speaker 1: thanks to Livia for her help with this, because you know,
Speaker 1: I was just kind of keen on, like, hey, Lvia
Speaker 1: put together an article on like how that works and
Speaker 1: how they figure out if someone burns something down, and
Speaker 1: she came back pretty quickly and she's like, oh, chuck,
Speaker 1: guess what it turns out? Like we can talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about that. But the real story here is
Speaker 1: the fact that Arson Investigation, for most of its time
Speaker 1: as a thing, has been a lot of sort of witchcraftybs. Yeah, folklore,
Speaker 1: And that's the real story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, mysticism, made up intuition is probably about the kindest
Speaker 2: way you can describe how it was for decades.
Speaker 1: Like did you see backdraft?
Speaker 2: No? I didn't Actually, isn't that like a Ron Howard.
Speaker 1: Jam Yeah, back in the day. But de Niro plays
Speaker 1: a Arson investigator who is very much fits and you
Speaker 1: know he apparently hung out with like three or four
Speaker 1: Arson investigators and kind of got his performance from them. Sure,
Speaker 1: which makes total sense now that I've read this, because
Speaker 1: there was a lot of like not mysticism, but really
Speaker 1: like you know, smelling something and like sniffing something. He
Speaker 1: chipped off of a wall, putting.
Speaker 2: Your fingers on the railroad tracks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, really corny lines. Like one of his corny lines is,
Speaker 1: you know, the only way to kill it is to
Speaker 1: love it a little bit. Man. So it's very much
Speaker 1: in line with what we found out here, which was
Speaker 1: that Arson investigation has long been just not scientific.
Speaker 2: No, and there's like we're not just here to poke
Speaker 2: fun at Arson investigators because they used unscientific methods. The
Speaker 2: big problem with this is those unscientific intuitive methods have
Speaker 2: been proven time and time again to be just utterly wrong,
Speaker 2: but they're used still to this day in some jurisdictions
Speaker 2: to put people away sometimes for like sometimes to death.
Speaker 2: Some people have been put to death under the junk
Speaker 2: science that arson investigation is and has been for decades
Speaker 2: and has only recently started to really kind of come
Speaker 2: in line and become a scientific endeavor.
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure, so big thanks, Olivia said to a
Speaker 1: couple of gentlemen, Douglas Starr and David gran They wrote
Speaker 1: some pretty great pieces, Douglas Starr for Discoverer and David
Speaker 1: grand for The New Yorker.
Speaker 2: Can I just say David Grant's New Yorker articles called
Speaker 2: trow By Fire about Cameron Todd Willingham and his wrongful execution.
Speaker 2: I think yeah, basically everybody should read that article at
Speaker 2: some point in decuren their life. It's just gut wrenching.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, great, great investigation, great journalism. And so let's
Speaker 1: get going here. I guess the first thing we should
Speaker 1: say is that the first people to get involved in
Speaker 1: arson investigation were not scientists, Like it was sort of
Speaker 1: developed as a thing by firefighters, by cops, by law
Speaker 1: enforcement generally, and not people who understood the scientific method.
Speaker 1: The first book about fire investigation was called Tiredstigations Very
Speaker 1: Appropriate No Colin. It was published in nineteen forty five
Speaker 1: by Harry retheret of the Fire Underwriter's Investigation Bureau of
Speaker 1: Canada and it was very much written for an audience
Speaker 1: of law enforcement to be like, all right, here's your
Speaker 1: handbook if you want to prove arson.
Speaker 2: Right. That's the big problem with it is in addition
Speaker 2: to it basically being like old wives tales and folklore,
Speaker 2: it came from the position like, if you're investigating this,
Speaker 2: if you're using this book, you're trying to prove arson
Speaker 2: not You're trying to figure out what started a fire,
Speaker 2: and it may or may not have been arson. It's
Speaker 2: here's what to look for for arson. And the problem
Speaker 2: is is a lot of really common features that are
Speaker 2: found after a fire we're attributed wrongly to arson. And
Speaker 2: this is where it started to spread all the way
Speaker 2: back in nineteen forty five.
Speaker 1: You know what a better title would have been, What
Speaker 1: What to Expect when You're Expecting Arson?
Speaker 2: Was an all time great chuck, Oh.
Speaker 1: Thank you, I just thought of that. So that book
Speaker 1: was sort of the standard until nineteen sixty nine. About
Speaker 1: twenty five years later or so, I got any Paul
Speaker 1: Kirk biochemists this time and forensic scientists at the University
Speaker 1: of cal Berkeley, published a different book called Fire Investigation.
Speaker 2: Well, it didn't have the s so it must have
Speaker 2: been the prequel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this one should have been called Fire Investigation Colon.
Speaker 1: You won't believe how much has changed.
Speaker 2: So yeah, So Paul Kirk, being a scientist, he's like, no,
Speaker 2: you really want to track down what started the fire
Speaker 2: and then start making your assumptions after you've collected evidence
Speaker 2: and analyzed it. Don't start from the premise that this
Speaker 2: is arson and then look for signs that support your premise.
Speaker 2: That's wrong. That's not how science works. The problem is is,
Speaker 2: like Paul Kirk was like, use the scientific method, and
Speaker 2: the fire investigators said to Paul, Paul, there's not a
Speaker 2: lot of science for us to compare our findings against someone.
Speaker 2: Help help nanny state, and the nanny States swooped in
Speaker 2: and improved everything forever.
Speaker 1: Yeah. About eight years later or so after that book,
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy seven, there was a government report that agreed, hey,
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of stuff going on, and so
Speaker 1: there were a couple of guides put out Arson and
Speaker 1: Urs Investigation in seventy seven, which was based on surveys
Speaker 1: from leading investigators, and then Fire in the Fire Investigation
Speaker 1: Handbook from nineteen eighty and we should just kind of
Speaker 1: read through like this quick list, because this was the
Speaker 1: general thinking of like how you can tell if it's
Speaker 1: arson if these things are there in the burned house.
Speaker 1: I'll do the first one. Everyone knows this. The most
Speaker 1: severely burned area of the house is where it started.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it just makes sense since that had the opportunity
Speaker 2: to burn the longest, so it burned the hardest.
Speaker 1: Rights Totally, all these makes sense.
Speaker 2: Also, heat rises, which means fire rises and smoke rises,
Speaker 2: so the ceiling is always the most burned part of
Speaker 2: any given room, which they call compartments in fire investigation lingo,
Speaker 2: and that if you find burned floors, that automatically says
Speaker 2: an accelerant was used, because you dump accelerate on the
Speaker 2: floor and light it, and that's how the floor gets charred.
Speaker 2: Telltale sign if you find a charred floor, an accelerant
Speaker 2: was used.
Speaker 1: Also, if you see a puddle shaped char on that floor,
Speaker 1: that's another telltale sign for liquid because molke spreads out.
Speaker 1: If you see a V shaped soot mark on the wall,
Speaker 1: that is going to literally point to the origin of
Speaker 1: the fire.
Speaker 2: Right. And another one that kind of was an umbrella
Speaker 2: category for some subcategories is that an accelerant fueled fire
Speaker 2: burns hotter than any other kind of fire. It also
Speaker 2: burns faster as a result, So that means that all
Speaker 2: sorts of weird stuff happens in a hotter, faster fire.
Speaker 2: For example, something that they call crazed glass, which is
Speaker 2: glass that has this weird webbing of cracks through it,
Speaker 2: which they're like, is again an indicator of a very hot,
Speaker 2: fast fire, which indicates an accelerant was used. So you
Speaker 2: find glass with webs in it, that is a surefire
Speaker 2: indicator that somebody started this fire using some sort of
Speaker 2: accelerant or fuel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they said, that's us. It's craze, And they went,
Speaker 1: don't you mean glaze. I said, now, let's just call
Speaker 1: it craze since it's so close to another glass term.
Speaker 2: Right, he goes, I hadn't thought about that. That makes
Speaker 2: it even better.
Speaker 1: So Nixon, believe it or not, kind of got things
Speaker 1: going in nineteen seventy three when there was a report
Speaker 1: from that administration that fires caused more than eleven billion
Speaker 1: dollars in damage, killed twelve thousand people in nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 1: A lot of this was found out to be exaggerated,
Speaker 1: but it didn't matter because that kind of lit a
Speaker 1: match no pen intended under the governments. But to get
Speaker 1: to get into this, and they created the and funded
Speaker 1: the Center for Fire Research, which is when they basically said,
Speaker 1: all right, let's get one hundred engineers to really look
Speaker 1: at this from an objective point of view and come
Speaker 1: back to us with some good stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the early things that came out of
Speaker 2: this that was really groundbreaking was called the Cone calorimeter,
Speaker 2: and it was invented by a guy with the wonderful
Speaker 2: name of y Tennis Bob Ruscus, who is a fire
Speaker 2: safety expert to this day. And the Cone calorimeter is
Speaker 2: essentially like a vent hood, a giant vent hood that
Speaker 2: has a ton of sensors attached to it, and you
Speaker 2: set something on fire, say like a specific kind of couch,
Speaker 2: and it records all sorts of different things, the chemical
Speaker 2: composition of the gases that are released of the smoke,
Speaker 2: how hot it burns, how long it burns. It even
Speaker 2: has a scale so you can measure you can compare
Speaker 2: the weight of the sook compared to the weight of
Speaker 2: like what the what the furniture was like before it
Speaker 2: caught fire, and you could take all this and put
Speaker 2: it in a database. Like what you're doing now is
Speaker 2: carrying out repeatable experiments to produce data that people can
Speaker 2: use to compare their findings to which was again the
Speaker 2: problem that fire investigators were having. That the Nanty State
Speaker 2: swooped in and helped. And this is how they helped.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and just to create an image in the viewers'
Speaker 1: mind's eye. If you're picturing that thing as some humongous
Speaker 1: thing where you set a couch on it, that's not
Speaker 1: the deal. It's very small actually, and it's it looks
Speaker 1: like a little campstove sort of with all these things
Speaker 1: looked to it. So you cut a piece of the
Speaker 1: couch off, is what happened.
Speaker 2: Actually, they have larger ones too that that you can
Speaker 2: set essentially a house on fire underneath one.
Speaker 1: Oh well, okay, but I'm talking about this the general
Speaker 1: lab version.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 1: They have they have them bigger than a house.
Speaker 2: Yes, I saw that in some labs that they have
Speaker 2: like house simulations in they like the roof will be
Speaker 2: the colorimeter. Okay, So it's it's like all sorts of
Speaker 2: different sizes. We're both right, I think. Is the happy
Speaker 2: outcome of it, okay, And there's also another experiment that
Speaker 2: or another finding that these experiments yielded, which is flash over.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, I thought, I mean I could have sworn.
Speaker 1: In the movie Backdraft, they called that backdraft. Maybe that's
Speaker 1: a similar term, or maybe it's the same thing, and
Speaker 1: maybe it was a oh it is, okay, it's.
Speaker 2: A backdraft seems to be a component of a flashover.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, Well, I guess that makes sense. So a
Speaker 1: flashover is when you've got a fire going in a house.
Speaker 1: You've got a big layer of smoke that's got all
Speaker 1: kinds of like combustible gases, all sorts of little particles
Speaker 1: that are super flammable of in that smoke. It's at
Speaker 1: the ceiling collecting and collecting and then just getting more
Speaker 1: dense and going down, down down, as a room heats up,
Speaker 1: and then as it hits a certain point basically a
Speaker 1: high enough temperature to ignite it, there is like an explosion.
Speaker 1: Basically it can hit one thousand degrees and when that
Speaker 1: flashover happens, you can see char marks and burn marks
Speaker 1: that previously people were like, the only way to get
Speaker 1: that is if you like dump gas all over the room.
Speaker 2: Right, and that's a thousand degrees celsius, like eighteen hundred
Speaker 2: degrees farenheit. Right, that is really hot, and it happens
Speaker 2: there's a really steep incline where that temperature just increases
Speaker 2: like that and everything stuff just spontaneously catches fire because
Speaker 2: it's so hot, it's reached the ignition point for that
Speaker 2: couch or that TV or whatever. The whole room catches fire,
Speaker 2: and like you said, it does all sorts of It
Speaker 2: leaves all sorts of telltale marks that had long been
Speaker 2: attributed to arson. For example, the idea that the floors
Speaker 2: chart or another one is kind of related to the
Speaker 2: idea that if the floor's charred in accelerant was used,
Speaker 2: if the underneath or if the bottom of a couch,
Speaker 2: what's that called the underside of a couch, the undercarriage
Speaker 2: of the couch, that's where the socks are, the fanny
Speaker 2: of the couch.
Speaker 1: If that's burn it's true.
Speaker 2: If that's burned, then then they were like, well an
Speaker 2: accelerant was used, it's spilled over under the couch and
Speaker 2: caught the couch on fire. No, when the whole room
Speaker 2: becomes what's called fully involved, the whole room's on fire,
Speaker 2: the bottom of the couch can very easily get get burnt.
Speaker 2: Same with the underside of the bed and any furniture
Speaker 2: and the floor. So that's that was a big finding too.
Speaker 2: And then the other thing about the flashover is it
Speaker 2: can it can basically stop and stay in suspended animation
Speaker 2: until oxygen comes in and it catches fire again. But
Speaker 2: wherever that oxygen's coming from, the fire follows in like
Speaker 2: a line, and it can go around the corner, up
Speaker 2: the stairs, through a bedroom door, and out a bathroom window.
Speaker 2: If that's where the oxygen's coming from the fire will follow.
Speaker 2: It is what's what a backdraft is in my understanding.
Speaker 1: Okay, I think that's that. I haven't seen that movie
Speaker 1: in a while, but that sounds about right. Okay, even
Speaker 1: though it was a movie fed version, you know, right,
Speaker 1: I think the science in it was supposed to be
Speaker 1: pretty good.
Speaker 2: Oh was it?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean it was Ron Howard, you know.
Speaker 2: So what was the I mean, this is like the
Speaker 2: early nineties, wasn't it.
Speaker 1: Uh? Yeah, it seems about right.
Speaker 2: I mean this would have been so one thing that
Speaker 2: you'll find when you start looking into fire investigation is,
Speaker 2: you know, Paul Kirk wrote that book in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 2: and over time, like more and more scientists got involved
Speaker 2: in fire investigation, but it's still like percolating throughout the field.
Speaker 2: Like so in the early nineties, it was still a
Speaker 2: lot of pocum involved. And I'm sure Backdraft repeated a
Speaker 2: lot of that too.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that the whole character was sort of, you know,
Speaker 1: that mystical guy who understood fire, you know, more than anyone. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another big thing happened in the early nineties besides the
Speaker 1: movie Backdraft in nineteen ninety one was the Oakland black Hole,
Speaker 1: a big fire in Oakland, California, that destroyed about close
Speaker 1: to three thousand homes. But it was a really good
Speaker 1: chance to go in there as a fire investigator and
Speaker 1: kind of see what happened. They looked at fifty different
Speaker 1: houses and they found, you know, sort of the normal
Speaker 1: things that you might find when you're thinking arson. But
Speaker 1: one of the big things they found was that crazing
Speaker 1: on the glass. They did some experimentation with that glass
Speaker 1: and they found they basically said that this whole notion
Speaker 1: that crazing is because of arson isn't true at all.
Speaker 1: It's when they spray the windows with that water and
Speaker 1: it's at a really high heat that it cools super fast.
Speaker 1: That's where you're going to get it. And this is
Speaker 1: one of those that seemed really like they should have
Speaker 1: known this earlier, just because people have been blowing glass
Speaker 1: and working with glass for so long. I'm surprised someone
Speaker 1: didn't know that before that.
Speaker 2: They know that was a finding from the Oakland black Hole.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they like, it wasn't one glass maker that was like, oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, if you get it wet, that happens.
Speaker 2: These these like this industry or field doesn't even listen
Speaker 2: to Supreme Court or other court rulings. They're not going
Speaker 2: to listen to some glass blower.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's true. Those are as hippie tippy as it comes.
Speaker 2: The other thing about that Oakland black Hole opportunity, because
Speaker 2: you like, they knew what caused the fire. They knew
Speaker 2: for a fact it wasn't arson in these houses. They
Speaker 2: were originally planning on examining a hundred houses, but the
Speaker 2: features and characteristics that they found were so uniform that
Speaker 2: they stopped at fifty. The group agreed, like, we're not
Speaker 2: going to learn anything from another fifty of them. We
Speaker 2: totally got this like it's that repeatable, like like this
Speaker 2: is what happens when a flashover occurs. All these telltale
Speaker 2: signs of arson are totally made up. Yeah, I say,
Speaker 2: we take a break, Chuck, and we'll come back and
Speaker 2: we'll talk a little more about arson investigation. So there
Speaker 2: were a couple more like huge landmarks I guess in
Speaker 2: the late eighties or mid eighties, early nineties as far
Speaker 2: that really pushed arson and fire investigation forward. One was
Speaker 2: a terrible hotel fire from New Year's Eve nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: six in I think San Juan, Puerto Rico at the
Speaker 2: DuPont Plaza Hotel, which I think was a Sheridan at
Speaker 2: the time. The hotel was in a dispute with its
Speaker 2: workers over union contract, and some disgruntled workers set a
Speaker 2: bunch of furniture on fire in one of the ballrooms
Speaker 2: and ended up killing like ninety eight people. The fire
Speaker 2: spread really quick. The reason why this is such a
Speaker 2: landmark is because some people armed with all this data
Speaker 2: that things like the calorimeter had produced, came in and
Speaker 2: added creating computer models, and essentially what they found was
Speaker 2: their computer could show that this fire happened exactly as
Speaker 2: the witnesses said it did and ultimately led back to
Speaker 2: the origin, which was those three disgruntled dudes in the
Speaker 2: ballroom setting the furniture on fire.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the problem though, as you mentioned, is that
Speaker 1: you're not going to get these two scientists from the
Speaker 1: Center for Fire Research on every case of every burnt
Speaker 1: house in the United States. So it's you know, that
Speaker 1: was one of the biggest problems. I guess. One big
Speaker 1: milestone was the Lime Street fire in nineteen ninety. This
Speaker 1: is another case where it's really sad. There was a
Speaker 1: guy named Jerald Lewis and Jacksonville, Florida. He was charged
Speaker 1: with arson and murder for setting his house on fire,
Speaker 1: killing his wife, her pregnant sister, and four kids and
Speaker 1: got out with his son. No one else was able
Speaker 1: to get out, and he said, hey, my son started
Speaker 1: this fire. He's playing with matches on the couch in
Speaker 1: the living room and arson investigators came in and said,
Speaker 1: you know, in the traditional way, and we're like, no,
Speaker 1: there's no way there was an accelerant here. There's that
Speaker 1: puddle char on the floor. That v pattern that we
Speaker 1: talked about, which should you know, literally point to the
Speaker 1: source of the fire is not pointing at that couch,
Speaker 1: and this is a big case. Prosecutors called on called
Speaker 1: in a guy named John Linidi from Georgia. He was
Speaker 1: a fire investigator and John Dehan, who wrote or co
Speaker 1: wrote at least a manual on fire investigation, to basically
Speaker 1: come in and say, hey, can you come in here
Speaker 1: and confirm that this guy's lying so we can put
Speaker 1: him away. And Lintidi walked away from that investigation and said, well,
Speaker 1: at first he looks like he's guilty to me, so
Speaker 1: I can confirm that you should go ahead and prosecute.
Speaker 1: But then they got a chance, and it seems like
Speaker 1: these opportunities are a real big thing in fire, where like, hey,
Speaker 1: we actually have a little bit of money to run
Speaker 1: an experiment here. And that is when they recreated this
Speaker 1: house right down to the kind of couch it was
Speaker 1: and everything that was in the house basically and set
Speaker 1: that couch on fire to see if it would burn
Speaker 1: like that, and it did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the prosecution spent twenty thousand dollars to recreate that
Speaker 2: fire in a house like two or one or two
Speaker 2: houses down that was exactly identical in structure to the
Speaker 2: one that Gerald Lewis had been accused of burning down
Speaker 2: and I mean they went all out to recreate it,
Speaker 2: so much so that they brought some family members in
Speaker 2: and said, does this look like what the house looked
Speaker 2: like in the night of the fire, And they said, yes,
Speaker 2: this is it. Like it's like, I'm it's eerie. So
Speaker 2: they started by setting the couch on fire, like basically
Speaker 2: trying out Lewis's account of events, and everybody involved in
Speaker 2: this experiment just expected the fire to kind of like
Speaker 2: maybe start to slowly catch and then sputter and go out,
Speaker 2: like the sofa was not just going to catch. So
Speaker 2: they were all really surprised when the fire caught and
Speaker 2: then caught the other cushion on fire, and then all
Speaker 2: of a sudden caught the like a big portion of
Speaker 2: the room on fire. That was the first thing. And
Speaker 2: then after the fire really burned and they evaluated everything,
Speaker 2: they were like, all of these things that are supposedly
Speaker 2: arson related, they're here, like this is this the couch setting.
Speaker 2: The couch being set on fire produced all of those
Speaker 2: things that as being used as evidence against this guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is this was a huge chaine for
Speaker 1: Lin Tidi personally as an investigator. He was basically like
Speaker 1: he said, I had an epiphany, you know, almost in
Speaker 1: a guy to die based on these theories that were
Speaker 1: a load of crap, was his quote. So that not
Speaker 1: only sort of changed his way of thinking, it started
Speaker 1: a change in the industry. But like you mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: one of the problems is is that getting that stuff
Speaker 1: to trickle down to the local, you know, level, is
Speaker 1: really really hard, especially in a profession where they seemed
Speaker 1: really really kind of stuck in these old methods of
Speaker 1: the like i'll just call it the de Niro.
Speaker 2: Way, that's a great, great name, and it.
Speaker 1: Was really hard to get that information. Even if they
Speaker 1: got the information, a lot of them were still like, now,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not a science. It is a lot
Speaker 1: of intuition, so much so that in nineteen ninety seven
Speaker 1: the International Association of Arts Investigators argued against the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: There was something called the Dalbert Standard, which basically said
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety three that like, hey, the scientific method
Speaker 1: has to be used if you're an expert testifying at
Speaker 1: a trial. And they said, no, no, no, that's great,
Speaker 1: but not for us, because this isn't a science and
Speaker 1: we should be exempted from that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was nineteen ninety seven. Paul Kirk wrote the
Speaker 2: book in nineteen sixty nine. Everybody remember, and so you'd think, okay,
Speaker 2: surely shortly after that the industry would have come around,
Speaker 2: and that's absolutely not true. In twenty eleven, the National
Speaker 2: Fire Protection Association, which now puts out what's considered like
Speaker 2: the gold standard manual on arson or fire investigation. Yeah,
Speaker 2: back in twenty eleven, their manual said that if you
Speaker 2: used the process of elimination and couldn't determine what started
Speaker 2: a fire, you should probably go ahead and assume it
Speaker 2: was arson. So if you didn't know what the cause was,
Speaker 2: go ahead into court and testify that it was probably arson,
Speaker 2: and that guy should get the death penalty for murder
Speaker 2: because of the people who died in the house. Yeah,
Speaker 2: twenty eleven, Chuck.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's probably a good time to talk about that case.
Speaker 1: You mentioned, the Cameron Willingham case. This is this is
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety one. It was in December of ninety
Speaker 1: one in the Corsicana, Texas. Cameron Willingham and Stacey Willingham
Speaker 1: lived in this house burned down, killed their three children.
Speaker 1: Stacy was gone at the time. It was you know,
Speaker 1: just before Christmas, so getting Christmas presents for her kids.
Speaker 1: Cameron said that, you know, there was so much heat
Speaker 1: in smoke that he tried to get his kids but
Speaker 1: couldn't had to get out of the house and call
Speaker 1: for help. Was you know, what he thought was the
Speaker 1: best method. And this was one of those case where
Speaker 1: the local fire assistant fire chief I guess Douglas Fogg,
Speaker 1: and a guy Nammanuel Vasquez, who had a lot of experiences,
Speaker 1: an investigator came in and identified these charring spots, what
Speaker 1: they call poor patterns, like you poured gasoline or something.
Speaker 1: The the patterns that they saw, which is where the
Speaker 1: fires are supposedly started, they found in the hallway where
Speaker 1: the kid's bedroom wasn't at the front door, like this
Speaker 1: was clearly someone trying to trap people inside. And this
Speaker 1: guy did it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that essentially he started by pouring accelerant and the
Speaker 2: kid's bedroom, walked backwards out of the hall while still
Speaker 2: pouring accelerant, and then all the way to the front
Speaker 2: door and then let a match. And this Vasquez guy,
Speaker 2: if he wasn't, if he wasn't one of the people
Speaker 2: that de Niro hung out with, I will be really
Speaker 2: surprised because from what you are describing him, from what
Speaker 2: I've read, he's exactly that kind of guy.
Speaker 1: His work, I mean, it was not ninety one. He
Speaker 1: probably was.
Speaker 2: His work was later criticized, like when we said that
Speaker 2: it's been described as mysticism. They were talking about this
Speaker 2: guy's report on the Willingham case. And he had tons
Speaker 2: of experience, so he was very ry, widely respected in
Speaker 2: the field of fire investigation, something like twelve hundred or
Speaker 2: fourteen hundred fires under his belt as an investigator. The
Speaker 2: thing that sends a red flag up about him is
Speaker 2: he said most of them were arson. There's nowhere on
Speaker 2: the planet where some high percentage of fires like that
Speaker 2: is actually arson. Maybe Detroit in the nineties, maybe Detroit,
Speaker 2: but certainly not just in Texas in general, right where
Speaker 2: this guy was working. So he was apparently one of
Speaker 2: those people. He died in nineteen ninety four, but he
Speaker 2: was apparently one of those investigators who started backwards from
Speaker 2: this was arson or I see that telltale sign of arson.
Speaker 2: So now I have to figure out what else supports
Speaker 2: that theory, And he did, and his report was very damning.
Speaker 2: It was very convincing, and it helped put Cameron Willingham away.
Speaker 2: There were some other things that the prosecution used about
Speaker 2: Cameron Willingham, that is super early nineties, late eighties Texas.
Speaker 2: He had an Iron Maiden poster in the utility room
Speaker 2: that can I play with madness poster you know where
Speaker 2: like somebody's punching through Eddie's head.
Speaker 1: I don't know the post.
Speaker 2: That's true, looking up, it's.
Speaker 1: A work of art. Okay.
Speaker 2: He had the fact that he had an iron Man
Speaker 2: poster up meant that he was interested in death and
Speaker 2: probably involved in Satanism, Like he had a tattoo with
Speaker 2: a skull with a snake around it. So obviously he
Speaker 2: was a killer of children and their whole their whole premise,
Speaker 2: their whole theory was that he had killed murdered his
Speaker 2: two one year old daughters and one two year old
Speaker 2: daughter by fire because they were getting in the way
Speaker 2: of his lifestyle of like hanging out and drinking and
Speaker 2: going out. And he was prosecuted and ended up in
Speaker 2: two thousand and four receiving the death penalty, And most
Speaker 2: people who are familiar with the case point to it
Speaker 2: and say, this is a clear example of an innocent
Speaker 2: person being executed.
Speaker 1: That's right. In two thousand and four is many years later. Obviously,
Speaker 1: he was scheduled for execution, and a guy named Gerald Hurst,
Speaker 1: who was an investigator who had gotten some previous charges
Speaker 1: dropped against someone else in a similar case. Some people
Speaker 1: got together who were, you know, supporting Willingham and said, hey,
Speaker 1: you know you're you're the best at getting someone off.
Speaker 1: You don't think he did this? Can you help? He
Speaker 1: went in and said, well, first of all, the report
Speaker 1: from Vasquez, the first line says, in order to kill fire,
Speaker 1: you have to love it a little bit. And that's
Speaker 1: just that's just weird. It's a red flag. No. He
Speaker 1: looked in and saw a lot of issues with their work.
Speaker 1: First of all, the assumption that only and this is
Speaker 1: one of the big ones, like only an accelerant could
Speaker 1: have caused a fire this hot. That's one that you
Speaker 1: see or used to see at least a lot in
Speaker 1: arson investigations, like it had to be gasoline or something
Speaker 1: because it was so hot. The craze glass again, that's
Speaker 1: another one. We've already been over that. And then he
Speaker 1: started just looking at the account. The more he looked
Speaker 1: at it, he was like, you know what this seems
Speaker 1: like it really or the evidence. He said, the more
Speaker 1: I look at this, this looks like it really matches
Speaker 1: up with his account of what happened. The other thing
Speaker 1: we didn't mention too is that they found mineral spirits
Speaker 1: at the house and when Hirst looked into it, he
Speaker 1: was like, this mineral spirit they found was on the
Speaker 1: front porch by the by the grill, and that's what
Speaker 1: he used it for, right, So like that's not a
Speaker 1: piece of evidence.
Speaker 2: No, So this guy, this investigator, gerald Hurst, just completely
Speaker 2: demolished the evidence that was used to convict and eventually
Speaker 2: execute Cameron Willingham. But the Board of Parole and Pardons
Speaker 2: is like they got the report and they apparently didn't
Speaker 2: open it and voted to uphold the conviction and execution
Speaker 2: and so like this is a this is I think
Speaker 2: when the Innocence Project was just starting. I don't even
Speaker 2: know if they'd come around by this time. The problem
Speaker 2: the problem with Arson cases because other people have gotten
Speaker 2: off thanks to people like gerald Hurst who've come back
Speaker 2: and been like hey, hey, hey, like criminal courts aren't
Speaker 2: super savvy, and you're still listening to Arson investigators who
Speaker 2: don't who are using folklore on the stand to convict people.
Speaker 2: Here's an actual scientific analysis of what the evidence shows,
Speaker 2: like it can get people off, but it's so not
Speaker 2: a smoking gun like DNA evidence is. Instead, it's there's
Speaker 2: a different interpretation, and it's quite possible it wasn't arson.
Speaker 2: And is that enough to reverse a conviction and set
Speaker 2: somebody free from prison. Not necessarily, So it's still kind
Speaker 2: of like a there's still plenty of people probably who
Speaker 2: were convicted of arson on junk science that are still
Speaker 2: in prison. I guess what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 1: All right, should we we need to take another break, right,
Speaker 1: I think so, all right, let's take another break. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about where we are today with Urson investigation. Like
Speaker 1: truly things have changed.
Speaker 2: Right, surely?
Speaker 1: All right, So you know, if you follow the news there,
Speaker 1: you can you can see a lot of I guess
Speaker 1: ground being gained as far as overturning convictions on arson.
Speaker 1: But it's a tough one, like you were talking about
Speaker 1: before their break, it's you know, it's hard to get overturned.
Speaker 1: A lot of the evidence has just gone obviously because
Speaker 1: it was a fire, or maybe the investigation to begin with,
Speaker 1: was it done well and stuff wasn't saved. So it's
Speaker 1: just it's a hard thing to get overturned, even with
Speaker 1: the new science that we have these days. It's not
Speaker 1: like a lot of other cases. There's the NFPA nine
Speaker 1: Colon Guide for Fire and Explosive Investigation, which this was
Speaker 1: published in nineteen ninety two to begin with, and this
Speaker 1: is the gold standard you're talking about.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, it's the gold standard now. It's also i
Speaker 2: think the same manual that said just assume it's arson
Speaker 2: if you can't figure out what started it.
Speaker 1: Well, they've been updating it obviously every year, which is
Speaker 1: what they do with guides like this. They just i
Speaker 1: guess ripped a lot of pages out and this is
Speaker 1: sort of it's a book, though that's not as much.
Speaker 1: It's aimed more toward like surance companies and law firms
Speaker 1: because a lot of this stuff is like a lot
Speaker 1: of times when you see something really investigated or reversed,
Speaker 1: it's because of a big civil case against like a
Speaker 1: drapery manufacturer or something that's getting sued because their their
Speaker 1: curtains went up, you know, too fast or something, and
Speaker 1: so they had the kind of money to pour into
Speaker 1: a defense that wouldn't happen in a criminal trial.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so over time, civil courts have become way more
Speaker 2: savvy as far as fire investigation goes as on the whole,
Speaker 2: compared to criminal courts. In criminal courts, it's still very
Speaker 2: possible that kind of pretty poor evidence can be admitted
Speaker 2: and used against somebody. And that's not just the courts
Speaker 2: who are at fault, like it's the investigators themselves who
Speaker 2: are at this point resistant to change. If you're not
Speaker 2: getting on board with the idea that science is showing, like, yes,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of stuff that's wrong with traditional arson
Speaker 2: investigation or fire investigation. You're just you're you're you're resisting now.
Speaker 2: There's just it's been disseminated too widely for too long.
Speaker 2: And I mean, I guess I can understand where that
Speaker 2: resistance comes from. Because all this what your training was
Speaker 2: handed down from people who had decades of experience and
Speaker 2: knew what they were talking about, and you venerated them
Speaker 2: because they were an old veteran of the fire department
Speaker 2: or something like that. Your beliefs are now being challenged
Speaker 2: or intuition is being derided as superstition in folklore, and
Speaker 2: you're probably being treated like a bumpkin. And then you
Speaker 2: also probably believe that these eggheads are freeing convicted arsonists
Speaker 2: from prison or trying to at least, So what the
Speaker 2: hell's going on the world is topsy turvy upside down?
Speaker 2: I don't like, I'm not DeNiro, I've hung out with
Speaker 2: any arson investigators, but I would suspect based on everything
Speaker 2: I've read, that that would account for any resistance or
Speaker 2: pockets of resistance that are still left.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say so probably, And you know what,
Speaker 1: it's probably one of the things that as people age
Speaker 1: out and retire, the new generation, a better understanding will
Speaker 1: probably you know, probably be the one in the forefront,
Speaker 1: I would hope. So we'll talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: how you can actually find the origin point of a
Speaker 1: fire in a more scientific way. It's a tough thing,
Speaker 1: obviously to find where a fire started once a fire
Speaker 1: has like fully burned down a house. There have been studies,
Speaker 1: even though it was one cited by Beattie and Oliva Oliva, Oliva,
Speaker 1: Sure you don't need that if a fire started to
Speaker 1: burn for just three minutes after the flashover happened, that
Speaker 1: investigators basically couldn't tell what quadrant of a room, not
Speaker 1: even like the very spot, but even what quadrant that
Speaker 1: the fire originated in any better than chance, right three
Speaker 1: minutes after the flashover. Yeah, but so all this to say,
Speaker 1: it's really really hard to do, oh.
Speaker 2: For sure, because the flashover again, it's full involvement the
Speaker 2: entire rooms on fire. They did say that within if
Speaker 2: the fires put out within thirty seconds of flashover, they're
Speaker 2: right about eighty four percent of the time.
Speaker 1: Big difference.
Speaker 2: That is a big difference. But they have found that
Speaker 2: there are some reliable ways of tracing the origin of
Speaker 2: fires or seeing the source of fires. Right, So if
Speaker 2: the V shape I don't think we ever said that
Speaker 2: V shaped char that used to be considered to literally
Speaker 2: point to the source of the fire, those form were opposite.
Speaker 2: Where an oxygen source enters in a a flashover room
Speaker 2: or room that's in flashover, it just forms that, right.
Speaker 2: Or They also found that like puddling, those puddle marks
Speaker 2: poor marks that clearly show accelerate those curtains on fire
Speaker 2: from that drape manufacturer, when they fall and hit the
Speaker 2: ground and burn, they can leave the same kind of marks. Right,
Speaker 2: So if you have all these confusing signs that just
Speaker 2: don't make sense anymore, how do you find the source
Speaker 2: of a fire? And as I was saying, they have
Speaker 2: established there are some that are just genuinely tell tale
Speaker 2: and they might not say this is arson, but they
Speaker 2: can kind of lead you to where the origin of
Speaker 2: a fire was and hopefully you can figure it out
Speaker 2: from there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. One way is to look at the
Speaker 1: bodies of victims. It's obviously a very sad way to
Speaker 1: investigate something, but you have to do it. And they
Speaker 1: have found that people if you're really really close to
Speaker 1: the fire, you know, I think most people think like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: you don't die from the fire, you die from a
Speaker 1: carbon monoxide poisoning. That is true if you were further
Speaker 1: away from the fire. If you were very close to
Speaker 1: that fire, you usually die. You die from edema, in
Speaker 1: which the airwaves of your body swell up from the
Speaker 1: heat and your organs shut down from the heat, which
Speaker 1: is I gotta imagine a terrible, terrible way to go, right.
Speaker 2: So, depending on the arrangement of the bodies throughout like
Speaker 2: a house, you can kind of trace who was closer
Speaker 2: to the origin of the fire, the source of the.
Speaker 1: Fire, right or at least where it was, you know, hottest, right, okay,
Speaker 1: which isn't always where it started as we know.
Speaker 2: Know that's true. There's another one called arcing that's pretty interesting.
Speaker 2: As a fire melts the insulation on wires in the house,
Speaker 2: like the electrical wire, the electricity can jump from one
Speaker 2: exposed wire to another and it causes an arc the
Speaker 2: and that's a you can tell that just by looking
Speaker 2: at and two electrical wires where an arc happened. That
Speaker 2: can only happen while the power's on, So you can
Speaker 2: actually kind of say, okay, this arc happened at this
Speaker 2: point in the fire because the power went out at
Speaker 2: this point or we turned the power off at this point,
Speaker 2: so this arc couldn't have happened after that, which helps
Speaker 2: walk you backward toward the origin point of the fire
Speaker 2: or the direction of yeah, timing wise.
Speaker 1: They also have just a great database now. It's called
Speaker 1: the Ignitable Liquid's Reference Collection Database or the il RCD.
Speaker 1: Not bad, didn't spell anything, but that's fine thing. And
Speaker 1: that's basically if you find just any flammable liquid at
Speaker 1: the fire site, then you can descend it to the
Speaker 1: lab and they can at least tell you what it is.
Speaker 2: Right. There's also guidelines now for people who aren't fire
Speaker 2: investigators but are likely going to be the first people
Speaker 2: on the scene, like firefighters or ems, that kind of thing,
Speaker 2: And it's just stuff to be on the lookout for
Speaker 2: so that you can you can tell fire investigators later
Speaker 2: what you saw. Really? Yeah, what do they have? An
Speaker 2: iron main poster? That's one You had to move a
Speaker 2: refrigerator to open a door to vent the fire or
Speaker 2: something like that. Was the refrigerator plugged in? Was the
Speaker 2: appliance turned on this space heater that we think might
Speaker 2: have been the cause? Was it in the honor off position?
Speaker 2: When you show up to a scene, are you seeing
Speaker 2: somebody who you've seen other scenes? And firefighters are like, yes,
Speaker 2: I have the paramedic did it right? Like no, no, no,
Speaker 2: like in the crowd, like not working the fire like
Speaker 2: somebody who's in the crowd and they're like, oh, no,
Speaker 2: I haven't seen Anyboddy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good one. If there were any like
Speaker 1: electrical line issue that you could see or whether or
Speaker 1: like if you see you know, a big winds cause
Speaker 1: a treat to fall nearby or something. Those are kind
Speaker 1: of obvious things, but again these are for non investigators.
Speaker 2: What's another one another one keeping track of what people
Speaker 2: who are witnesses or who were in the house or
Speaker 2: the structure when it caught fire are saying and telling you, right,
Speaker 2: especially if they say something like the paramedic did it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, I got. I got interviewed one time by
Speaker 1: a fire investigator. What Yeah, I kind of forgot about this.
Speaker 1: My brother and I we used to love exploring sort
Speaker 1: of abandoned homes and things. No, no, no, although I
Speaker 1: did have a little fire thing for a little while.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people go through that phase.
Speaker 1: Nothing big, just like you know, I'm going to set
Speaker 1: this stick on fire in the woods. Very dangerous though,
Speaker 1: even though nothing happened by the get clear. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: was a abandoned shed across the street from us. It
Speaker 1: was a house that people moved out. New people moved
Speaker 1: in and built a really big house, but left this
Speaker 1: old shed and we had been in it exploring and
Speaker 1: it was just just full of junk, and we as
Speaker 1: a young child I was I was probably like ten
Speaker 1: years old, was quizzed by the uh. I guess the
Speaker 1: cops a couple of weeks later, my brother and I
Speaker 1: because it turns out that the people said that there
Speaker 1: were a lot of really expensive things in there, and
Speaker 1: it was a big insurance playing and I think he
Speaker 1: burned it down and said there was a bunch of
Speaker 1: expensive stuff and he was I believe looking back, he
Speaker 1: was thwarted by those darn kids.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: And no, we didn't take our dog in there, but
Speaker 1: I remember just that was like, no, man, there was
Speaker 1: a mannequin and a bunch of files and just some
Speaker 1: frame pictures. It was junk. It was junk.
Speaker 2: You're like, I remember the mannequin Bekis Scott pretended to
Speaker 2: kiss it. I think he actually did kiss it.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't remember. We never had to
Speaker 1: like go into quart or anything. So I'll have to
Speaker 1: ask my mom kind of what happened with that. But
Speaker 1: just remember that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what a great anecdote, dude, to end this with.
Speaker 1: Well, I appreciate that. So I made it all up.
Speaker 2: That's fine, we'll edit that out. I guess. I guess
Speaker 2: the upshot of this is, if you know a fire
Speaker 2: investigator and arson investigator, give him a hug and say,
Speaker 2: let's stick to the science. If you want to know
Speaker 2: more about that kind of thing, go out and research.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of really interesting stuff to read about
Speaker 2: Arson investigation, and you could definitely do worse than reading
Speaker 2: David Grand's Trial by Fire in the New Yorker and
Speaker 2: Douglas Stars article in Discover magazine. Think a spark of science,
Speaker 2: maybe something like that. Check it out. Oh that means
Speaker 2: the time for listener mail. Sorry, I fell down on
Speaker 2: my duties.
Speaker 1: That's right, brutalism follow up here. Hey guys. While listening
Speaker 1: to that episode, I was delighted at the mention of
Speaker 1: Habitat sixty seven. As a McGill student, Habitat sixty seven
Speaker 1: has been touched on in a number of my classes,
Speaker 1: especially because this architectural staple in Montreal was designed by
Speaker 1: McGill alumni Mosha Safti. I wanted to share a fun
Speaker 1: fact about the development of Habitat that I learned in
Speaker 1: art history a few years ago. During the design process,
Speaker 1: Safety use Lego blocks to help him model the building design.
Speaker 1: In fact, he used so many Lego blocks that he
Speaker 1: bought out all of the legos at a number of
Speaker 1: Montreal toy stores. Pretty fun anyway, Thanks Roby, do you guys?
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know was always my first podcast recommendation
Speaker 1: to others and has helped me become a more inquisitive
Speaker 1: person over the last few years. So keep up the
Speaker 1: good work. And that is from Kestrel Musculman.
Speaker 2: Great name, great name for sure, Thanks for that story.
Speaker 2: We appreciate it. The great leg shortage of sixty something
Speaker 2: in Montreal. If you want to get in touch with
Speaker 2: us like Kestrel did man that is a great name,
Speaker 2: you can email us. Send us an email to Stuff
Speaker 2: podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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