

# INFERNO

# AN INQUIRY INTO THE WILLINGHAM FIRE

Published by J Bennett Allen on Smashwords

Copyright 2011 by J Bennett Allen

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Visit the Skeptical Juror website at http://www.skepticaljuror.com

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### Introduction

Amber was once again drawn to the heater, to its bright flickering flame, to its warmth, to its forbidden mysteries and charms. Both Mommy and Daddy had caught her before, putting things too close to it. Daddy had even given her whuppings, but he was asleep in the other room, and Mommy was not even home.

Perhaps she wanted to move some of the fire from the heater to her Little Tykes oven sitting nearby. Perhaps she simply wanted to put something inside the heater and watch it disappear.

Maybe a piece of drawing paper. Maybe one of her socks, the one she wasn't wearing when she was pulled barely alive from the house. Maybe it was the sock that was never found.

Whatever it was, when it burned it was scarier than the fire in the heater. It burned closer and closer to her finger and her thumb as she held it at arm's length. But it was so hot. It was the hottest, scariest thing she had felt, ever, so she flung it away, and then the curtain was on fire. The curtain between the heater and her little oven was on fire. She was going to get in trouble again. She was going to get another whupping.

Fear of anger and whuppings, though, were quickly overcome by horror. The fire was growing larger and larger and scarier and scarier. She retreated as the fire climbed the wall to the ceiling. The smoke got inside her and made her cough. She could feel the heat on her skin, on her face and neck and shoulders. She had to get away, but the gate was there, blocking the doorway, keeping her from the safety of her Daddy's arms.

Her sisters too were scared. They were crawling away as fast as they could, crawling towards the far corner of the room. One of them made it underneath the crib.

Now the top of the room was on fire, and it was getting dark even though it was just morning outside. She couldn't breath and face burned, and her neck and her bare shoulders, and she wasn't even close to the fire. She didn't want to keep it a secret any more. She wanted her Daddy to save her. She screamed and screamed but he didn't come.

So she did what her sisters could not do. She climbed the child gate and ran to her Daddy's room, screaming for him.

"Daddy, Daddy!"

She couldn't see him because the smoke was there too, in his room. It was everywhere. She could hear him though. He was yelling at her to run, to go outside. But the fire was there where he wanted her to run, and she wanted _him_ to save her. She climbed into his bed, but he wasn't there.

Instead of him saving her, she would save him. She would save him with her screams and her pleas, by awakening him, by telling him of the fire, by taking his place in the bed, by breathing in the smoke that would have filled his lungs instead of hers.

It wasn't heroism that caused Amber to take her Daddy's place. A two-year-old cannot be heroic. She can only be afraid of fire and smoke and dark. She can only be expected to seek the safety of Mommy or Daddy. Amber did everything a two-year-old could and should do. She screamed, she climbed the gate, and she ran for help. In doing so, she bought a reprieve for her father.

The fire, however, would not be denied. Disguised first as justice and then as a needle, it would eventually consume her father just as surely as it had consumed her sisters, just as surely as it consumed her.

## TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1: Overview

Chapter 2: The House

Chapter 3: What Willingham Told His Relatives and a Friend

Chapter 4: What Willingham Told the Police

Chapter 5: What Douglas Fogg Told the Jury

Chapter 6: What James Palos Told the Jury

Chapter 7: What Manuel Vasquez Told the Jury

Chapter 8: What Manuel Vasquez Wrote in His Report

Chapter 9: What the Neighbors Saw

Chapter 10: What Today's Experts Say

Chapter 11: Defense Theory

Chapter 12: Volume Considerations

Chapter 13: The Electrical System

Chapter 14: The Space Heater

Chapter 15: The Cause of the Willingham Fire

Notes

About the Author

## Chapter 1: Overview

The house at 1213 West 11th Avenue in Corsicana, Texas burned on December 23, 1991.

The house was then occupied by Cameron Todd Willingham, his two-year-old daughter Amber, and his one-year-old twin daughters Kameron and Karmon. Stacy Willingham, his wife and mother of the children, was not home at the time of the fire.

Amber, Kameron and Karmon died in the fire. Cameron Todd Willingham escaped with some loss of head hair and singeing of the hair that remained; singed eyebrows, eyelashes, and chest hair; singed nasal hairs and soot in his throat; first degree burns on his face, ears, and neck; a two-inch burn on his right shoulder.

Willingham was charged, tried, convicted, and executed for setting fire to his house and thereby murdering his daughters.

Debate regarding the Willingham execution has centered around the issue of arson. The pre-eminent fire scientists of our time argue that the evidence of arson used against Willingham at his trial was based on outdated rules of thumb. They do not propose a cause of the fire, nor do they explicitly rule out arson as a possibility. They argue only that a determination of arson was not justified based on the evidence, given today's understanding of fire cause and behavior.

Those defending the conviction argue that the experts who testified at the Willingham trial made a state-of-the-art determination of arson. Though a few die-hards argue still that the evidence would support a determination of arson even today, most argue instead that Willingham's behavior before and after the fire was sufficiently indicative of guilt to justify a conviction, even in the absence of a formal arson conclusion.

Those defending the conviction argue further that the gas and electrical systems were excluded as a cause of the fire, and that no one has disputed that exclusion. They argue that arson remains the only possible cause of the fire, and Willingham the only possible arsonist.

In this monograph, I discuss the various theories regarding the cause of the Willingham fire. Unlike my predecessors, I dare to suggest a specific cause of the fire other than arson. I argue that the fire was caused by two-year-old Amber playing with the open-flame space heater in her room. I conclude that Willingham was factually innocent of the crime for which he was executed.

## Chapter 2: The House

The house that burned was a three-bedroom, one-bath, single-floor rental house. The front of the Willingham house is shown below as it appeared soon after the fire. The image is a view looking south.

The floor plan of the Willingham house is shown below. South is at the top.

The three bedrooms were originally the three rooms located along the right side of the image. The uppermost of those three bedrooms was, at the time of the fire, being used as a utility room. The children's bedroom, now located to the left of the image, was originally located at the bottom right of the image. The Willinghams switched the children's bedroom and the living room to provide more room for the children to sleep and play. From Willingham's police interview:

_Willingham_ : Well you see, the room where the babies was at, that used to be the living room, you know that's why it had a ceiling fan and everything in it. Well as they got a little older you know, they always played together and everything. To start with we had the twins, in this room, we had Amber in here and we was in here. Well as they got a little older, we thought well, we'll just change it around a little bit, give them one big room for them to be in, put all their toys in one room. So we moved the twins and Amber into here, you know we put a twin here and a twin, oh this is the front porch. Okay there was a twin here, a twin here and Amber was here.

There was a child gate separating the children's bedroom from the hallway. The door to the children's bedroom had been removed.

There was a Christmas tree in the living room.

There was no stove in the house. The Willinghams instead used a two-burner hot plate, a microwave, and a FryDaddy electric deep fryer.

There was no phone in the house.

The Willinghams owned a washer and a dryer. Those appliances were presumably kept in the utility room.

The floors were originally made from oak. At some point, the oak wood floor was covered by tar paper, plywood, and vinyl tile. There were throw rugs and a patch of carpet in the living room. There was a patch of carpet in each of the bedrooms. The patch of carpet in the children's bedroom was large enough to define a play area for the children.

The house was poorly insulated and was cold in the winter. Stacy sealed the back door in the kitchen to reduce the leaks.

_Willingham_ : Well Stacy had the back door sealed off. She had uh, in that kitchen you can look on the floor, you can see gaps, like this tall some places. That house was cold, you know. That might have been why we got it so cheap, but it was cold. I know for a fact that there was no insulation in that house you know from what you could see in the attic or whatever. But every winter Stacy would always put, you know she'd take cloths and stuff and window seals and tape up all the holes and then put tin foil around the windows, you know, to keep the heat in and to you know keep it cool in the summertime and stuff. Well, every winter she would always, you know, she'd take it down in the summertime, but every winter she would, uh, tape the back door and from outside she'd put a plastic bag over the screen door then shut the screen door and then shut the back door. And when she'd shut the back door, she'd cram all the holes with towels and things to keep the weather out. And then she had a big blanket that she would hang over the door and then she'd duct tape all that up. The only reason the ice box was there was because a few months earlier our ice box was going on the fritz and so I bought this other one, the one that was against the door, I bought it for thirty dollars and was gonna, we was gonna fix it but we never got the money to have anybody put Freon in it, so this year when she did that, she pushed the ice box against the back door you know.

There were three gas-fired open-flame heaters in the house. They were located as show in the floor plan, repeated below.

The heater in the hallway is visible in the fire scene photo below. It is there along the right side of the hallway, near the center of the photo.

The heater in the children's bedroom is visible in the photo below. The area around the heater had been cleaned before the photo was taken.

## Chapter 3: What Willingham Told His Relatives and a Friend

### His Father

On the day of the fire, Gene Willingham, Todd's father, spoke with Todd about the fire. From Gene Willingham's police interview, we learn the following information, which may be relevant to determining the cause of the fire:

_Gene Willingham:_ He said that he was asleep when he heard someone yell "Daddy, Daddy." He said that he assumed it was Amber. He said that when he woke up the smoke was so thick that he couldn't see. He said that he put his pants on and due to the smoke he got down on his hands and knees and upon searching for Amber he couldn't find her. He yelled "Amber, get out if you can." He said that he crawled to the babies' room and he stepped over the gate. Todd said that he was able to crawl on the floor because there was no fire on the floor. Todd said that all of the fire was above him. Once inside the babies' room he still couldn't see because of the smoke and while crawling around on the floor he still couldn't find any of the children. He said that the ceiling then started to fall down and he had to get out. He said that he made his way down the hall and out the front door which Todd said always remained unlocked because he did not have the key to lock and unlock the door. After he got a fresh breath of air he said that he tried to go back inside but he couldn't.

In her interview with the police, Stacy confirmed the issue of the front door lock.

Stacy Willingham: Okay, I know why I didn't lock the front door now. Okay, our door doesn't, it locks, but we don't have a key to it. We lost our key, that's why I didn't, well I, I, I don't know, sometimes, you know, well I used to go to work at eight in the morning and, and you know I would lock it 'cause that was too early, I knew everybody would be asleep, but you know that, I didn't lock it anymore because you know I lost the key and sometimes I would forget stuff and come back home and have to wake everybody up and so I didn't want do that and with me especially leaving at nine twenty and knowin' I'm gonna be in town, I thought well, I don't remember, I forgettin' nothin' now, but maybe I will, I don't want to wake everybody up.

Before his execution, Willingham conceded that he lied about one and only one portion of his story. From David Grann's _New Yorker_ article "Trial by Fire":

_Grann:_ Earlier, he had confessed to his parents that there was one thing about the day of the fire he had lied about. He said that he had never actually crawled into the children's room. "I just didn't want people to think I was a coward," he said. [Gerald] Hurst told me, "People who have never been in a fire don't understand why those who survive often can't rescue the victims. They have no concept of what a fire is like."

### A Friend

On the day after Christmas, the day before the children's funeral, Willingham talked to his friend Sherry Cooley about the fire. From Cooley's police interview, we learn the following:

_Sherry Cooley:_ He told me he had put the twins to bed on the floor to go to sleep after giving them their bottle. He said he then put Amber in the same room with the twins and then put up the child gate at the door. He said that he then went to sleep. He said that he then woke up when Amber yelled "Daddy, Daddy" but due to the smoke being so thick, he couldn't see Amber or even the bed he was laying on. Todd then said he made his way to the room where the twins were. He said that as he was stepping over the gate, he leaned against the door and it was so hot he had to jerk it back. This left a burn on his hand. Once inside the twins' room he said that the smoke was so thick that he couldn't find the twins and even mistaken [sic] the stuffed animals for the twins. He said that the fire was so intense that he had to keep putting his hair out of fire. He said that he finally couldn't stand the smoke anymore and that he had to kick the front door open to get out of the house. When I asked him how he thought the fire started he said that due to the sparks coming out of the sockets he felt that it was electrical.

The front door opened to the inside and was apparently unlocked. It is odd, therefore, that Sherry Cooley reported that Willingham told her he had kicked the front door open to escape. Willingham's father made no such claim.

### His Half-Brother

While at the children's funeral, Monte Willingham, Todd's half-brother, asked Todd what happened. From Monte's police interview, we learn the following:

_Monte Willingham:_ He said that he woke up when Amber yelled "Daddy, Daddy." He said that he woke up and tried to find Amber but he couldn't. He said that he then went to the twins' room to look for the twins but he couldn't find them. He said that the ceiling then started to fall down and he had to go outside of the house to get some fresh air. He tried to get back inside but he couldn't because the fire was too bad.

### His Step-Mother

After the children's funeral, Eugenia Williams, Todd's step-mother, met with Todd at her house in Ardmore, Texas. She asked him what had happened. From her police interview, we learn the following:

_Eugenia Williams:_ He told me that Stacy had woke him up about 9:15 AM at which time they put the children in the twins' room with a child gate. He said that after Stacy left he went back to sleep with the children still in the twins' room. He then said that he woke up when Amber yelled, "Daddy, Daddy." When he woke up he found the room filled with thick black smoke. He said that he got up immediately and put his pants on. He thought that Amber had yelled that from the twins' room so he ran to that room. He said that the fire and smoke was so bad that he couldn't stand up because his hair kept catching on fire. Due to the smoke, he got on his hands and knees and searched for the children. He said that he couldn't find them and he even [mistook] a doll for one of the children. He said that the smoke was so bad that he went out of the front door but he doesn't remember how he got out. After Todd calmed down and regained his composure he said that "Now I'm not sure if it was Amber that woke me up or not."

### His Wife

On New Year's Eve, Stacy Willingham gave an extended interview to police and fire officials. The interview lasted from 11:10 to 11:30 AM. Based on that interview, we learn that Stacy arose around 7:30 or 8:00 AM. She woke the three girls, changed their diapers, dressed them, gave them each a bottle, and allowed them to play while she got ready for work. She remembers specifically that she left for work, at the Salvation Army, around 9:20 AM.

Below are discontinuous segments from her interview. Before presenting them, I want to clarify some editorial changes I have introduced.

The person who transcribed the interview apparently attempted to replicate Stacy's speech mannerisms by recording words such as hollering and crying as hollerin' and cryin'. I have returned the trailing 'g' to its proper place.

Similarly, the person who transcribed the interview usually recorded Stacy as saying 'cause rather than because, and 'em rather than them. I have replaced words having leading apostrophes with their more proper counterpart.

As will many people in a nervous state, Stacy tended to run her sentences together. I have broken many of the transcribed run-on sentences into multiple, smaller sentences.

Except as noted above, I have not otherwise changed the transcript without so indicating with brackets or ellipses.

_Stacy_ : Todd told me that, he uh, he woke up and Amber was screaming "Daddy, Daddy" and he jumped up. He said when he jumped up, he started gagging and he couldn't see. So he went, felt for his pants and put them on, then went straight to the twins' room, or it's the kids' room, so, and was feeling down on the floor. He couldn't feel the kids and stuff and he couldn't find Amber. Said he couldn't find Amber, couldn't hear her. He kept screaming for her but she wouldn't never answer for him. And so, uh, he said he tried kicking down the door and stuff and that he got it down and, uh, went outside and caught, tried to catch his breath. Then he went around to get back in the house, but he said he couldn't get back in.

_Stacy_ : He said the door was on fire. Said it was on fire.

_Stacy_ : He told me that, he, he woke up and Amber was screaming "Daddy, Daddy" and he jumped up, put his pants on. He said when he got up, when he first just jumped out of the bed, he said he couldn't, he couldn't breathe. He started gagging because he then couldn't see nothing because it was so black, the smoke was so black and that he was putting his pants on and, and, uh, he said the first thing that he thought about was the twins' room, or the kids' room, because that's where they were all sleeping. And he, uh, went in there and he was screaming for Amber to get out, you know get out the door, get out, and he was calling her

_Stacy_ : He, he, when he, he said when he heard Amber say "Daddy, Daddy" he automatically jumped up and ran to the kids' room because that's where they were all asleep.

_Stacy_ : He thought they were all still in the bedroom, because that's where he'd laid them down and, um, and then, um, he said he was telling Amber, calling for her name and everything and she wouldn't answer. Then he was in the kids' room, you know, feeling of the floor trying to find them and everything. And he said he couldn't find them, and he started screaming again for Amber's name and she wouldn't never answer him. He couldn't find her, so he started trying to kick down the door and stuff, and then apparently he got it down. And then he went outside to catch his breath and stuff and he started back, you know, into the house, but he says he couldn't get in because of the, you know, the flames and stuff.

_Stacy_ : He told me the door was on fire. He said he couldn't open it or nothing, it was just on fire.... He said he kicked it down and then he just went through it.

_Stacy_ : He could just hear her and he thought, he said, he said when he heard her. All he could, he knew he put them all three in their rooms and put them, you know, to just, to go to sleep and he said, uh, that's what he, what he thought they were all still there and when he couldn't find them, he started, you know, he was screaming for her to get out the door. And he started screaming for her again because he couldn't find her and she would never answer him.

## Chapter 4: What Willingham Told the Police

On New Year's Eve, Willingham gave an extended interview to police and fire officials. The interview lasted from 11:43 AM to 1:10 PM. Below, I present excerpts from the transcript of that interview. First, however, I describe the editorial changes I have introduced.

Willingham had a propensity to use the speaking crutch "you know" extensively. He used it so frequently that the original transcription is both difficult and annoying to read. I have therefore removed each instance of "you know" from the excerpts I include below.

Willingham had a propensity to join sentences using the word "and." That usage also makes the transcription difficult and annoying to read. I have therefore replaced most such uses of the word "and" with punctuation and capitalization.

Willingham started many thoughts which he never completed. I suspect this is common in such interviews. These unfinished thoughts also add to the difficulty of understanding his statements. I have therefore removed most of them.

The person who transcribed the interview sometimes recorded Willingham as saying "because" and sometimes as saying "cause." I present all such usage as "because."

Except as noted above, I have not otherwise changed the transcript without so indicating with brackets or ellipses.

I have organized the excerpts by topic rather than sequentially as they were reported. Within a topic, the excerpts are presented in the sequence they were spoken.

### Events Immediately Preceding the Fire

_Willingham:_ I remember when I woke up it was 9:13. I sat there and [Stacy] left [for work] and everything. Then after she got out of the driveway, I heard the twins cry. So I got up and gave them a bottle. They was [on] the floor at that time. We always let them sleep in the floor there, and I gave them a bottle. Amber was in her bed, so I told her, I said "Do you wanna get up and come in there with Daddy?" She said no, so I told her "Well, lay back down there." So I went back to the bedroom and went back to sleep.

### Being Awakened

_Willingham:_ The next thing I remember is hearing "Daddy, Daddy!" When I finally woke up, when I heard that last "Daddy" and I woke up, the house was already full of smoke. It was so thick in there already, I couldn't even see where the exits was from the bedroom. It was so smoky in there already.

_Willingham:_ I was laying on my back on the right side of the bed. When I woke up and opened my eyes and seen the smoke, I never heard her again. I heard the "Daddy, Daddy" and I clicked and opened my eyes. That was last time that I ever heard her, because I called her name over and over again. "Amber, Amber, Amber. Where you at Amber? Amber!" I never heard her again. She never answered me again.

### Getting out of Bed

_Willingham:_ When I got up and felt around on the floor for a pair of pants, and finally got a pair of pants on, the only thing I could think to say was "Oh God, Amber, get out of the house! Get out of the house!" I knew that she was in her room. When I went to bed, I knew she was in her room, so that was the first place I thought of trying to get to.

### Examining the Hallway

_Willingham:_ It was the first time in my life that I had ever been in a place that was so dark and so smoky that you had to feel your way around. You couldn't see anything. The only place you could tell, the only place you could distinctively tell in the house was the kitchen... because that was the only place that wasn't full of smoke.

_Willingham:_ I noticed that I could still see formations and stuff in the kitchen, but as toward the front of the house, you couldn't see nothing but black.

_Willingham:_ There wasn't as much smoke in [the kitchen]. I could tell that from standing in the hall that there wasn't as much smoke. So as you look toward the front of the house, though, it was black. Boy! You couldn't seen nothing. Because our door had three windows in the door and I couldn't even see through them. All you could see was black.

_Willingham:_ I never thought about going to the back door, because I knew it would be too much trouble to get all that stuff undone. That's why I went ahead and went to, because that's where my babies was anyway, so that's where I was gonna be anyway, so I knew the front of the house was gonna be the easiest part.

_Willingham:_ I got into the hallway. There was smoke and stuff. I yanked the kitchen door open. I noticed I could still see forms in the kitchen. As I looked toward the front of the house, the house was real black and lots of smoke. That's when I bent down and started making my way to their room. I just kinda of crouched down and walked kinda down the side of the wall.

### Examining the Children's Room

_Willingham:_ After I made my way into the hall, I was crouched down about as far as I could get without crawling, because the smoke was so bad. When I finally made it to the twins' doorway, I knew that there was fire in there. But there was so much smoke in there, I couldn't actually see fire. I could just see orange, and I knew it was already, I could feel the heat real bad already.

_Willingham:_ God, the whole room! The fire was on top. It was in their room. The only place I could ever see fire, it was in their room. And you know, I noticed that it was around top of the walls. It seemed like it wasn't down on the floor, because it wasn't eye level, because I had to look up to see it.

_Willingham:_ I know that I never seen no flames anywhere, except in their room. It was the only place I could have seen flames.

_Willingham:_ The flames was in their room. That's the only place that I recognized flame... Real, very bright orange. Not, not like a campfire orange. Not like an open fire is, where you can see it, because I couldn't see it for the smoke. I could see the orange. I could see the orange glow. It was more like a light. It was more like... real bright lights. Because the smoke had kinda tempered the glare.

_Willingham:_ [The smoke was at] the top of the roof. Around the top [of the] room, around the ceiling part. Where it joins. Where it joins the ceiling and the roof is some more where I could see it. I knew it was up higher. I know it wasn't down low, and it wasn't on the floor, not that I could see. The only place I could see flames was in the top.

_Willingham:_ I never seen any actual flames, I never seen any actual orange flame or anything, nothing that I could relate that would be fire. Because I never seen any fire until I got to this doorway. That was the first time I seen fire.

_Willingham:_ I think it started in their room for the simple fact that that's the only place I'd seen flames.

### Entering the Children's Room

Cameron Todd Willingham claimed he entered the children's bedroom and searched futilely for the children. According to David Grann in his _New Yorker_ article "Trial by Fire," Willingham later confessed to his parents that he lied about one portion of his behavior that day: he never entered the children's bedroom. "I just didn't want people to think I was a coward."

Gerald Hurst explained to David Grann that such behavior was not unusual. "People who have never been in a fire don't understand why those who survive often can't rescue the victims. They have no concept of what a fire is like."

In his extended police interview, Willingham would describe the intensity: "And the fire is not what was singeing my hair. It was the heat, just from standing up. The heat was so great in there that, that it, it just -- Oh God! I never felt anything that hot before."

The excerpts you are about to read regarding Willingham's search in the children's room are fabrications, and obviously so. Willingham claims he stayed in the children's room for two or three minutes. He would have succumbed to the smoke. He would have suffered far more serious burns than he did. Willingham claims he felt the toy plastic slide already melting. The hot, melting plastic would have left evidence of that contact on his fingers.

_Willingham:_ After I got into I got into their room, I stood up. As soon as I stood up, I caught my hair on fire, so I bent back down and put my hair out and just stayed down low. That's when I went to feeling around on the floor, because I knew kinda where I left them. I was feeling for them and everything, and I kept calling Amber's name, and calling her name, and trying to find the babies and stuff. I couldn't find them. I kept looking and finally I felt a baby bottle. I had just gave them a bottle not very long ago. I kept looking for them, and kept looking for them, and I never could find them. And they just wasn't nowhere. They just wasn't nowhere around right there at the time.

_Willingham:_ Finally stuff started falling off the ceiling, I don't know what it was. I guess maybe paper or something, stuff like that. Well something had fell off. I think... something had either fell off the wall or fell off the ceiling, and that's what got my shoulder.

_Willingham:_ I just crouched down and [proceeded] up the hall, and when I got to there I felt the door. I felt their gate. I felt their gate is what I felt. We had a gate there. As I went over the gate into their room, that is when I stood up and my hair was on fire.

_Willingham:_ As I came into the room, I could feel the baby crib there. That's when I went straight to the middle of the room. I was feeling around the floor. I thought I found one of them once, but it was a doll. They had a big doll that was just like a real baby. I picked it up and I started feeling of it and everything. I finally could feel the hair and I knew it wasn't it. So I [threw] it down and got to feeling, and the only thing I ever found was a baby bottle.

_Willingham:_ After I searched the room and stuff, like I said things was starting to fall off the ceiling. What it be was paper, or whatever it was, and things. I made my way back to their door.

_Willingham:_ I knew the dresser was there. I could feel the dresser around them, and I was feeling as far as I could with my hands around in the area. I felt the slide, and the slide had already started to melt. Then I could tell that the slide had already started to decompose. Then I felt all the back here beside Amber's bed. I felt on top of Amber's bed and she wasn't there. So I thought "Well, she's gotta be in here somewhere." I kept feeling for her. I stayed in there as long as I could, but I felt myself passing out, because... I guess you can't stay in very long. I've never been through it before so I can't say. Maybe probably two, three, maybe three and a half minutes that I was actually in their room probably.

_Willingham_ : Then I stayed crouched down the whole time. Well, I had to step over their gate. That was the one of the main reason that I stood higher up. When I got inside their room I just stood up. That's when it caught my hair on fire.

### Exiting the House

_Willingham:_ Finally I got back out of the room and went to the front door. I thought "Naw, I might, I just ought just stay in here." I remember thinking "I'll just stay in here." And I remember then that the door and stuff was already smoking. The door, you know, might already been fixing to catch fire.

_Willingham:_ Then the front door was just right here. I made it from their door and I got to the front door and I checked to make sure whether the door handle was hot or not. And it wasn't, so I just yanked it and just ripped the door open, and went on through the screen and outside the house.

_Willingham:_ The door knob wasn't hot, because I checked the door knob first. I checked the door knob before I went out, and the door knob wasn't hot enough to burn you. Because I remember yanking it open and it didn't burn my skin when I yanked it open.

### Getting his Breath

_Willingham:_ And after I got out the front door, and got through the screen, and got on the front yard, [I] got my breath back.

_Willingham:_ After I got out of the house, I came down the steps. I stumbled more or less down the steps, because I guess from being in there I couldn't really focus real good yet. I stood there and got my breath back.

_Willingham:_ I got down on the ground. I... came straight out the door and kinda fell down the steps because I couldn't see. I was still blinded from being in there.

_Willingham:_ Right then, all I could see was really, just real bad smoke, you know, you could see the roof smoldering from smoke coming through. But see I never stopped right here really. I went straight from the door all the way out into the yard. I got completely out from under the house... the first time as I come down the steps. That's when I sit there and got my breath back.

### Seeing his Neighbors Arrive

_Willingham:_ After I got in the front yard, I seen the neighbors. I guess I kinda seen them, because I knew there was somebody over there. That's when I told them to "Call the fire department. My babies is in there and I can't get them out."

_Willingham:_ I was breathing, trying to get my breath back. That's when I looked up and noticed that the neighbor was outside the house there. I told her to "Call the fire department. My babies is inside. Call the fire department. I can't get them out. Please call the fire department."

### Breaking the Front Windows

_Willingham:_ I got up and was gonna try go back in the house again, but it was already so bad. So there's two windows right here. Well, there was a pool stick that I had been using to prop the Cadillac hood open with.... Well I knocked the windows out with that, you know. I was gonna try and knock the windows out there and try to go back in, but as soon as I was knocking the windows out, the flames were just coming out of the windows.

_Willingham:_ That's when I went back up on the porch. I couldn't get inside the door again. Flames and stuff was already there. That's when I went to the windows. Maybe I could get through the windows.... I busted this window out first. Flames came through it, so I busted this one out and flames came through it. I knew that I wouldn't be able to get through that one either.... The porch and stuff [had] already started catching fire real good then. So I got back off the porch.

_Willingham:_ I went back on the porch to the left window of the house. I broke it out and flames came through the window. They came through as soon as I broke the glass. So I went to the other window and did the same thing, and flames came through there. So I knew I wouldn't be able to get back through there. The flames was coming up pretty good then, so I got off the porch.

Willingham: Well I went right to the door again... but it was too hot.... I didn't see any actual flames that I could remember. I noticed there was a lot of smoke.... I broke the windows out. That's when I seen flames come through the windows.

### The Electrical System

_Willingham:_ We had squirrels in the attic too. One night we was getting a suitcase out of the attic, or something, just a cardboard box to put things in. Well I, stupid, I left the attic door off and two squirrels they got [out of] the attic and got down inside the house that night. Well, we always kept the back of the house shut off, and Stacy woke me about 8:00 that morning and said there's squirrels in the house, there's a squirrel in the house. Well, that was Sunday. Sunday was when I killed the squirrel. I caught him in the back room and killed him and everything. Then we put the door back on the attic and we never heard any more squirrels. Naw, I take that back. It was Saturday. Saturday I did that. Saturday morning I did that, and then Sunday, and then Monday the house burned down.

_Willingham:_ But about a week prior, we noticed that the squirrels. You could lay down at night in bed, you could hear the squirrels chewing on the rafters and stuff like that. That's when we decided we needed to get rid of them. But I didn't have to. They did it for us. They got down inside of the house where I could get a hold of them.

_Willingham:_ You could be in the kitchen every once in a while and have stuff on and be cooking, and then put something in the microwave and hit the button on the microwave and you'd blow the fuse. I pointed at Mr. Palos. I pointed the fuse out to him. That was the only fuse we ever had that would blow on us.

_Willingham:_ Our microwave blew up about three weeks prior to this, and the smell that the microwave made was the same smell that was in the house. All you could smell was I guess wire and stuff like that. You could smell electrical wiring and stuff. Also, I never really could see, but I was noticing like the plug ins and light switches and stuff, you could hear them popping. You could hear the light switches and stuff popping.

_Willingham:_ From what the smell inside the house was, I figure it might have been electrical, cause of the smell. I don't know. Maybe every house smells like that. I ain't never been in a house like that before, that's burning. I've been in a house fire before, but just like when something had caught on fire, like a grease fire or something, and you put it out in the kitchen, and stuff like that.

_Willingham:_ But the firemen got there, the firemen got there quick, real quick. When they got there, that's when the fuse box started blowing. It was just blowing fuses completely out of the fuse box. You can tell that the 220 fuse box that's up there -- Shoot!

_Willingham:_ Also there was a live wire. There was also a live wire outside the house, because I seen the firemen messing with it... where it connected to the house, right there by the front porch. It was down in the yard and it was live, because I seen it pop two or three times.

_Willingham:_ Like I said, about three weeks, maybe a month, I'm not real sure, we had a microwave that we used all the time. Well, Stacy was in the kitchen cooking. I was asleep and she come and woke me and said "The... microwave blew up." And I said "Do what?" And she said "The microwave blew up." So I got up out of bed, and I could smell the wires that was inside the microwave. You could turn the microwave on and it would smoke, so that's when we unplugged it and stuff. But you could smell the wires and things that had been burning in there. And I know what electrical wires smells like, because I'm a mechanic. I've seen cars catch on fire.... When Amber woke me up and I finally opened my eyes and got out of bed, that's all I could smell was the smell that that microwave had been putting off... The burnt rubber and wires and casings and stuff like that, and it was the same smell. But I don't know whether wood and wire puts off two different kinds of smoke or anything, but I know it wasn't gray. I know it was black. It was just soot black.

_Willingham:_ The instant I jumped out of bed and smelled the smoke, the first thing I could think was microwave. I could associate it with the smell with the microwave. I would say it was the same smell. Now when you walk in the house, all you can smell is burnt wood. But at that time, with all the smoke and everything, all I could smell was that smell right there.

_Willingham:_ I think it was electrical. Yeah. Because of the smell that was in the house, the light sockets and stuff blowing sparks, the plug-ins blowing sparks, the fuse box blowing up after I got outside the house, the fuse box just completely blowing up, even in the front of the fuse box where the little, where ... the meter that goes around. It even blowed it off. Blowed the glass off of it and everything. You can tell it's all gone. I think it was electrical. I'm not an expert. I don't know anything, just what I think from the smell that was in the house and stuff, I think that it might had been electrical. That puts me back to thinkin' about the squirrels that was in the attic. Because we had squirrels for a long time, but we just never got rid of 'em 'til a couple of days before.

### The Space Heaters

_Willingham:_ We had three heaters in the house. The whole house, the entire house just had three outlet[s]. That was it. That was the reason for the tin foil on the windows and the back door being taped up. My wife did all that because it was so cold in that house. The only place we had a heater was in the hall, the bathroom, and the twins' room. You see the twins' room used to be a living room.

_Willingham:_ There was a space heater in this corner right, right over here.... There was never anything around it. The kids knew not to touch it. They knew. You could take one of the twins and set them down in front of that heater and lift their hand up to it, and let them go, and they would turn around and go the other way. Stacy taught them that. And I taught Amber not to play with it either. Amber knew better. Amber got whuppings every once in a while for messing with it. She wouldn't stick stuff in it, but it might be her hands, and playing with, and just stuff. She knew not to be messing with stuff like that.

_Willingham:_ I kinda figure that if the heater would have started it, maybe that more of the house would have been burnt on that corner there or something. Because the flames was in the top of the house, right there, around the whatever you call that, between the ceiling and the wall. That's where all the flames was. I know it was hot in there because that house has got like nine foot ceilings, I would guess.

### The Written Statement

After his interview with police and fire officials, Willingham provided a written statement. From that statement, we learn the following:

_Willingham:_ On Dec. 23 at 9:20 A.M. I got up out of bed to get the twins a bottle. I gave both Karmon and Kameron a bottle and put them to sleep. Amber, my 2 year old, was in her bed. I asked her if she wanted to go to bed with Daddy. She said no. I told her to lay back down. I then went back to bed. The next thing I heard was "Daddy, Daddy." I woke up and the house was full of smoke I said "Oh God, Amber, get out of the house." I felt on the floor and found the jeans I had on the night before. I went out of the bedroom into the hall. I opened the kitchen door and there wasn't as much smoke. I looked toward the front of the house. It was worse. I got to the babies' bedroom. I stepped into the room and stood up. The heat or the fire caught my hair on fire. I put my hair out and got down low on the floor. I felt all around the room where I had left the babies asleep and around other parts of the room I couldn't find them. I felt my way around more. The flames that I could see were at the top of the room around the walls. I got to the door, felt the door knob to see if it was hot. I yanked at the door 2 or 3 times before it came free. I went through the door down the steps, stood there, got my breath back and tried to go back in the doorway. It was too hot. I went to the windows to try there. I broke the left one first and flames came out where I broke the window. I went to the next window. The same thing happened. The fire was getting worse. Then I got off the porch.

## Chapter 5: What Douglas Fogg Told the Jury

Douglas Fogg was, at the time of the Willingham fire, the Assistant Fire Chief for the Corsicana Fire Department. He had been employed at the department for 22 years. He was at another structure fire when the alarm came in for the fire on West 11th street. Since there were children still in the house at West 11th, he left immediately to assist.

When he arrived, he found heavy fire and smoke at the front of the house. Willingham was screaming "My babies are in the house." Some electrical lines had broken away from the house and were still popping in the front yard.

He instructed one firefighter to attend Willingham. He relieved another of a water hose so that firefighter could don an air pack and enter the house. Fogg aimed the water from the fire hose through the front window and front door of the burning house.

Once the fire was extinguished and the bodies were removed from the house, Chief Fogg began his investigation into the origin and cause of the fire. The following quotes are from his trial testimony. Recall that north is to the bottom of the floor plan, so that the northeast bedroom is the children's bedroom.

_Fogg_ : Initially, we started looking in the front hallway, northeast [children's] bedroom area of the house. That was the area of most fire damage. Initially, we started looking for accidental causes of the fire. We started eliminating those in the northeast bedroom. One of the first things we looked for was the space heater. The space heater was located in the southeast corner of the bedroom. The stop along the east wall or gas outlet along the east wall was found to be in the "off" position. We eliminated that space heater. We started looking for electrical shorts from wiring which was visible in the bedroom. We found no electrical shorts in the bedroom.... There was a light switch by the front door facing. The wires were intact. No evidence of electrical short.... We even had the gas company come out and do a leak test and bar test where they punch holes, checking for gas leaks, which they found none. The electrical, you look at the electrical wiring for evidence of shorts from the outlets, from fixtures, so forth. There again, those were eliminated.

Fogg mentioned the gas company performed a leak test and a bar test. A bar hole is a small-diameter hole bored into the soil to allow insertion of a combustible gas indicator. Basically, bar testing is checking for underground leaks.

From the photo of the front of the house, presented earlier and repeated below, it looks as if the gas company did more than a leak test and a bar test. That photo was taken four days after the fire. It appears that the gas company removed the gas meter. Later pictures of the house after restoration show the gas meter installed at the front of the house, beneath the windows framed by the thin blue shutters, where one pipe protrudes from the ground and a second protrudes into the crawl space beneath the house. The gas meter seemingly fit between (and connected) those two pipes.

If the gas outlet valve along the east wall was in the "off" position at the time of the fire, if that valve prevented gas from reaching the space heater in the children's bedroom, then the fire could not have been caused by Amber playing with the space heater. Neither attorney, however, questioned Chief Fogg about the details of his examination. Neither asked Chief Fogg if he was the first firefighter to examine the heater after the fire. No one asked if the valve might have been turned to the "off" position by a firefighter securing the house against potential explosion. Chief Fogg was, after all, sufficiently concerned about gas leaks that he asked the gas company to examine the gas system and declare it safe.

Neither attorney questioned Chief Fogg about the status of the control valve on the heater itself. No one apparently found it odd that Stacy and Todd would control the heater by reaching around it to adjust the gas outlet valve. No one asked either Stacy or Todd during their police interview if they controlled the heater in such a fashion.

Below, I present for a second time a photo of the space heater in the children's bedroom. The east wall is the wall to the left. No gas outlet valve along the east wall is visible. I suspect, but do not know, that the gas line entered the house through the hole near the floor at the juncture of the east and south walls. If so, that would indicate the gas line had been removed before this photo was taken, four days after the fire.

Rather than providing details about the space heater, Chief Fogg was more interested in what he described as evidence of pour patterns, a low-burning fire, and the use of an accelerant.

_Fogg_ : And as we started removing debris then from the floor, as we had low burn, we started finding configurations of puddling effect, pouring effect of a liquid or what we would consider a liquid being used to accelerate a fire.

_Fogg_ : From there we started going to the deep burn or lowest burn areas that we found deepest burns, being floor level in the hallway and followed that into the bedroom, northeast bedroom where the two twins were found. We removed some of the debris. We had to punch holes in the floor to allow some of the water to drain out and. as the water drained down, more patterns -- we call them pour patterns, puddling effects were evidenced on the floor. We started removing debris from the floor and additional areas of low burn. Floor level burns were noted.

The photo below shows the patterns of which Chief Fogg spoke. The area appears to be the hallway just outside the children's bedroom. The vertical column at the top of the photo, the one closer to the center, is the doorframe. The other vertical column is a bedpost.

_Fogg_ : Not only did we attempt to connect the low burn on the floor configurations, it actually ended up starting on the front porch, through the threshold of the front door into the hallway, very minutely linked to the bedroom. Then the patterns in the bedroom were interlinked.

_Fogg_ : When a fire normally burns, it burns up. As heat rises flames go up. This burning characteristic had fire going under the threshold plate, which is very unusual in that it should have been protected from flame itself under that base plate. [I attribute that to] liquid being used to accelerate the fire.

Douglas Fogg concluded that the fire resulted from arson. He decided to contact the State Fire Marshal's office, specifically Manuel Vasquez, and have him conduct a formal investigation.

_Fogg_ : Christmas day I made the decision to go ahead and call them and it was December the 26th that I actually placed the call.... Initially, upon arrival, he came down \-- was here December the 27th. We visited the fire scene. I stayed back, and he walked through the fire scene. Then we got together and matched my findings to what he saw and came to the same conclusion that we had a deliberately set fire.

## Chapter 6: What James Palos Told the Jury

To test for the presence of accelerants, James Palos collected samples from throughout the house. Palos collected wood, glass, metal, and carpet samples from the front door area, the hallway, and from the children's bedroom. Eventually, thirteen samples would be tested for accelerants. Palos' testimony would focus on two of those samples, the only two that tested positive for a potential accelerant. The potential accelerant in this case was light oil frequently used as lighter fluid.

_Palos:_ My name is James Palos.... I'm the fire marshal at the Corsicana Fire Department.... My duties... include inspections on various businesses, investigation of fires and public education.

_Palos:_ The alarm came in at 10:24 in the morning and other units responded at that time. I was tied up in another structure fire. I was gathering my information, and I arrived at the one on West 11th at approximately, say, 11:00 o'clock that morning.

During his testimony, Palos identified various items (and photos of items) as samples he collected for testing.

_Palos:_ That is at the front door, the wooden threshold.... I obtained a sample from this area because of the unusual burn characteristics on the wood.... [T]hey cut [it out] with a saw.... I took my sample, I placed it in a container which I myself sealed; and I tagged it with an evidence tag and placed it in my van.

_Palos:_ That's going to be the east side of the front porch.... This area here is the front porch, as the side of the house, and this was the remains, some type of plastic which was collected as evidence also.... That piece of evidence there again was placed in a container, tagged, put in my possession and was taken to Armstrong Forensic Laboratory.

The segments of testimony just presented constitute the essence of Palos' testimony as elicited by the prosecution. There was some rambling and confusing testimony about the numbering of exhibits and submissions, but the essence of his testimony was as given.

Once the prosecution was finished with its direct examination of James Palos, the defense had him describe each of the other samples he collected. They also had him testify that none of the other eleven samples tested positive for accelerants.

Based only on Palos' testimony, one might conclude that he arrived at the fire soon after it started, collected samples that same day, sent them to the lab, and learned later that two of them tested positive for a light oil used frequently as lighter fluid. Such a belief, intentionally impressed on the jury by the careful questioning of the prosecutor and the lackluster questioning of the defense attorney, would be wrong.

Initially, James Palos submitted only five samples for testing. Those samples included three from the children's bedroom and two from the front doorway. Those samples were tested by John Corn, the chief chemist at Armstrong Forensic Laboratories. John Corn would find no evidence of accelerants. John Corn would not testify at Willingham's trial.

One week after the fire, on New Year's Eve, James Palos met with Douglas Fogg, Manuel Vasquez (whom we shall hear from soon), and two police officers. They discussed the status of the investigation. James Palos and Manuel Vasquez then returned to the fire scene, after obtaining a consent-to-search document signed by Willingham.

The next day, on New Year's Day, six more samples taken from the house were submitted for laboratory testing. The samples included three more samples from the children's room, two more samples from the front door area, and one sample from the hallway. This time, the samples were tested not by John Corn, who had previously failed to find accelerants, but by Andrew Armstrong himself, the man who would testify: "I run Armstrong Forensic Laboratories."

Even though John Corn found no sign of accelerants on two wood samples collected from the lower portion of the front doorway, and even though Andrew Armstrong would find no sign of accelerants on the aluminum threshold, Armstrong would find evidence of light oil in the wood cut from beneath the aluminum threshold.

On January 4th, Manuel Vasquez, Douglas Fogg, and one police officer would visit the fire scene again. James Palos, collector of test samples, was not with them.

On January 20th, two additional test samples would be provided to Andrew Armstrong. These samples were remains of two plastic containers reportedly found on Willingham's front porch. One of the samples revealed evidence of a light oil.

If you read James Palos' testimony once again, you will see that he selected his words carefully. With respect the wood threshold segment, he used the active voice.

_Palos:_ I took my sample, I placed it in a container which I myself sealed; and I tagged it with an evidence tag and placed it in my van.

With respect to the plastic bottles, however, he used the passive voice.

_Palos:_ That piece of evidence there again was placed in a container, tagged, put in my possession and was taken to Armstrong Forensic Laboratory.

It seems quite possible that the plastic bottles were collected by Manuel Vasquez and Douglas Fogg on their third visit to the fire scene, and that these bottles were provided to James Palos (at least temporarily) before some unidentified person transported them to Armstrong Forensic Laboratories for testing.

## Chapter 7: What Manuel Vasquez Told the Jury

Manuel Vasquez was, at the time of the trial, a Deputy State Fire Marshal. He was the primary witness at the trial. His testimony constituted one-third of all the testimony presented during the guilt/innocence phase of the trial.

Manuel Vasquez had been employed with the State Fire Marshal's office for nearly seven years. Prior to that, he had been employed as a fire marshal by the City of Lancaster for seven years, and as an assistant fire marshal by Dallas County for three years.

_Vasquez_ : My duties are to investigate fires and determine the origin and cause of the fires, if I determine that the fire is accidental, usually at the end of the investigation, if I determine that the fire is incendiary.

Unlike Douglas Fogg, who did not testify to any training or qualifications as a fire investigator, Manuel Vasquez told the jury of his qualifications.

_Vasquez_ : I attended UTA for three years, and I am a certified Texas police officer. I am also a certified Texas arson investigator. I completed Dallas County Sheriff's Academy, and I completed the Dallas County Fire Academy. I was instructor at both facilities, and I have attended numerous courses of seminars at Texas A & M during the fire training school.... I belong to the Texas Law Enforcement Intelligence Association, and I belong to the North Texas Fire Investigator's Association.

Vasquez explained that he had been contacted on the 26th and arrived on the 27th, just as testified by Douglas Fogg.

_Vasquez:_ I think this request was received on December 26th, 1991; and the request was made by the assistant fire chief, Doug Fogg.... I arrived in Corsicana the next day, December 27th, close to noon.

Vasquez then explains the path he followed as he investigated the house, detailing his findings as he walked around and then through the house. I summarize below the small fraction of his testimony that described his path. First, however, I present again the floor plan of the house so that you can more easily envision the path he described. Remember that north is towards the bottom and east is towards the left.

_Vasquez:_ [T]he first thing that I did [was] the perimeter examination... Then I went to... the back door... I entered from here in the kitchen.... I went into this bedroom, which is the utility room... From here I went into the master bedroom.... I went north into the living room.... From here I went back into the [master] bedroom, and then... into the hallway.... I'm inside the [children's] bedroom now.... I made that decision to look at the porch last.... Then I walked east along the porch.

After his tour of the house, he concluded that the fire was the result of arson.

_Vasquez_ : It's a set fire. It's an incendiary fire, and consequently is a crime of arson.

As did Chief Fogg, Deputy Vasquez took particular note of possible pour patterns on the floor.

_Vasquez_ : So this area right here are what I call burn trailers. Burn trailers is like a trailer, you know, like a little path, a burnt path. A pour pattern, which is a pattern like somebody put some liquid on the floor or wherever. And, of course, when you pour liquid, then it creates a puddle. Liquids creates puddles. When it rains, you get puddles. When the baby drops its milk, you create puddles. If you ever drop a coke, you create puddles. All this area has that, has the burn trailer pour patterns and configurations.... And a pour pattern and trailer is an indication that somebody poured something, you know, either going in or out.

For convenience, I provide a photo shown previously. It is the hallway floor just outside the children's bedroom.

Vasquez made a sketch showing the extent of the alleged pour patterns. I present that sketch below.

Vasquez also shared Fogg's interest in the front door threshold.

_Vasquez_ : I'm looking at the aluminum threshold. And aluminum melts at 1200 degrees normal. Wood fire does not exceed 800 degrees. So to me, when aluminum melts, it shows me that it has had a lot of intense heat. It reacts to it. That means its temperature is hot. The temperature cannot react. Therefore, the only thing that can cause that to react is an accelerant. You know, it makes the fire hotter. It's not normal fire.

He was impressed that the front door had been completely consumed during the fire.

_Vasquez_ : The door burned because it was incinerated with the, with that liquid outside and inside. It ran down the door before it was ignited. It got under the baseboard. It got also in the front of the boards there on the concrete. That's why it burned down.

He concluded that the fire had started in at least three different locations, and that provided a strong indication of arson.

_Vasquez_ : If this fire had been a combustible material fire, like a pile of clothes or a pile of paper or something to that effect, wood, then you would have a point of origin because that's all that burns is that combustible material there. But when you have a liquid, either combustible or flammable, then you no longer have a point of origin. You have an area of origin. That's the whole room here on the northeast bedroom is a point of fire origin. Also the hallway here is another area of fire origin. So inside the interior I have determined two points, two areas of origin: in the hallway and in the bedroom. And then the examination of the porch, the entrance here in front of the door is another area of origin. So there were three areas of origin. That's what we call multiple areas of origin.... Multiple areas of origin indicate -- especially if there is no connecting path, that they were intentionally set by human hands.... The fire was set in three different places.... Based on my experience and from what I observed at the fire scene, the first fire was in the bedroom, the northeast bedroom.... Then the second fire was in the hallway, and the third fire was on the front door on the porch.

As had Chief Fogg, Deputy Vasquez dismissed the space heater as a possible source of the fire.

_Vasquez:_ Also this space heater is in this northeast bedroom, and it's in this corner right here in the southeast corner or closest to the southeast corner.... Again, I examined this space heater because, you know, if it was an accidental fire, the space heater caused the fire.... Again the heat pattern behind this space heater is from above. There is nothing but debris around this space heater, and the top part and the front part of the space heater has received a lot of heat damage. There is no way that this heater could have started the fire. So that was eliminated.... If I may say so, one of the things that I need to find out: Was the heater on or off? The heaters were off.

### The Fire Whisperer

Manuel Vasquez described himself as a fire whisperer, though he didn't use that term. He did, however, testify that the fire spoke to him.

_Vasquez_ : The fire is telling me this. The fire tells a story. I am just the interpreter. I am looking at the fire, and I am interpreting the fire. That is what I know. That is what I do best. And the fire does not lie. It tells me the truth.

The fire whispered to him the most minute details. When Willingham's defense demonstrated pouring a light oil on a carpet sample, Vasquez could not resist critiquing the technique.

_Vasquez_ : May I -- may I -- it was squirted, sir; it wasn't poured like you did.

No effort to alter, hide, or destroy the evidence could interfere with the conversation he had with the fire. Vasquez, for example, was well aware that the fire scene had not been preserved for his inspection.

_Vasquez_ : The fire department, prior to my arrival, had made an attempt to clean up some of the evidence.

Some of the evidence is shown in the photo below, piled along the side of the house, just outside the children's bedroom. The evidence was apparently tossed and shoveled through the windows, large items first followed by shoveled items later. If the debris pile is representative of all items removed from the bedroom, the pile includes pieces of furniture, clothing, toys, paper, carpeting, and floor tiles.

Vasquez concedes the fire department had used hand tools to shovel and scrape debris from the floor.

_Vasquez_ : I don't remember seeing that when I was there. They must have used them before I got there.

But it made no difference. In fact, as far as Manuel Vasquez was concerned, there was never a need to secure a fire scene before he investigated. When asked specifically if the Willingham fire scene should have been secured or guarded in any way before his arrival, he replied:

_Vasquez:_ No... Because, like I said, the fire leaves the burn patterns. You can't -- you can't alter the burn patterns. You cannot pollute the fire scene. You can try, but you can't.

Manuel Vasquez was supremely confident that the fire whispered truth to him, not only in the Willingham case...

_Vasquez_ : I have interpreted the burn patterns correctly.

... but in each of the 1200 to 1500 cases he had previously investigated. When asked if he had ever been wrong, he replied:

_Vasquez_ : To my knowledge, everything that I have said is corroborated by evidence.

When asked to confirm that he had never been wrong, he replied:

_Vasquez_ : If I have, sir, I don't know. I don't -- it's never been pointed out.

The fire at the Willingham residence not only told Vasquez that it was born of arson, it told him the name of the arsonist...

_Vasquez_ : The occupant, Mr. Willingham.

... and it told him that Cameron Todd Willingham decided to burn his house on the spur of the moment.

_Vasquez_ : The fire, itself, tells me that it's a very aggressive fire; and, therefore, the fire was not a planned fire. It was a spur-of-the-moment fire.

The fire also told Manuel Vasquez the source of Willingham's burn injuries.

_Vasquez_ : In my opinion, they are self-inflicted.

And finally, the fire told Manuel Vasquez why Cameron Todd Willingham decided to burn his house.

_Vasquez_ : These pour patterns indicate to me, sir, the intent of why the fire was set. And the intent was to prevent people from coming in through that place or delay this entrance of persons, thereby creating a fire that would impede the entrance: a barrier, a fire barrier.... The intent was to kill the little girls.

### Preconceived Notions

Vasquez assured the jury that he was an objective investigator, that he made his determination as to the cause of any fire only after a careful investigation.

_Vasquez_ : So, you know, right now I'm just collecting information. I'm collecting facts. I have not made any determination. I don't have any preconceived idea. I'm just -- that's my job, to collect the information and analyze.

Throughout the course of his fire investigation career, however, he did determine arson to be the cause of the fires at an alarming rate. He almost never met a fire that wasn't caused by arson. Of the 1200 to 1500 fires he investigated, he determined all but a handful resulted from arson. When asked how many, he replied:

_Vasquez_ : With the exception of a few, most all of them.

By comparison, the State Fire Marshals Office, as a whole, found arson as the cause of fire in only 50% of the cases they investigated during the period 1980 to 2005. I present a year-by-year summary below:

Vasquez, by his own testimony, found almost every single fire he investigated to be caused by arson. His colleagues, by comparison, found only half to result from arson. Despite his testimony of having no preconceived notions, Manuel Vasquez seems to have been pre-disposed to find arson.

As the science of fire investigation has been slowly adopted by fire investigators, the rate of arson determination has dropped nationwide in general and Texas in particular. From a January 2011 report by the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission, we learn that more recently the rate of arson determination by the Texas State Fire Marshals Office has been 41%.

_Sunset Advisory Commission_ : Since 2005, SFMO has investigated about 2,700 fires, of which 1,100 were ruled arson and 300 resulted in convictions.

## Chapter 8: What Manuel Vasquez Wrote in His Report

### Visits to the Fire Scene

Based solely on the testimony provided in court, a juror could not be faulted for believing that Manuel Vasquez initiated and completed his fire scene investigation on the 27th of December. After all, Douglas Fogg testified...

_Fogg_ : Initially, upon arrival, he came down -- was here December the 27th. We visited the fire scene. I stayed back, and he walked through the fire scene. Then we got together and matched my findings to what he saw and came to the same conclusion that we had a deliberately set fire.

... and Manuel Vasquez testified...

_Vasquez:_ I arrived in Corsicana the next day, December 27th, close to noon.... I entered... in the kitchen.... I went into this bedroom... I went into the master bedroom.... I went north into the living room.... I went back into the [master] bedroom, and then... into the hallway.... I'm inside the [children's] bedroom now.... Then I walked east along the porch.... It's a set fire. It's an incendiary fire, and consequently is a crime of arson.

In his written report, however, Vasquez provided a timeline of his investigation that told a different story. I quote from the report below. Be aware that throughout the report, Vasquez refers to himself as "this investigator." I've put in bold the portions I find particularly interesting.

_Vasquez:_ On December 27, 1991, this investigator was assigned to investigate a fire with three (3) fire deaths at [redacted] Navarro County, Texas.

_Vasquez:_ On December 27, 1991, this investigator traveled to the Corsicana Fire Department and met with Assistant Fire Chief Doug Fogg, Fire Marshal James Palos, and two Police Department Detectives -- Jimmie Hensley and Rex Givens. This investigator was briefed on the fire incident that resulted in the fire death of 3 children.

_Vasquez:_ **On December 27, 1991, this investigator** , accompanied by Assistant Fire Chief Doug Fogg, **made a visual survey of the burned structure**.

_Vasquez:_ On December 30, 1991, this investigator traveled to the Corsicana Fire Department and met Assistant Fire Chief Doug Fogg, Fire Marshal James Palos, Police Detectives Jimmie Hensley and Rex Givens. The meeting was to coordinate the fire scene examination.

_Vasquez:_ On December 30, 1991, this investigator traveled with Fire Marshal James Palos to a residence on [redacted] Texas and met the occupants of the burned structure. The occupant, Cameron Todd Willingham, signed a consent to search document.

_Vasquez:_ **On December 30, 1991** , went to the fire scene of the burned structure accompanied by the Fire and Police officials. **This investigator started the fire scene examination**.

_Vasquez:_ On January 2, 1992, this investigator traveled to the Corsicana Fire Department and met the Fire and Police officials. Also, this investigator was accompanied by two deputies from the Region 3 office, State Fire Marshals -- Edward Cheever and Don Turk. We had a conference on the fire incident at the fire department.

_Vasquez:_ **On January 2, 1992, this investigator** , accompanied by the Fire and Police Officials and the two State Fire Marshal Deputies, **went to the fire scene. This investigator completed the fire scene examination.**

It seems as if there was also an unrecorded visit to the fire scene on New Year's Eve. Many of the fire scene photos are clearly labeled as having been taken on December 31, 1991. Two examples are provided below.

Manuel Vasquez swore an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It is, however, impossible to learn from his testimony that he visited the fire scene on at least three occasions, possibly four, that he held a coordination meeting before each of those visits, that he didn't actually begin his fire scene examination until the second visit, and that he didn't complete the examination until the third.

Similarly, Douglas Fogg and James Palos swore an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Their testimony, however, similarly failed to inform the jury that there were at least three visits to the fire scene, and that there were multiple efforts to find samples that tested positive for potential accelerants.

This shared lack of candor is probably not coincidental. The prosecutor quite possibly coordinated the testimony of his witnesses to make the State's case seem more certain than it actually was. Unfortunately, the willingness of these witnesses to tell less than the whole truth, after taking an oath to do so, tends to tarnish their integrity and their claim to impartiality. This is particularly troublesome in a capital murder investigation.

### The Vasquez Interview with Willingham

Manuel Vasquez' report mentions an interview with Willingham on New Year's Eve. That interview places Vasquez in Corsicana on the same day as the unrecorded visit to the fire scene.

_Vasquez:_ On December 31, 1991, this investigator traveled to the Corsicana Fire Department and met Assistant Fire Chief Doug Fogg and Detective Jimmie Hensley. We had an appointment with the occupants of the burned structure, Cameron Todd Willingham and his wife Stacy Willingham. Both occupants were interviewed and they gave a voluntary written statement.

During his trial testimony, Vasquez grossly misrepresented his role in that meeting.

_Vasquez:_ I listened to him. I never questioned him. I never asked him any questions. He just talked and he talked, and all he did was lie.... Pure fabrication.... I let him talk and he told me a story of pure fabrication.

Vasquez either willfully perjured himself regarding relatively minor details, or his memory was so bad that his entire testimony is untrustworthy. By my count, Manuel Vasquez asked 47 questions during the interview. I include a small sample of them below.

_Vasquez_ : Okay, uh, and you came out of, out of this room here and you had seen the flames , it was full of smoke, you couldn't locate the children, so you decided to go outside, right?

_Vasquez:_ Did you, when you walked out then, was the door open or closed?

_Vasquez_ : You left it open. Okay and it was open, uh, toward the, the, the uh, west door or the east side of the wall?

_Vasquez_ : Okay. You left it open when you went out?

_Vasquez_ : Now, when you stepped out of here, what did you see on the porch?

_Vasquez_ : Okay, now before you go back, you, you went back inside?

_Vasquez_ : When you were coming on the steps going in, back, did you see any flames out here on the porch?

_Vasquez_ : When you got here, and the smoke, you didn't see any flames inside the hallway?

In his trial testimony, Vasquez also grossly misrepresented Willingham's explanation on how he left the house.

_Vasquez_ : The inconsistent thing that he said right away was that he had kicked the door to exit from the hallway with his bare foot.

Again, I can envision no explanation for the blatantly erroneous testimony other than perjury or a memory so bad as to cast doubt on his entire testimony. I provide below each of Willingham's four explanations from the interview regarding how he exited the house.

_Willingham_ : I made my way back to their [the children's] door, then the front door was just right here, you know. I made it from their door and I got to the front door and I check to make sure whether the door handle was hot or not, and it wasn't so I just yanked it and just ripped the door open, you know, and went on through the screen and outside the house.

_Willingham_ : I came back from their room, and went, well first I checked it to see if, you know, the door knob was hot and stuff, then I just remember yanking the door knob until I got it open, then yanked the door open, then went on out through the screen door, out the front porch and down the stairs.

_Willingham_ : Well you could see, you could see smoke real bad, you know, the door knob wasn't hot, 'cause I checked the door knob first. You know, I checked the door knob before I went out and the door knob wasn't, wasn't hot enough to burn you 'cause I, I remember yanking it open and it didn't burn my skin when I yanked it open.

_Willingham_ : I started, you know, the first thing I thought -- started, I thought I started to kick it out, you know, but, you know, it was a solid door, the door was solid -- I just went ahead and grabbed the door knob and yanked the door. Well I yanked the door open, I yanked it open to, you know I just ripped the door open and went on out through the screen door and everything.

Willingham did not say "right away... he had kicked the door to exit from the hallway with his bare foot," as Vasquez testified under oath. Willingham mentioned the word "kick" only once. That one occurrence was near the end of the interview, not near the beginning. In that single occurrence, Willingham said he thought about kicking the door. Willingham said explicitly, on at least four occasions under repeated questioning by Vasquez, that he opened the door in the normal fashion, by use of the door knob.

### Official Cause of Death

In light of Vasquez' unwillingness or inability to tell the jury the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, I find unsettling a possible conflict between Vasquez written report and trial testimony regarding the autopsy. I quote first from Manuel Vasquez' written report.

_Vasquez:_ On January 6, 1992, this investigator went to the Dallas County Forensic Institute and met Dr. C. D. Odom and Dr. J. L. Zamora, both M.E.'s. Others present were Assistant Fire Chief Doug Fogg, Detective Jimmie Hensley, and Justice of the Peace Judge Connie Mayfield. The two doctors from the Medical Examiner's Office ruled the deaths of the three (3) children as homicide. The weapon used to kill them was fire.

Dr. Charles Odom performed the autopsy on two-year-old Amber. Dr. Juan Luis Zamora performed the autopsies on the one-year-old twin girls. Both doctors worked for the Dallas County Medical Examiners Office in Dallas. Each performed his work on the Willingham case on Christmas Eve, the day after the fire. Dr. Odom began the autopsy on Amber at 8:30 AM. I do not know the time Dr. Zamora began the first of his two autopsies on the twin girls.

Both doctors testified during trial. David Martin, Willingham's lead defense attorney, questioned Dr. Zamora about his classification of the deaths as homicides. The transcript segment follows:

_Martin:_ You performed that kind of autopsy on these children that we're discussing?

_Zamora:_ Yes; I performed a complete, thorough autopsy in these babies.

_Martin:_ And your conclusion was that the cause of their death was carbon monoxide poisoning.

_Zamora:_ Yes, sir.

_Martin:_ These autopsies were performed on the 24th of December; correct?

_Zamora:_ Yes, sir; it was on Christmas Eve.

_Martin:_ I notice that on the last paragraph of your report you conclude that the death is to be classified as a homicide; correct?

_Zamora:_ Yes, sir.

_Martin:_ And you say that that is based upon the information provided by the regional state fire marshal. Would that have been Mr. Manuel Vasquez?

_Zamora:_ It was through his office, yes, sir.

_Martin:_ So he's the person you're referring to there?

_Zamora:_ No, sir, I'm referring to the entire regional office. We met with several personnel from that office.

_Martin:_ Your report says the regional state fire marshal; are you referring to Mr. Manuel Vasquez in that sentence?

_Zamora:_ Yes, sir, to Mr. Vasquez and to his personnel. I'm referring to the office of the fire marshal.

_Martin:_ So your conclusion is based upon what he told you in that regard?

_Zamora:_ Yes, sir. The manner of death, in several cases, is based upon the information provided. That has to match with the findings at the time of the post-mortem examination.

_Martin:_ Because you can't tell from an examination of the body whether it was an accidental fire or otherwise; can you?

_Zamora:_ No, sir. It's not possible to determine, based on the examination of charred bodies, if the fire could -- to comport to their death, is an accident or a criminal act.

_Martin:_ So, in this case, your opinion about it being homicides was based upon what Mr. Vasquez and the people associated with him told you?

_Zamora:_ Yes, sir. It's based on that, the information provided by that office.

_Martin:_ Because you did the autopsy on the 24th, and Mr. Vasquez didn't even go to the house until three days later; did you know that?

_Zamora:_ I think that they came up after the fire was extinguished. I don't know how long it took them to go over the house.

_Martin:_ There wasn't anything in your autopsy examination that indicated one way or the other whether it was accidental or otherwise; did you?

_Zamora:_ No, sir. As I said before, the examination of the bodies do not give much clues of whether the fire was a criminal act or it was an act as a result of any play or anything.

At best, Manuel Vasquez was disingenuous when he reported "The two doctors from the Medical Examiner's Office ruled the deaths of the three (3) children as homicide." As Dr. Zamora made clear, medical examiners cannot themselves tell from a burned body "whether the fire was a criminal act" or the "result of play." Dr. Zamora declared the deaths to be homicide based upon input from "Mr. Vasquez" and "his personnel." For Vasquez to suggest that the doctors ruled the deaths as homicide was disingenuous.

More disturbing is the possibility that Manuel Vasquez advised Dr. Zamora to rule the deaths a homicide on Christmas Eve. Recall that both Fogg and Vasquez testified that Fogg contacted Vasquez the day after Christmas, and that Vasquez arrived in Corsicana the day after that, on the 27th. David Martin's questions and Dr. Zamora's answers, however, suggest that Vasquez met with Zamora on Christmas Eve and declared the fire to be arson, though Vasquez would not visit the site until two days later.

_Zamora:_ I'm referring to... Mr. Vasquez and to his personnel. I'm referring to the office of the fire marshal. I think that they came up after the fire was extinguished. I don't know how long it took them to go over the house.

If Manuel Vasquez met with Dr. Zamora on Christmas Eve, that meeting would put a lie to Vasquez' claim on that he first learned of the fire on December 26, and on his claim that he investigated the fire scene with an open mind.

_Vasquez_ : I think this request was received on December 26th, 1991; and the request was made by the assistant fire chief, Doug Fogg.

_Vasquez_ : So, you know, right now I'm just collecting information. I'm collecting facts. I have not made any determination. I don't have any preconceived idea. I'm just -- that's my job, to collect the information and analyze.

## Chapter 9: What The Neighbors Saw

Three neighbors, a mother and her two daughters, saw the Willingham house burning before the fire department arrived. Their contemporaneous reports and their trial testimony, if accurate, disprove the theory of the fire as presented by Assistant Fire Chief Douglas Fogg and Deputy State Fire Marshal Manual Vasquez.

Fogg theorized that accelerant had been poured in the bedroom, hallway, and on the porch. He was not quite clear with regard the sequence of the fire, though his testimony suggested that he believed Willingham set the fire while on the porch, and the fire then spread down the hallway and into the children's bedroom.

_Fogg_ : It actually ended up starting on the front porch, through the threshold of the front door into the hallway, very minutely linked to the bedroom.

Vasquez was considerably more explicit regarding his theory.

_Vasquez_ : If this fire had been a combustible material fire, like a pile of clothes or a pile of paper or something to that effect, wood, then you would have a point of origin because that's all that burns is that combustible material there. But when you have a liquid... then you no longer have a point of origin. You have an area of origin. That's the whole room here on the northeast bedroom is a point of fire origin. Also the hallway here is another area of fire origin. So inside the interior I have determined... two areas of origin: in the hallway and in the bedroom. And then the examination of the porch, the entrance in here front of the door is another area of origin. So there were three areas of origin.

_Vasquez_ : The liquid, this one here, when the liquid was poured in this [children's] room, it was not ignited immediately.... [I]t soaked through floor to the hardwood floor. It had time to soak. It took at least five minutes or more for that liquid to soak.... Based on my experience and from what I observed at the fire scene, the first fire was in the bedroom, the northeast bedroom.... Then the second fire was in the hallway, and the third fire was on the front door on the porch.

### Smoke

Each theory, that of Fogg and that of Vasquez, involves Willingham setting fire to the front porch and/or the front door. If either is correct, then flames would have been visible to those eyewitnesses who saw the house while Willingham was still standing on the porch. From the testimony and written reports of the Barbees, however, neither the front porch nor the front door was on fire.

_Diane Barbee (testimony):_ As soon as we got out the front door, I just immediately looked and Cameron was on the front porch screaming.... There was smoke coming out.... It wasn't real dark at that point.... It was coming out the front windows and the front door and the side windows of the front room.

When asked specifically whether she saw any fire or flames, she replied, "I didn't see any at first. I just seen the smoke." When asked to confirm she saw no fire, she confirmed she did not.

_Brandy Barbee_ _(testimony)_ : Todd was standing in the yard when I got out there.... He was screaming that there was a fire, that his babies were burning and for someone to help him, to call 911. ... I was screaming for him to go back in the house and get the babies or tell somebody where the babies were.... It was smoking.... I didn't see any flames.

_Brandy Barbee (written statement)_ : I ran outside and I saw Cameron Willingham standing on the porch at his residence. He was holding his head with both of his hands saying his babies were burning.... All I could see was smoke coming from the house so I thought he has time to go back and get the babies.

_Buffy Barbee (testimony)_ : Me and my mom ran out the front door at the same time. And when we ran out the front door, he started hollering.... He was hollering, "My babies are inside burning up. Help me." I said, "Go back in and get the babies."

When asked if she could see fire or merely smoke, Buffy confirmed: "There was just a lot of smoke."

If any one of the Barbees was correct (and all three agreed they initially saw no fire) then Douglas Fogg and Manuel Vasquez were fatally wrong in their testimony that Cameron Todd Willingham poured an accelerant on his front porch and set it ablaze.

### Flashover

According to the Barbees, smoke continued to pour from the house for five to ten minutes before flames burst forth from inside and finally became visible from outside.

_Diane Barbee (testimony):_ I turned back around to go into the house when I realized that the phone wasn't working,... I ran down the street until I found somebody to call 911. It was on the next block about three doors down.... [F]our, five, six minutes... go and come back.

Once she returned, she tried to coax Willingham into her house, which was two doors down from his. He refused.

_Diane Barbee (testimony)_ : It was about that time, I think, that the house erupted in fire. It blew up, blew out.... [M]e and my oldest daughter... we started running back up toward the house when it blew up.... [W]hen it blew up, of course, I knew there wasn't anything we could do. It was just, you know, it was totally engulfed in that front room... The heat was so intense.... It just met me.... The flames just blew out.... I seen them coming out of windows and the top. You know, I mean, it's just busted out.... All the windows and the front room was engulfed. I guess what I'm trying to say, it was just engulfed.

_Bandy Barbee (testimony):_ We was running towards the house, me and my mother, we was fixing to go and try to get in, and that's when it was an explosion, the electricity and everything.

The Barbees had just witnessed a flashover. From Wikipedia, I offer the following definition.

_Wikipedia_ : A flashover is the near simultaneous ignition of all combustible material in an enclosed area. When certain materials are heated they undergo thermal decomposition and release flammable gases. Flashover occurs when the majority of surfaces in a space are heated to the autoignition temperature of the flammable gases....

_Wikipedia_ : An example of flashover is when a piece of furniture is ignited in a domestic room. The fire involving the initial piece of furniture can produce a layer of hot smoke which spreads across the ceiling in the room. The hot buoyant smoke layer grows in depth, as it is bounded by the walls of the room. The radiated heat from this layer heats the surfaces of the combustible materials in the room, causing them to give off flammable gases... When the surface temperatures become high enough, these gases ignite.

Though Willingham had no more than a layperson's knowledge of fire behavior, his description of the fire was entirely consistent with fire behavior during its pre flashover period.

_Willingham:_ God, the whole room! The fire was on top. It was in their room. The only place I could ever see fire, it was in their room. And you know, I noticed that it was around top of the walls. It seemed like it wasn't down on the floor, because it wasn't eye level, because I had to look up to see it.

_Willingham:_ [The smoke was at] the top of the roof. Around the top [of the] room, around the ceiling part. Where it joins. Where it joins the ceiling and the roof is some more where I could see it. I knew it was up higher. I know it wasn't down low, and it wasn't on the floor, not that I could see. The only place I could see flames was in the top.

Manuel Vasquez conceded during cross-examination that the Willingham fire progressed to flashover, though he refused to concede that flashover set the porch ablaze, despite the eyewitness testimony of the Barbees.

During redirect, Vasquez was asked to describe flashover.

_Vasquez:_ Flashover is, like this room right here; and you've got, the first thing, is a small fire. And every fire, of course, creates heat. And as the fire builds up, the heat builds up. And, of course, there's smoke building up. And as \-- and the fire, itself, is looking for fuel, and it's burning and it's expanding, and it gets hotter and hotter and hotter. Eventually, everything in this room will reach ignition temperature simultaneously. And then the fire, everything will ignite at the same time. And that's a flashover. And you will hear a whoosh sound. A lot of people mistake that for an explosion, but it's when the fire catches fire. The whole thing.

Given that a man's life hinged on the accuracy of Vasquez' testimony, I find it disturbing that Vasquez did not know that the neighbors falsified his claim that Willingham, rather than the flashover, set fire to the porch and front door.

_Martin:_ Did you know that the witnesses said that they never saw any flames on the front of the house until they heard the explosion? Did you know that?

_Vasquez:_ I don't remember, sir.

_Martin:_ That's a fact; they've testified to that here in court.

_Vasquez:_ Okay.

_Martin:_ And when the witnesses are viewing the house and there's no flames along the front of the house... and then they hear what sounds like an explosion and suddenly the house is engulfed in flames; is that what you identify as a flashover?

_Vasquez:_ Inside the bedroom, yes, sir.

_Martin_ : They talked about the front of the house, that they didn't see any flames on the front of the house until they heard the explosion. Did you know that?

_Vasquez_ : No, sir.

## Chapter 10: What Today's Experts Say

At the time of the Willingham fire, the fire investigation community did not generally understand that flashover is transformative process. Experience and testing since then has demonstrated conclusively that flashover obliterates and overwrites the pre-flashover burn patterns.

### Hurst

Dr. Gerald Hurst is widely recognized as our country's foremost fire investigation expert. Just days before Willingham's scheduled execution, Dr. Hurst prepared a five page report explaining how the flashover created evidence that Manuel Vasquez misinterpreted.

_Hurst:_ A decade ago, fire investigators would often look at a flashover fire scene and note various burn patterns of varying degree which appeared to be shaped like irregular pours of liquid. It was fairly common practice for the investigator to cite these patterns as proof of the use of an accelerant. With the advent of NFPA 921, it became more and more widely realized that post-flashover burning in a room or hallway produces floor burn patterns which cannot be differentiated from burns imagined to be caused by liquid accelerants. Full scale testing... showed that post-flashover burning, even of relatively short duration, makes it impossible to identify accelerant burns visually. Thus it becomes impossible to visually identify accelerant patterns under these conditions. The subject fire included post-flashover burning of considerable duration as evidenced by the hallmark of flashover, flames pouring from windows and doors.

_Hurst_ : The Fire Marshall reported multiple fire origins. Actual multiple fire origins create a powerful case for arson. However, multiple origins can only be demonstrated when two or more areas of fire are completely isolated from one another. In this post-flashover fire, all the burn areas were clearly contiguous in the sense that they were at least joined by obvious radiation and/or conduction mechanisms. The finding of multiple origins was inappropriate even in the context of the state of the art in 1991.

_Hurst_ : The fire Marshal alleged that the charring of wood under the aluminum threshold was caused by liquid accelerant burning under the threshold. The phenomenon is clearly impossible. Liquid accelerants can no more burn under an aluminum threshold than can grease burn in a skillet even with a loose-fitting lid. The charring of wood under a threshold is a common occurrence in post flashover fires. The thermal radiation at doorways is extremely high because of the turbulent mixing of hot, fuel-rich gases with incoming fresh air. This radiation is often high enough to melt the threshold.

Despite Dr. Hurst's efforts, Governor Rick Perry allowed the execution to proceed. On February 17, 2004, the people of Texas inserted a sterilized needle into Willingham's arm, then injected a lethal cocktail of three chemicals.

### The Innocence Project

Since Willingham's execution, the overwhelming consensus among the scientific community is that Dr. Gerald Hurst was correct and Manuel Vasquez and Douglas Fogg were wrong.

In April of 2005, a prestigious arson review committee commissioned by the Innocence Project published their _Report on the Peer Review of the Expert Testimony in the Cases of State of Texas v. Cameron Todd Willingham and State of Texas v. Ernest Ray Willis_. I quote from their report below:

_Arson Review Committee_ : [T]he heated products of combustion... rise as a column of hot gas... When the rising thermal plume impinges on the ceiling of a compartment, the flow of hot gases is forced to spread horizontally in all directions until the flow is redirected by any intervening walls. When the hot products of combustion can no longer spread horizontally, a layer will start to develop, descend, and become relatively uniform in depth.... When the temperature of the upper layer reaches approximately 1,100 - 1,200 ºF, there is sufficient thermal radiation... within the compartment to ignite every exposed and "easily-ignitable" combustible surface in the room. This... has been defined as the onset of flashover, which is a transitional event... dominated by the burning of all combustible items in the compartment.

_Arson Review Committee_ : The post-flashover compartment fire is characterized by the entire volume of the compartment being filled with flames... This burning regime will produce conditions sufficient to burn and consume materials lining the compartment, such as floors, ceilings, and walls. This process can create patterns on those surfaces of the type described by Mr. Vasquez as "puddle configurations" and "pour patterns." More importantly, these patterns can be created in compartment fires where no flammable liquids were introduced. Surprisingly, such knowledge of compartment fires was readily available to the fire investigation community in the _Fire Investigation Handbook_ published in 1980, more than a decade before the Willingham fire.

_Arson Review Committee_ : Each and every one of the "indicators" listed by Mr. Vasquez means absolutely nothing, and, in fact, is expected in the context of a fire that has achieved full room involvement, as this fire clearly did.... They mean nothing with respect to the origin and cause of the fire, and they absolutely do not support any hypothesis that the fire had been accelerated by liquid fuels.

### Texas Forensic Science Commission

In August of 2009, Dr. Craig Beyler published a report the Texas Forensic Science Commission. I quote briefly from Beyler's _Analysis of the Fire Investigation Methods and Procedures Used in the Criminal Arson Cases against Ernest Ray Willis and Cameron Todd Willingham_.

_Beyler_ : Floor pattern analysis was the primary method used to substantiate that the fire was arson... [Now] the fire science and fire investigation communities are clear that floor patterns cannot be reliably used as an arson indicator in fully developed fires.... [I]t has long been recognized that the temperatures and radiation associated with fully developed fires is sufficient to ignite floor covering.

_Beyler_ : Modern fire investigation... acknowledges that floor patterns are created by fully developed fires and that signatures, like burning cracks and vinyl tile edge curling, can occur in the absence of accelerants due to radiant heating.

### Judge John Jackson

Even John Jackson, the man who prosecuted Cameron Todd Willingham, the man who now presides over the very court where Willingham was convicted, concedes the fire science presented during the trial was deeply flawed. I quote from a 2010 interview he gave to Terry Moran of _Nightline._

_Moran_ : You would agree that this report from the Texas Forensic Science Commission calls into very serious question the methodology, and the way this arson investigation...

_Jackson_ : Without question.

_Moran_ :...that it really has a problem.

_Jackson_ : That the techniques used were flawed.

_Moran_ : Deeply.

_Jackson_ : Yes.... Some of the evidence is certainly less credible than I would have liked to see.

_Moran_ : And doesn't that give you pause at all about sending a man to death?

_Jackson_ : Not a man like Todd.... The best evidence to me is not the investigation of the arson. The best evidence that I believe I presented was the prior attempts of Todd Willingham to kill his children.

During the penalty phase of the trial, after the jury had already found Willingham guilty of murdering his children, John Jackson called a witness who testified that Willingham once beat Stacy when she was pregnant with the twins, and that he did so in an effort to cause a miscarriage. Stacy rebutted that testimony, claimed it never happened, and insisted Todd would never have hurt their children. That is the extent of the evidence offered by anyone about any "prior attempts of Todd Willingham to kill his children."

## Chapter 11: Defense Theory

David Martin, Willingham's lead defense attorney, promoted two theories regarding the cause of the fire. The first was during trial. The second was in the public forum beginning in 2009. We'll consider each, beginning with the defense theory he promoted during the trial.

### Defense Theory as Presented During Trial

We can easily infer the defense theory from Martin's questioning of Douglas Fogg and Manuel Vasquez. I provide below some of the questions he asked Douglas Fogg.

_Martin_ : Because, for example, a child could have started a fire with a cigarette lighter or match?

_Martin_ : Wasn't anything about the fire that eliminated the possibility that a child started the fire, was there?

_Martin_ : And it's not uncommon in human experience for a child in a home where people smoke to get a hold of a cigarette lighter and light it, is it?

_Martin_ : And it's not uncommon around any home to have accelerants in a place where children could reach them, is it?

_Martin:_ It has been your experience in these past 20 years to find fires where a child, for example, has gotten ahold of an accelerant and sprayed them or poured them or some other way got them on the floor then accidentally set it on fire?

_Martin:_ Why could not have the child, Amber, for example, two years of age, have inadvertently or accidentally got the charcoal lighter fluid or sprayed the lighter fluid and inadvertently set it on fire?

_Martin:_ Nothing in your investigation would make it impossible that a child took a container of some flammable liquid and inadvertently or otherwise spilled or poured it on the floor and set it on fire, correct?

Now for some questions David Martin asked of Manuel Vasquez.

_Martin_ : Mr. Vasquez, I'm going to ask you a hypothetical question; all right?

_Martin_ : You agreed, did you not, that this could have been the combustible liquid that was on the floor, lamp oil?

_Martin_ : And on a shelf in the hallway could have been a gas oil lantern like this one; couldn't there?

_Martin_ : And it could have been filled with lamp oil... couldn't it?

_Martin_ : And a child could have gotten ahold of it and splashed the combustible liquid out of here, couldn't they, onto the floor?

_Martin_ : It would have burned the same way as you found; wouldn't it? Wouldn't it?

_Martin_ : And a child could have gotten this or a similar lantern off of the shelves in the hall and spilled a combustible liquid, like that lantern oil, on the floor in the hall. Couldn't they?

_Martin_ : And the same splashing of a combustible liquid out of this lantern in the hall would account for what you say is puddles and floor patterns. Wouldn't it?

_Martin_ : And then the child could have held it and climbed over the child's gate... into the bedroom?

_Martin_ : And then, once in the bedroom, for whatever reason, child's play, we don't know, and spills some of this same liquid in the bedroom. Could she not have done that?

_Martin_ : And then that flame could have been ignited with a cigarette lighter.

_Martin_ : Cigarette lighter, a match... a burning stick?

_Martin_ : Mr. Vasquez, you cannot tell who spilled or poured the liquid you believe was on the floor; can you?

_Martin_ : You can't tell who poured it or spilled it on the floor, from the pour or the spill or the burn pattern; can you?

_Martin_ : It could have been accidentally spilled?

Martin's defense theory was simply absurd. The jurors quickly and thoroughly rejected it, returning a guilty verdict after only 77 minutes of deliberation. According to one juror, all but two of them wanted to vote guilty immediately upon entering the room, without any discussion whatsoever. Regarding Martin's theory of the case, she was generous in her description. "None of us could see how that would work."

Martin's defense theory proved fatal to his client. Martin conceded someone had indeed poured a large volume of combustible liquid over a substantial portion of the children's bedroom, the hallway, the front door, and the porch. He left the jury to decide only whether Willingham or Amber spread the fluid. Coupled with the character assassination that constituted the first half of the state's case, Martin's theory condemned his client to a guilty verdict in a capital murder case.

### Defense Theory in Reality

David Martin didn't believe his courtroom defense theory anymore than did the jurors. For those unable to infer his presumption of guilt from his courtroom performance, Martin made sure everyone understood once Willingham was executed. In 2009, Martin began appearing frequently on television, telling anyone who would listen that Willingham was absolutely guilty.

_Martin_ : We hired [a defense expert] and he said "Yep. It's arson." It was very, very clear what happened in the house. Everybody who saw it, of course, reached the same conclusion.

_Martin_ : I was in the house. I talked to the cops. I talked to the firemen who were there very first on the scene. I looked at the pictures. When you walk through that house, the children's bedroom was set aflame, obviously, by an accelerant.

_Martin_ : God forbid that somebody was executed who was innocent, Nobody wants that to happen. But for somebody so obviously guilty like Willingham, it's a travesty to make it seem like something other than it was.

Regarding Manuel Vasquez, who died in 1994, David Martin has been considerably more charitable. Martin rejects the opinions of our country's foremost experts and the concurring opinion of Willingham's own prosecutor. Martin stands squarely beside the thoroughly-impeached testimony that sent his client to death row.

_Martin_ : Vasquez was one of the most competent experts I ever cross-examined. He was a straight shooter and an honest guy.

On the other hand, Martin turns to lurid prose when describing the loathing he felt for his client.

_Martin_ : I never think about [Willingham], but I do think about those year-old babies crawling around in an inferno with their flesh melting off their bodies. I think that he was guilty, that he deserved death and that he got death.

## Chapter 12: Volume Considerations

Perhaps Martin can be forgiven for not realizing in 1992 that flashover creates burns which are frequently misinterpreted as pour patterns. I suggest, however, that absolution should not be forthcoming. His lack of skepticism about the State's case caused him to overlook the obvious: a bottle of lighter fluid contains far too little fluid to coat the children's floor, the hallway, both sides of the door, and the porch.

Neither the prosecution nor the defense, nor the jury for that matter, seemed the least bit troubled by the relative volume of the lighter fluid container versus the extent of the alleged pour patterns. To me, the disparity seems obvious. To me, it seems impossible that a single container of lighter fluid could account for the amount of liquid Todd (or Amber) allegedly poured on the floors, door, and porch. In fact, a simple and inexpensive investigation might have convinced Willingham's attorney and his jurors that he was in fact innocent beyond a reasonable doubt.

As far as I know, no one else to this day has attempted such a simple analysis. As far as I know, the analysis I am about to present represents the first such effort.

### The Lighter Fluid Container

I need to establish two numbers for comparison. The first is the amount of lighter fluid available to Willingham for his alleged "spur of the moment" arson. Unfortunately, I find not even a single mention in the trial transcripts, interviews, or fire reports about the size of the lighter fluid container. I'll attempt to infer the size of the container from indirect references.

Andrew Armstrong, in his testimony, perhaps provided an upper limit of one quart. He testified that he received a "burned plastic container, white" secured in a glass jar. He testified further that he transferred the burned plastic container from the glass jar to a metal can for testing. He identified that can as a "one-quart container, metal."

He further described the sample he tested.

_Armstrong_ : Melted, charred plastic with an attached label partially decomposed. I can discern "C-h-a-r" on one line and "g-h-t" on the next line below that. I interpret that to mean "charcoal lighter." It's been through a fire. [It] contained mineral of kerosene, Class 3, petroleum distillate.

David Martin, during his questioning of James Palos, referred to the sample as a "white object... a disintegrated portion of a charcoal lighter container... sold at H.E.B.... cheap.... It has a flip top on the top... A child at a very young age could open it."

The container was apparently small enough that "a child at a very young age" could lift it and open it.

Lighter fluid seems to be typically sold in either small metal cans (with a pointed squirt top) or plastic quart bottles (with a flip top). In fact, a small can of lighter fluid was found on Willingham's porch. For some reason, the can was not reported, not tested, and not introduced into evidence. I present a picture of the lighter fluid can seemingly ignored by all parties.

There was nothing unusual about finding a charcoal lighter fluid containers on Willingham's porch. Fogg and Vasquez both acknowledged that the press photographers, as they captured images of the firefighters at work, also captured an image of a barbecue grill on the left side of Willingham's porch. The damaged white container was found in that same area.

I do not have a picture of the damaged white container. I offer instead a picture of the one-quart container I purchased for my testing. It cost me $3.99 before sales tax.

Perhaps the full container is small enough and light enough for a two-year-old child to carry and open.

### The Vinyl Floor

The floors in the Willingham house were originally made from oak. At some point, the oak wood floor was covered by tar paper, plywood, and vinyl tile. For my testing, I used a single vinyl tile measuring one-foot along each edge. The tile is shown beneath the lighter fluid in the photo above. The tile cost $0.77, before tax.

I placed and leveled the tile on a gravel bed. I weighed the lighter fluid container, and its contents, on an electronic scale accurate to 2 grams. Together, the container and the fluid weighed 730 grams.

I carefully poured the fluid onto the tile until the fluid formed an approximate circle that extended to each of the four edges.

Vasquez wanted the jury to realize he wasn't suggesting the lighter fluid was spread thinly across the floor. He was explicit that floor wasn't just covered by the lighter fluid, it was completely saturated with the fluid.

_Vasquez_ : [T]he total saturation of this floor is indicated with pour patterns.

I therefore attempted to maximize the amount of fluid the tile would hold without overflowing. If the pour was perfectly circular, the pour area could be no larger than 0.785 square feet. That's the area of a circle having a diameter of one foot. I'll assume the area was 0.8 square feet.

After pouring the liquid, I again weighed the container and its remaining contents. The weight was 696 grams. Using those numbers (and a specific gravity of 0.77 for lighter fluid) I calculated that one gallon of lighter fluid could cover 70 square feet of vinyl flooring, assuming the flooring was well-leveled and the fluid was carefully poured.

In his report for the Texas Forensic Science Commission, Craig Beyler reports on the work of D.T. Gottuk and D.A. White. In 2008, they summarized the current literature regarding spill fires. They reported that the spill area of liquid fuel is 57 square feet per gallon.

I enlarged the sketch Vasquez made of the pour area, and I added a grid. I counted the small squares that enclosed any portion of the dark pattern Vasquez used to indicate "Burn Trailers, Pour Pattern; Puddle configurations" and "Brown rings - concrete." I assigned fractional values to squares not completely filled.

I calculated the total pour area for the children's bedroom, the hallway, and the porch to be 95 square feet.

Assuming the lighter fluid covered 70 square feet per gallon, as per my testing, 1.4 gallons of lighter fluid would have been required to merely cover the 95 square feet. Assuming the lighter fluid covered 57 square feet per gallon, as per the research of Gottuk and White, 1.7 gallons would have been required to cover the floor.

Taking a crude average of the two numbers, I calculate that 1.5 gallons of lighter fluid would have been required to cover the vinyl tile as indicated in Vasquez' sketch.

### Carpeting

During his interview with the police and fire investigators, Willingham explained the nature of the carpeting in their house. Ironically, Willingham spoke of the carpeting in response to a question from Manuel Vasquez. Recall that Vasquez swore to the jury that he never asked a single question of Willingham, though he asked nearly 50.

_Willingham_ : [W]e had, okay, we had carpet in the living room. Patches. We had, you know, throw rugs. We had uh, uh, uh, a patch of carpet in the living room, a patch of carpet in the bedroom, a patch of carpet in the back room and there was a patch of carpet in the kids' room that just covered a big enough area for them to play.

We're only interested here in the carpeting in the children's room. Willingham does not specify the size of the carpet, noting only that it was a patch just large enough for the children to play.

Vasquez recorded the children's bedroom as approximately square, with each wall being approximately 14 feet and 5 inches long. That's an area of just over 200 square feet. If we assume the carpet covered only one eighth of the floor, that would be a 25 square foot patch, possibly a square with 5 foot sides. That's an area large enough for the children to play upon, but just barely.

I'll assume the carpet was 25 square feet in area.

I did not attempt to measure the spill area of lighter fluid on carpeting. Fortunately, Beyler reports (again via Gottuk and White) that liquid fuel will cover 6 to 12 square feet per gallon. Since the carpeting had to be saturated for the tile floor beneath to be soaked, the carpeting alone would have required another 2 to 4 gallons of lighter fluid.

Using an average of those two numbers, I calculate another 3 gallons of lighter fluid would have been required to saturate the carpet in the children's bedroom.

### Hardwood Charring

As noted previously, the floors in the Willingham residence were originally made from oak. At some point, the oak wood floor was covered by tar paper, quarter-inch plywood, and vinyl tile. Manuel Vasquez noted in his sketch that some areas, those indicated by parallel diagonal lines, experienced deep charring. Rather than attribute this to the extreme heat associated with a flashover, Vasquez testified that it resulted from the hardwood (oak) floor being saturated with lighter fluid.

_Vasquez_ : What does that tell me? It tells me that it took a little while for that liquid to soak in. In other words, if you, on your carpet at home, if your husband or baby drops coffee or coke, you want to clean it up right away, don't you, because if it soaks in, then you can't get the stain out. Same thing with this liquid. It goes all the way down. It hit the wood. When it burns, it charred the wood.

_Vasquez_ : [I]t soaked through floor to the hardwood floor. It had time to soak. It took at least five minutes or more for that liquid to soak. That's what I said awhile ago. When you spill something on your carpet, you got to clean it right away because it goes down. And then it's harder to get out. Same thing with this here.

_Vasquez_ : [T]his shows that the hardwood floor was charred. Okay. What does that tell me? It tells me that it took a little while for that liquid to soak in.... It hit the wood... This charred area is this area right here, where these lines are. That's where that char area is.

This portion of Vasquez' theory is fraught with problems. To reach the hardwood portion of the floor, the lighter fluid would have to first penetrate the vinyl tile, the quarter-inch plywood, and the tar paper. The vinyl and the tar paper are impermeable. They're designed to prevent liquids from flowing through them. During my testing, the lighter fluid didn't begin to penetrate the vinyl tile, though I gave it twenty minutes to do so.

The plywood layer poses another problem for Vasquez' theory. The lighter fluid would pass through the plywood only after first saturating it. Even assuming the vinyl and the tar paper would allow the fluid to descend, a large amount of fluid would be required to first saturate the plywood before saturating the oak.

I'll simply ignore the impermeable nature of the vinyl and the tar paper. I'll calculate how much water it would take to saturate plywood, I'll assume the same amount of lighter fluid would saturate plywood, and then I'll assume the same amount of lighter fluid would saturate the oak before it burned as Vasquez theorized.

Plywood has a specific gravity near 0.6. That means it is 60% as dense as water. The saturation point of wood is a function of its specific gravity. Coincidentally, wood with a specific gravity near 0.6 can hold its own weight in water. Finally, I note that 1/4 inch plywood is actually 7/32 inch thick. Mixing that information together in an algebraic stew pot, I calculate that one gallon of water (and presumably one gallon of lighter fluid) would, given time, saturate approximately 7 square feet of 1/4 inch plywood. That's in the same ballpark as carpeting.

Using the same technique I used for calculating the pour area, I calculated the area of hardwood charring to be 12 square feet for the hardwood. I then added 12 square feet for the plywood. I calculate that 3.5 gallons of lighter fluid would be required to saturate the hardwood as Vasquez described, assuming the fluid would penetrate the vinyl and tar paper layers.

### Front Door

Manuel Vasquez testified that Willingham covered both sides of the front door with more lighter fluid than it could absorb.

_Vasquez_ : The door burned because it was incinerated with that liquid outside and inside. It ran down the door before it was ignited. It got under the baseboard. It got also in the front of the boards there on the concrete. That's why it burned down.

A standard entry door is 80 inches tall and 36 inches wide. That's 40 square feet of door if you count both sides. I'll assume that a vertical wooden door will absorb less fluid than even the least absorbent carpet. In fact, I'll assume the wooden door is painted, and therefore won't absorb lighter fluid at all. I'll assume that it will retain only a thin film while the excess flows down onto the baseboard.

For convenience, I'll assume zero fluid was used to coat the front door.

### Total Lighter Fluid Required

I calculated the floor would require 1.5 gallons of lighter fluid to cover the area indicated in Vasquez' sketch.

I calculated a five-foot square carpet segment would absorb 3 gallons before becoming saturated.

I calculated that another 3.5 gallons would be required to saturate the oak and plywood flooring as indicated in Vasquez' sketch.

I assume zero fluid was used to coat the front door.

In summary, I calculate 8 gallons of lighter fluid would have been required to accelerate the fire in the fashion described by Manuel Vasquez.

Though I doubt Vasquez attempted to quantify the volume of accelerant required to support his theory, I suspect he sensed a lot would be required. Consider his response to David Martin's suggestion that the lighter fluid from the white plastic bottle might have innocently flowed along the porch and contaminated the door threshold.

_Martin_ : Mr. Vasquez, if I poke a hole in this and it's sitting on an angled surface, it would run all the way to Waco if the angle was steep enough and there was enough of it; wouldn't it?

_Vasquez_ : Are you talking about that bottle or a 55 gallon drum?

_Martin_ : Well, let's do this. That was for purposes of emphasis. You're telling us that there's no way in the world that this lighter fluid could have run down to the front door. Is that what you're saying?

_Vasquez_ : The amount of lighter fluid that was in that can couldn't.

_Martin_ : But all you've got is a burned plastic remnant, and you don't know how much was in it; do you?

_Vasquez_ : There was no burning on the porch. sir, so it didn't burn there. There was not enough liquid to even burn on the porch.

### The Search for Gasoline

Unfortunately for Manuel Vasquez and his theory, his answer left unexplained the source of all the lighter fluid Willingham supposedly used to accelerate the fire.

Vasquez recognized that lighter fluid came in small containers. Gasoline for lawnmowers, however, was frequently stored in 5 gallon cans. Vasquez needed to find 5 gallons of accelerant much more than he needed to find a quart.

During his testimony before the jurors, Vasquez suggested he never entertained the thought that gasoline was used as an accelerant. It would be too explosive when poured in such large quantities, and Willingham would have been killed or seriously burned.

_Vasquez_ : [Y]ou don't want to start a fire with gasoline in this room here because you will incinerate yourself.

_Vasquez:_ People have died in fires with [gasoline] when they breathe because they got fumes in their lungs. They breathe fire from gasoline.

Vasquez: If it had been gasoline or something like that, you better be out here when you throw that match, because it's going to, everybody is going to hear it because you are going to hear a big noise.

_Martin_ : And if you douse a room with gasoline and you're in there and light a match, you set yourself on fire usually; don't you?

_Vasquez_ : There have been cases where people died in a fire; yes, sir.

_Martin_ : A person in a small closed room who douses the floor with gasoline and lets it soak, as you mentioned yesterday, and is in there and lights a match; what will happen in the room?

_Vasquez_ : He will also receive burns.

_Martin_ : All right. Because the fumes will catch on fire; won't they?

_Vasquez_ : The fumes will ignite simultaneously throughout the whole area.

Despite his courtroom testimony, Vasquez asked Todd and Stacy Willingham only about gasoline when he interviewed them. Neither Vasquez, Fogg, nor Detective Jimmie Hensley ever asked about lighter fluid.

Those three people interviewed Stacy first. Her interview began at 11:08 AM. At about the half-way mark, Vasquez began asking about the lawn mower.

_Vasquez_ : Okay. Uh, do you all have a lawn mower?

_Stacy_ : My, um, it was my brother's lawn mower.

_Vasquez_ : Where is the lawn mower?

_Stacy_ : It's, um, in the kids' room, the window you look out to see the garage, it's right there. I had went to mow the lawn, and didn't, and put it there, because I didn't want nobody to see it out in the open and steal it. So I put it there.

_Vasquez_ : Uh, who did the mowing?

_Stacy_ : Uh, I did.

_Vasquez_ : Did Todd ever do any mowing?

_Stacy_ : I think he mowed the front yard one time, but I did the yard work.

_Vasquez_ : Who put the gasoline in the lawn mower?

_Stacy_ : Uh, it was already in there.

_Vasquez_ : Did you ever fill it up or did Todd do that?

_Stacy_ : No. I did that. I always, I've always done the yard work.

_Vasquez_ : Where did you get the gasoline from?

_Stacy_ : I don't remember. That lawn mower's been sitting there, you know, four months, three or four months.

_Vasquez:_ Since the summer ended?

_Stacy_ : Yeah, it was, it was like right at the end of summer because I was gonna mow it one more time before winter time came and I never got to the back yard. So.

_Vasquez_ : Okay. Who put the gasoline in it?

_Stacy_ : I would, I would think I did because, because I do, I do know that I ran out of, I ran out of gas after I did the front yard and I had to go and get some more. And you know I, if, if there was some in there, I would think I did it because you know, I, I knew I had to mow it. But that's been so far back and it's something that I really never, you know, thought about to remember or anything.

_Vasquez_ : Where did you normally get the gasoline?

_Stacy_ : It would be Circle K. That's where I've always gone. Circle K. It's right there.

_Vasquez_ : What kind of can did you use?

_Stacy_ : If it, if it was a, I would usually use a milk jug unless I had a can, which I didn't have a can personally, myself. You know.

_Vasquez_ : You're talking about a plastic milk can?

_Stacy_ : Yeah. Milk jug, gallon jug. That's what I used. I borrow my dad's, he had a can, but I, I do not remember if my brother brought it, you know, when uh -- I can't remember if I had a gas can or can.

_Vasquez_ : Okay.

Stacy's interview ended at 11:35 AM. She had been questioned for 27 minutes. Todd's interview began 8 minutes later.

_Vasquez_ : Do you have a lawn mower?

_Willingham:_ We did have a lawn mower. It wasn't ours. It was borrowed , it was, was right here on the ground, probably about, this is the window, it was right here.

_Vasquez_ : Uh huh. When was the last time you mowed the grass?

_Willingham_ : Stacy mowed the grass. Probably a month and a half. Maybe. We mowed the front yard. We never got to mow in the back yard, but we mowed in the front.

_Vasquez_ : Where did you get the gasoline for the lawn mower?

_Willingham_ : It was gas that was already in it. The lawn mower was out of gas and it's still out of gas I imagine. That's why we quit mowing, because we ran out of gas and we never did buy anymore after I had mowed the front yard. The lawn mower belonged to her brother, Tracy. We had borrowed it off him to mow the grass.

_Vasquez_ : Okay.

Todd's interview ended at 1:10 PM. They had questioned him for 1 hour and 27 minutes. Vasquez had not been able to identify a source for all the accelerant needed to fit his theory.

### The Discovery of Lighter Fluid

Initially, Vasquez seemingly did not consider lighter fluid to be a reasonable candidate for the accelerant he was sure had been copiously poured throughout the house. The plastic lighter fluid container was not even provided to the lab for testing until January 20, nearly a month after the fire. The metal lighter fluid can was never provided for testing. I suspect that's because Vasquez realized there was insufficient lighter fluid to account for his theory.

_Vasquez_ : There was not enough liquid to even burn on the porch.

After the unfruitful interviews with Todd and Stacy, however, lighter fluid suddenly became Vasquez' favored accelerant.

In fact, on the very same day as the interviews, presumably after the interviews, someone returned to the fire scene. We do not know of that return visit from Manuel Vasquez' written report, because Vasquez never mentioned the visit in his report. We know of that return visit only because photos then taken at the fire scene were date-stamped "Dec. 31 1991."

Also on the very same day as the interviews, presumably after the unrecorded visit to the fire scene, Andrew Armstrong received test samples 6 through 11. Test sample 6 consisted of wood from the front door threshold. Vasquez claimed, in his sworn testimony before the jury, that he was present when the sample was collected.

_Vasquez_ : I'm looking at the 2-by-4 or 2-by-6 at that time on the floor, the board here at the door; and I noticed that it's charred underneath. And the only thing that makes that char pattern is a liquid. So we cut that piece out and sent it to the laboratory.

The sample tested positive for mineral spirits of kerosene, commonly used as lighter fluid. Vasquez, Fogg, and Palos had suddenly found the first trace of their sought-after accelerant.

However, other than an unremarkable trace from a burned lighter fluid container, no other lighter fluid would be discovered at or near the scene of the Willingham fire. That by itself is suspicious.

### Lighter Fluid as an Accelerant

As a liquid fuel, lighter fluid is relatively safe. It does not readily vaporize and therefore does not explode as gasoline tends to. That's why lighter fluid is used in place of gasoline to help start charcoal fires. Lighter fluid is safe enough that Amazon sells it online, presumably to be shipped by UPS or FedEx. Gasoline is never transported in such fashion.

Lighter fluid, by itself, is difficult to ignite. During my simple testing, I placed a flame directly over my pool of lighter fluid, to no effect. As evidence, I provide the photo below. Since the lighter fluid is clear, you will have to trust me, at least for the moment, that lighter fluid is there, just below the flame.

When I actually put the flame in the lighter fluid, the flame went out. This was not unexpected since it's the vapors, not the liquid, that burn.

To actually start a fire, I used cotton string as a wick. The string burned quickly but incompletely. Except for the small fraction of fluid absorbed by the string, the lighter fluid did not burn.

Unlike the photo above, you can see the lighter fluid in the photo sequence below, as its boundary moves towards the flame.

The sequence of the photos is from left to right, top to bottom.

Though 80% of the tile had been covered with a discernable thickness of lighter fluid, only a small portion of the tile shows any evidence of scorching. Almost immediately after the fire, I could lift the tile with bare hands. The gravel beneath was slightly warm to the touch. No lighter fluid soaked through the tile.

Anyone searching for evidence of lighter fluid from my little demonstration would not need avail themselves of a gas chromatograph. Sufficient lighter fluid remained to pour into a small cup.

According to the Arson Review Committee, laboratory techniques available to the State of Texas in 1992 allowed detection of ignitable liquid residue as small as 1/500th of a standard drop. Though Vasquez claimed that Willingham saturated large areas of carpet, tile, plywood, tar paper, and hardwood flooring, the State of Texas was unable to detect even 1/500th of a standard drop in the children's bedroom, the hallway, or the porch.

According to Manuel Vasquez, the explanation is simple. All the lighter fluid simply burned up, except for that found under the aluminum threshold, and except for that found on the remnant of a lighter fluid container.

_Vasquez_ : Well,... that accelerant will burn up. And so there won't be any -- anything left; it will burn up. The only thing left is a burn pattern. Because the fire, itself, leaves the evidence of what was there. Although the evidence -- the liquid is burned, the evidence, by the fire left there, is that there was a liquid there.

Though I am not a qualified fire investigator, and though my little demonstration does not rise to the level of a well-controlled scientific experiment, I declare Manuel Vasquez' explanation for their failure to detect even 1/500th of a drop to be poppycock.

## Chapter 13: The Electrical System

To the extent that Willingham attempted to explain the cause of the fire, he suggested it might have been caused by squirrels chewing on wire in the attic. Prosecutor Jackson, in his closing argument, simply mocked the idea that squirrels could have started the fire, and faulted Willingham for even bringing the issue up.

_Jackson_ : Think of the image of Brandy Barbee, the older child, begging. Her testimony was she begged Cameron Todd Willingham to go back in that smoking house and get the babies. And do you remember what he did, based on the evidence? Jerry Long, the witness, told you that he started talking about electrical problems and squirrels in the attic. **I want you to think about that when you consider your verdict in this case.**

Unfortunately for justice, Willingham neither mentioned squirrels to Jerry Long nor volunteered information to him about the cause of the fire. Prosecutor simply misled the jury. As evidence of that claim, I present the relevant portion of Jerry Long's testimony below.

_Prosecutor John Jackson:_ Did he ever try to explain to you what had happened with the house or anything like that?

_Jerry Long_ : Well, he just told me, he pointed up to the meter where the wires come from, the utility pole, up to the house. He pointed up to those, told me that he had been having trouble with those, that they had been having trouble with the electricity in the house.

_Jackson_ : So, he was trying to tell you about problems with wiring at this time?

Long: He just pointed where the wires met the house and told me that he had been having electrical trouble with the electricity in the house.

_Jackson_ : Pass the witness.

It turns out that Willingham did not volunteer his electrical theory to Jerry Long. He simply answered a question put to him by Jerry Long. I present a transcript segment from Jerry Long's cross-examination.

_Defense Attorney David Martin_ : There were sparks when you got there?

_Long_ : Sparks from the ...

_Martin_ : Sparks from the electric wires?

_Long_ : Yes, sir.

_Martin_ : You asked him where the sparks were coming from? Take a moment to recall, if you will.

_Long_ : I may have.

Notice that Jerry Long did not mention squirrels. In fact, a search of the trial transcripts reveals that the word squirrel (or its plural) was mentioned only one time in the trial. That one instance was when Prosecutor Jackson mocked Willingham for suggesting such a thing, after which he asked the jurors to "to think about that when you consider your verdict ..."

Though Jackson mocked the idea that squirrels might have caused the fire, the idea is not at all far-fetched. When I searched for "squirrels fire chewed" in Google, I came up with 3,830,000 hits. I offer excerpts from some of those hits.

_Excerpt_ : Squirrels like to chew on various edible and inedible objects. This characteristic aids in maintaining sharp teeth and because their teeth grow continuously prevents over-growth. ... Rodents ... have to chew and gnaw constantly to keep their teeth's length in check otherwise their teeth would grow too long -- rendering them unable to eat and thus starve to death.

_Excerpt_ : According to the US Fire Administration there are usually about 120,000 residential fires of "unknown cause" each year in the US. Since 25% of house fires of "unknown cause" are attributed to squirrels and other rodents chewing on wiring, that's possibly up to 30,000 house fires each year in the U.S. as a result of inadequate squirrel control, mice control, or rat control."

_Excerpt_ : Squirrel removal research has estimated that more than 40,000 incidents of house fires annually are caused by faulty electrical wiring. As such, it is the leading cause of fire-related casualties, claiming about 500 lives with property losses estimated at over $500 million annually. Out of these 40,000 fires it's believed that 40% are caused by rodents chewing on wires.

_Excerpt_ : Fire Marshals estimate that 20% of house fires of unknown origin in the United States are caused by squirrels chewing on electrical wires.

_Excerpt_ : Another of our group said he lost his wife in a fire caused by squirrels chewing on wiring.

_Excerpt_ : City officials of New York City attribute at least one power outage each day to squirrels. Squirrels cause more power outages than lightning in some states.

_Excerpt_ : One of the darkest moments in the [fire] department's history occurred ... when the siren was sounded ... [and] they discovered it was [another fire station] engulfed in raging flames. ... The fire burned out of control for nearly two hours, and required the service of 12 neighboring fire departments ... The devastating fire, caused by squirrels chewing through electrical wires, was finally extinguished, but caused severe destruction.

_Excerpt_ : A family were [sic] left devastated after returning from holiday to find their ... luxury home burnt to the ground – after squirrels chewed through wires in the loft. ... The rodents sparked a huge blaze which destroyed the roof, first floor and much of the ground floor.

_Excerpt_ : Yesterday, a pair of the furry animals in Brooklyn Park sparked a house fire and caused up to $75,000 in damage, fire officials say. ... [F]irefighters ended up doing as much damage as the fire, ripping out the ceiling trying to get at the blaze to put it out. They discovered squirrels had chewed through electrical wires and started the fire.

Despite these excerpts, I do not believe that the Willingham fire was caused by squirrels chewing on electrical wires in the attic. It's not because I don't believe squirrels cause fires and it's not because I can clearly rule out a wiring problem as the cause of the Willingham fire. It's because I don't believe the fire started in the attic.

Notice, in the last two of the squirrel excerpts, that attic fires have some characteristics not found in the Willingham case. First, attic fires tend to burn through the roof. Fire spreads more easily upwards than downwards. Second, attic fires are difficult and dangerous to fight. Firefighters frequently leave substantial evidence of their efforts to combat attic fires. I excerpt below an observation by one firefighter regarding the difficulty of fighting attic fires.

_Excerpt_ : Sitting around the firehouse dinner table recently, our discussion turned to attic fire horror stories. What was truly scary was that virtually everyone had a story to share. I reflected back when, as a fairly new firefighter, I arrived on the scene of a medium-sized home with a working attic fire. I recalled that interior conditions presented very light smoke hovering at the ceiling level. Within minutes, we pulled huge amounts of ceiling and operated nozzles as we worked to put the fire out. Well, the fire went out, but it was discouraging to see the amount of damage that we had done to the home's interior and its contents. I struggled with determining which caused more damage—the fire or the firefighters. Fortunately, I would learn from other company officers and experienced firefighters that we can do it differently and that we can have a positive impact on an already tragic situation.

In the Willingham fire, the fire did not burn through the roof, and the firefighters did not need to pull down the ceiling to extinguish the fire. Also, Manuel Vasquez testified that he looked in the attic and found no evidence of a fire there.

_Vasquez_ : And I looked up into the attic because I know that the ceiling in the bedroom, the fire had not penetrated into the attic, but I wanted to make sure that the fire \-- there was no fire in the attic. So Exhibit No. 48, that's my flashlight. I'm pointing the flashlight with the light. Then I take pictures. There is smoke up in the attic, but there was no fire.

Given that Vasquez flat out lied to the jury ("I listened to him. I never questioned him. I never asked him any questions."), and given that Vasquez intentionally mislead the jury (with regard to when he conducted his fire scene investigation), I give little credence to his testimony with regard to the possibility of an attic fire. I base my conclusion primarily on the post-fire condition of the roof and ceiling.

Though I believe it is unlikely the fire started in the attic, I argue that Fogg and Vasquez did a terrible job investigating the electrical system. As a bare minimum, they should have thoroughly examined the fuse box, every electrical outlet box in the bedroom and hallway, and every electrical device anywhere near the origin of the fire. They should have also conducted continuity checks for any circuit associated with the bedroom or hallway. They should have established a history of any electrical problems during their interviews with both Stacy and Todd. They should have fully documented (via text and photographs) all aspects of their investigation, including the electrical aspects.

Chief Fogg, who testified as an expert though not qualified to do so, described a minimalist investigation of the electrical system.

_Fogg_ : We started looking for electrical shorts from wiring which was visible in the bedroom. We found no electrical shorts in the bedroom. From there we went to the hallway, which was just outside the doorway of the bedroom. ... There was a light switch by the front door facing. The wires were intact. No evidence of electrical short. ... The electrical, you look at the electrical wiring for evidence of shorts from the outlets, from fixtures, 'so forth. There again, those were eliminated.

He offered not a single photograph or any description of the interior of even one outlet. The jury was simply to trust him.

The testimony of Manuel Vasquez, who was qualified as an expert by the court, was even more disturbing

_Vasquez_ : And Exhibit 32, I'm next to this wall here, next to these windows. And I have noted that it's more burnt on the left than on the right side; but one of the things that is significant here is, again, there is a wire coming down from the ceiling all the way down to the electrical outlet. When I examined the wire, it's burned -- the insulation is burned off. The wire from the top going down on Exhibit 32. And, of course, I couldn't take a whole picture of the wall because I'm too close. I took two pictures. And this is the bottom of the wall there, and you can see the wire. And as you get close to the electrical outlet, the wire is intact. The insulation is still on it. So this indicates that the fire went up and reached the attic and then mushroomed and went in that direction then down. That's why the wire is burned from the top to the bottom.

If Manuel Vasquez believed "that the fire went up" from the electrical outlet and "reached the attic", how could he in good conscience not pull that outlet, examine it, and photograph it? How could he exclude that outlet as the origin of the fire?

Vasquez had another piece of testimony to offer about an electrical components. He found a piece of wire on the porch.

_Vasquez_ : Then I walked east along the porch here and at this area here at the end on the west end. I am looking at this area here, and ... there is a glob down here that's fused to a wire. We looked at it, and we could see what the glob was. This little glob here was charcoal lighter fluid.

While I guess it might be possible that fire will cause lighter fluid to form solid globs near the base of a wire segment, I think it is far more likely that fire will cause lighter fluid to burn.

As an alternative explanation for that glob, I offer the following excerpt from Section 14-10.6.2 from NFPA 921, the gold standard for fire investigations.

_NFPA 921_ : When exposed to fire, copper conductors may melt. At first, there is blistering and distortion of the surface. ... The next stage is some flow of copper on the surface with some hanging drops forming. ... The resolidified copper forms globules. ... There is no distinct line of demarcation between melted and unmelted surfaces.

Any doubt about the nature of the glob could have been resolved by simply submitting the sample for testing. Vasquez, however, did not submit it for testing. Instead, he confidently proclaimed to the jury that he had discovered a glob of lighter fluid at the end of a wire.

Vasquez missed the important part of his discovery. It wasn't the glob, it was the wire itself. Vasquez had found a wire segment, one that had possibly melted during the fire, one that may have come from the very origin of the fire. Unfortunately, we'll never know if the burned wire segment was evidence of an electrical fire, since neither Vasquez nor Fogg made any effort to determine where it came from.

When all is said and done, however, I don't believe the fire Willingham fire was caused by an electrical problem. I suspect instead that the fire was caused by the space heater in the children's bedroom.

## Chapter 14: The Space Heater

Numerous renowned fire investigators have explained that the evidence did not support a conclusion of arson in the Willingham fire. Those involved in Willingham's conviction and execution argue his behavior and character were a sufficient basis for killing him. No one offers an explanation (other than arson) of how the fire might have started.

The renowned fire investigators are understandably cautious about speculating, about straying beyond the scientific method. They are, after all, arguing that such forays caused their predecessors to reach erroneous conclusions.

Those who argued for, supported, or refused to stop Willingham's execution have substantial emotional, professional, and political biases with which to wrestle. They have little incentive for pouring through all the data in an effort to discover the actual cause of the fire, if not arson.

I too wrestle with bias. I advocate for those I believe have been wrongfully convicted. I will argue, in my next monograph, that 10% of the 2.5 million people we have incarcerated in America today are factually innocent. Few people will accept that our justice system might be so seriously flawed.

I too am concerned about reaching beyond the data. I therefore do not claim as true my hypothesis that two-year-old Amber Willingham started the fire that killed her, her twin sisters, and eventually her father. Instead, I present the reasoning behind my hypothesis and ask that you not accept it as unassailable truth. While I believe my hypothesis is substantially more likely to be correct any discussed above, I acknowledge that I will not be able to prove my case.

### The Weather

I find it discouraging, but unfortunately not surprising, that no party to the Willingham conviction considered the weather when considering whether any of the space heaters were on or off. I find merely a single tussle between David Martin and Manuel Vasquez on the subject of weather. Martin suggests it might have been cold outside, given that it was the day before Christmas Eve. Vasquez suggests it might have been warm, given that it was Texas.

_Martin_ : Did you also notice, when you were there in December, that it was colder than it is this month?

_Vasquez_ : Colder in December than in August?

_Martin_ : Let's think about that. Generally that's so; isn't it?

_Vasquez_ : Yes, sir.

_Martin_ : It's the wintertime.

_Vasquez_ : Yes, sir.

_Martin_ : It's a time when 40-year-old houses have drafts in them, we would expect.

_Vasquez_ : We're talking about Texas weather.

_Martin_ : Yes.

_Vasquez_ : In December, you can also get heat waves.

Rather than speculate in such childish fashion when a man's life was at stake, both Martin and Vasquez should have informed themselves fully of the weather in Corsicana on the day of the fire. Neither of them did. I will do so now, twenty years later.

Wolfram Alpha is a numerically based search engine. If you are searching for information on liquid accelerants, you are better advised to use Goggle or Bing. If, however, you are trying to find the number of days between two dates, convert semitones to octaves, or find historical weather data for a particular city, I recommend Wolfram Alpha.

Using Wolfram Alpha, I requested information for Dallas on December 23, 1991. I display below the weather portion of the information returned.

I used Dallas in the query rather than Corsicana because the search engine did not return temperatures for Corsicana. I presumed Dallas was an acceptable analog since the two cities share the same geography and are separated by less than 60 miles.

Assuming the weather in Dallas that day was indeed representative, Corsicana started its day under a clear sky. Clouds began rolling in eight hours later. By 10 AM, they blanketed the sky.

The temperature had a mind of its own. At midnight, it was a chilly 53 degrees. It would never get any warmer. By 9AM, the temperature had dropped to 48. By the beginning of Christmas Eve, it would be 46.

Despite Vasquez' speculation that Corsicana might have been experiencing a heat wave, it was cold enough in Corsicana that morning to expect that residents would have had their heating systems turned on.

### The Weatherproofing

The house was poorly insulated, drafty, and cold in the winter. I repeat below the portion of Willingham's interview in which he described Stacy's improvised efforts to weatherproof their house.

_Willingham_ : Well Stacy had the back door sealed off. She had, uh, in that kitchen you can look on the floor, you can see gaps, like this tall some places. That house was cold, you know. That might have been why we got it so cheap, but it was cold. I know for a fact that there was no insulation in that house you know from what you could see in the attic or whatever. But every winter Stacy would always put, you know she'd take cloths and stuff and window seals and tape up all the holes and then put tin foil around the windows, you know, to keep the heat in and to you know keep it cool in the summertime and stuff. Well, every winter she would always, you know, she'd take it down in the summertime, but every winter she would, uh, tape the back door and from outside she'd put a plastic bag over the screen door then shut the screen door and then shut the back door. And when she'd shut the back door, she'd cram all the holes with towels and things to keep the weather out. And then she had a big blanket that she would hang over the door and then she'd duct tape all that up. The only reason the ice box was there was because a few months earlier our ice box was going on the fritz and so I bought this other one, the one that was against the door, I bought it for thirty dollars and was gonna, we was gonna fix it but we never got the money to have anybody put Freon in it, so this year when she did that, she pushed the ice box against the back door you know.

The photo below shows the back door as sealed by Stacy that winter. It also shows the new refrigerator / freezer purchased when the old one failed. The old unit had not yet been disposed, and the new one was placed in front of the rear door, since that door had already been made unusable by Stacy's weatherproofing efforts.

_Willingham_ : That house was cold, you know. That might have been why we got it so cheap, but it was cold. I know for a fact that there was no insulation in that house.

_Willingham_ : [I]n that kitchen you can look on the floor, you can see gaps, like this tall some places

### The Space Heater

To fend off the cold, the Willinghams relied on three space heaters. At least one of them, the one in the children's bedroom, didn't work very well.

_Willingham:_ We had three heaters in the house. The whole house, the entire house just had three outlet[s]. That was it. That was the reason for the tin foil on the windows and the back door being taped up. My wife did all that because it was so cold in that house. The only place we had a heater was in the hall, the bathroom, and the twins' room. You see the twins' room used to be a living room.

_Willingham_ : Also the thing with the heater, the heater that we had in their room didn't have hardly a flame. It was not the kind of heater that you could put in a big room and keep the room warm cause the highest the flame would get, possibly you could turn it up to full blast and the flame would never be no more than two to three inches high. I don't know what, it might have been stopped up or something or need to be cleaned but that was the biggest flame you could get off of it.

The Willinghams recognized that the heater posed a potential fire hazard. They attempted to keep the surrounding area clear.

_Willingham:_ There was a space heater in this corner right, right over here.... There was never anything around it.

_Willingham_ : [N]othing ever got close to the heater. We, we made that a point, you know the toys and stuff.

Nonetheless, the room had been converted from a living room to a children's room. Toys and clutter are inevitable. Willingham described the major items in the room, and specified their arrangement.

_Willingham_ : Okay there was a twin's bed here, they was baby cribs, and a twin's bed here. There was a wagon of toys here, a space heater here, a... I call it, you know, a busy kitchen, you know. It was a Little Tykes kitchen that had a telephone, a stove, an oven, things like that. One of them plastic Fisher Price things. Okay, that was right here.... Beside that Amber had a dresser here. There was a Little Tykes chair here, and then her bed. Right in the middle of the room there was a slide.

Based on his description, I offer the following layout. Keep in mind that south is to the top of the layout. That point will soon be significant.

Willingham soon thereafter confirmed the arrangement, at least the arrangement along the south wall.

_Willingham_ : Yeah, because then the kitchen, then the dresser and then the little tykes chair and then her bed.

### Fogg

While Douglas Fogg never claimed the space heater in the children's bedroom was turned off, he did claim that the gas valve leading to the space heater was in the off position.

_Fogg_ : Initially, we started looking in the front hallway, northeast [children's] bedroom area of the house. That was the area of most fire damage. Initially, we started looking for accidental causes of the fire. We started eliminating those in the northeast bedroom. One of the first things we looked for was the space heater. The space heater was located in the southeast corner of the bedroom. The stop along the east wall or gas outlet along the east wall was found to be in the "off" position. We eliminated that space heater.

As I noted earlier, I find it strange that the Willinghams would control the space heater using a gas outlet valve located somewhere behind a hot heater. Instead, it seems more likely that the Willinghams controlled the heater as did everyone else, by using the control on the heater itself. In fact, Willingham indirectly confirmed they used the heater's own control during his interview with Fogg (and Vasquez and Hensley):

_Willingham_ : You know I don't know whether they, you know, they never have told us whether it [the space heater] was on or not but you should be able to tell from the stove.

We know that Willingham was speaking of the space heater when he said stove, for two reasons. First, he referred to the heaters as stoves during other points in his interview. Second, the house didn't have a kitchen stove.

_Willingham_ : We never had a stove. We lived in that house a year and a half and never had a stove. We cooked on, all we had was a hot plate, a two burner hot plate, and a microwave oven and a FryDaddy. That was all we had.

Willingham was therefore relying on his experience when he suggested that investigators could determine the on/off status of the space heater simply by looking at it. It never occurred to him that someone might infer the status of the heater by looking at a gas outlet valve somewhere along the east wall.

Throughout the interviews with Todd and Stacy Willingham, Chief Fogg seemed to simply assume that the space heaters were on. He never asked whether they were on or off. He never told them that the heaters could not have been. Instead he asked both Todd and Stacy if they had trouble with the space heaters.

_Fogg_ : Did you ever have trouble with the gas in the house? Space heaters to the range or anything?

_Willingham_ : We never had a stove.... But we never had any problems with the heaters or stuff like that. Now the one in the hall, every, every once in a while you might, you might smell a little gas, you know. But we never could find where it might have been coming from, but... it would do it if you turn it full blast....

_Fogg_ : But no trouble with the gas whatsoever?

_Willingham_ : No sir.

_Fogg_ : Either one of the heaters?

_Willingham_ : Well we had three heaters in the house.

It's surprising that Douglas Fogg did not realize that there were three heaters in the house. Should we believe he accurately noted and remembered the position of a gas valve when he did not accurately note and remember an entire heater?

During Stacy's interview, Fogg asked specifically about the heater in the children's room.

_Fogg_ : How about the heater that was in the babies' room? Did you ever have any trouble with it?

_Stacy_ : No, not that I can remember. If you turn it on high, it just, it just puts out a small flame. It never got real high.

Why would Fogg ask that question if no gas could have even reached the heater?

_Fogg_ : How about the heater that was in the babies' room? Did you ever have any trouble with it?

### Vasquez

Manuel Vasquez also testified that space heaters were off.

_Vasquez_ : Again the heat pattern behind this space heater is from above. There is nothing but debris around this space heater, and the top part and the front part of the space heater has received a lot of heat damage. There is no way that this heater could have started the fire. So that was eliminated. If I may say so, one of the things that I need to find out: Was the heater on or off? The heaters were off.

Vasquez, of course, could not provide independent, first-hand testimony regarding the on/off status of the heaters. According to his testimony, he did not arrive at the scene until four days after the fire, and he made no effort to insure the scene was preserved. If fact, it seems the gas company had searched for gas leaks, both above and below ground, and removed the gas meter before Vasquez ever arrived.

Vasquez nonetheless asserted several times that the heaters were turned off. He did not claim, as did Fogg, that the gas outlet valve was in the off position. Instead, he claimed to know that the space heaters themselves were turned off.

_Vasquez_ : First of all, the heaters were turned off. And I did not find any remnant of paper around the heater or anywhere.

In reasserting his unjustified confidence that the heaters were off at the time of the fire, he confirmed that the heaters had their own controls. He added further to the argument that Willinghams had no reason to control the heaters via their gas outlet valves.

Vasquez made an extremely interesting slip of the tongue while discussing the heater in the children's room.

_Vasquez_ : Again, I examined this space heater because, you know, if it was an accidental fire, the space heater caused the fire.

Why would Vasquez volunteer this opinion if he knew the space heater was turned off? Why would he not testify: "If it was an accidental fire, the space heater could not have caused the fire. It was turned off."

Instead, Manuel Vasquez volunteered:

_Vasquez_ : [Y]ou know, if it was an accidental fire, the space heater caused the fire.

### Zamora

Manuel Vasquez met with Dr. Juan Luis Zamora at least once, perhaps twice. Vasquez advised Zamora that the deaths resulted from homicide, and Dr. Zamora so indicated on the autopsy report. He then said something subtle and interesting during his testimony.

_Zamora:_ No, sir. As I said before, the examination of the bodies do not give much clues of whether the fire was a criminal act or it was an act as a result of any play or anything.

What might prompt Zamora to offer "play" as an alternative to arson? Perhaps Dr. Zamora had too often seen the results of children playing with fire. Perhaps instead Manuel Vasquez mentioned to Dr. Zamora as a possibility. Either way, David Martin did not follow up on the point.

### Todd

Willingham claimed to not know whether the heater in the children's bedroom was on or off. Stacy informed him that it was on. If he had known it was on, he said, he would have turned it off.

_Willingham_ : Stacy says it was on, I can't swear to that you know cause I don't remember. You know I, when I went into that room you know I was still half asleep, you know I had just woke up and gave them a bottle and everything you know. She says it was on, I couldn't, I couldn't swear to that, cause I didn't look. You know... if I'd have known it was on, I'd have cut it off because... I hate stoves being on, you know. Because I'm real hot blooded, you know. Plus the gas bill. But I would have turned it off. You know I don't know whether they, you know, they never have told us whether it was on or not but you should be able to tell from the stove or whatever but you know I never looked at that cause I didn't want to touch anything like that.

### Stacy

Neither Vasquez, Fogg, nor Hensley asked Stacy during her interview if the space heater was on. Instead they seemingly assumed it was.

_Fogg_ : How about the heater that was in the babies' room? Did you ever have any trouble with it?

As just noted, Todd claimed during his interview that Stacy assured him the space heater was on. This should not be surprising given the outside air temperature and the weatherproofing condition of the house.

David Grann, in his ground-breaking _New Yorker_ article "Trial by Fire", explains that Stacy told the same thing to Elizabeth Gilbert, one of Todd's foremost post-conviction advocates.

_Grann_ : According to a tape recording of the conversation, Stacy said that nothing unusual had happened in the days before the fire. She and Willingham had not fought, and were preparing for the holiday. Though Vasquez, the arson expert, had recalled finding the space heater off, Stacy was sure that, at least on the day of the incident -- a cool winter morning -- it had been on. "I remember turning it down," she recalled. "I always thought, gosh, could Amber have put something in there?" Stacy added that, more than once, she had caught Amber "putting things too close to it."

Neither the prosecution nor the defense called Stacy to the stand during the guilt / innocence phase of Willingham's trial. The jury never heard Stacy explain that she left the heater on.

### Origin

Everyone who has investigated or researched the fire seems to accept that the fire began in the children's bedroom. Everyone, that is, except Douglas Fogg. Fogg seems to believe that Willingham doused the bedroom, hallway, doorway, and porch with accelerant, then lit the porch on fire.

_Fogg_ : It actually ended up starting on the front porch, through the threshold of the front door into the hallway, very minutely linked to the bedroom.

Since Fogg's theory is utterly impeached by the eyewitness testimony that no fire was visible until the explosion, there is no viable alternative area of origin.

Assuming we can accept Willingham's statements as accurate, he admittedly lied about entering the children's bedroom, we can narrow down the origin somewhat. Willingham was consistent in his claim that he only saw flames on ceiling and south wall of the bedroom.

On the same day as the children's funeral, Lt. Ron Franks of the Corsicana Fire Department escorted Willingham through the fire scene. From Franks report, we learn the following:

_Franks_ : He asked me if I had any idea as to how, or who, or where the fire started, to which I replied no. He then stated "I think the fire started over there." He pointed to a window on the south wall of the room, then he said "When I came in, the fire was over there and on the ceiling."

Willingham repeated that claim during his interview with Fogg, Vasquez, and Hensley on New Year's Eve.

_Willingham_ : I kinda figure that if the heater would have started it, maybe that more of the house would have been burnt on that corner there or something. Because the flames was in the top of the house, right there, like right around there, you know around the whatever you call that, between the ceiling and the wall, that's, that's where all the flames was. I know it was hot in there because, that, that house has got like nine foot ceilings, I would guess, and the fire is not what was singeing my hair. It was the heat, just from standing up. The heat was so great in there that, that it, it just, oh God, I never felt anything that hot before, you know. And I knew that, I know that I never seen no flames anywhere, except in their room you know it was the only place I could have seen flames you know.

It's interesting that Willingham did not attribute the fire to the space heater. He speculated that had the space heater started the fire, he would have seen flames in the corner and there would have been more damage to the corner.

Manuel Vasquez agreed that the corner did not seem uniquely burned.

_Vasquez_ : Again the heat pattern behind this space heater is from above. There is nothing but debris around this space heater, and the top part and the front part of the space heater has received a lot of heat damage. There is no way that this heater could have started the fire. So that was eliminated.

It's more interesting that Willingham placed the flames at the south wall of the room, the same wall where he placed Amber's toy kitchen.

_Willingham_ : It was a Little Tykes kitchen that had a telephone, a stove, an oven, things like that.

### The Twins

There are precious few consolations associated with this case. One of those few, perhaps, is that neither of the twins burned to death. Though they experienced the terror of fire, they did not feel its searing pain. Instead, each of them died of asphyxiation, before the room flashed over, before their bodies were seriously burned by the ungodly heat.

In their death, they left a clue as to the origin of the fire.

_Willingham_ : [T]here used to be a... slide, right in the middle of their room. And I laid one of them on the left side of it and one of them on the right side of it, between the slide and Amber's bed, you know. That's where I put them to sleep at in the floor was right there.

_Willingham_ : Right in the middle of the room there was a slide... I laid one of the twins here, I laid one of the twins here and gave them a bottle.

_Willingham:_ The kids knew not to touch it. They knew. You could take one of the twins and set them down in front of that heater and lift their hand up to it, and let them go, and they would turn around and go the other way. Stacy taught them that.

_Vasquez_ : I asked the assistant chief Doug Fogg to mark on the floor where the bodies were found in the debris when they first put out the fire. And one body is right here laying 18 inches from the door. The other body is a few feet down here from the crib, according to the markings.

The children clearly crawled, since one was found underneath the crib. They were presumably crawling away from the flames. They crawled to the corner opposite the space heater. The sketch below shows their possible paths.

Regardless of where they began their crawl, and regardless of the path they took, they ended up as far away from the southeast corner as they could before being overcome by smoke. The twins, though their reflexive behavior, left evidence regarding the origin of the fire. Coupled with Willingham's repeated claims that he saw fire only on the ceiling and the south wall, the twins left evidence that the fire started in the region of the toy kitchen.

_Willingham_ : You could take one of the twins and set them down in front of that heater and lift their hand up to it, and let them go, and they would turn around and go the other way.

### Amber

While the twins were afraid of the space heater, Amber seemed drawn to it. After Todd's conviction, Stacy told Elizabeth Gilbert that more than once she had caught Amber "putting things too close to it."

_Stacy_ : I always thought, gosh, could Amber have put something in there?

Todd also repeatedly caught Amber "messing" with the heater.

_Willingham_ : And I taught Amber not to play with it either. Amber knew better. Amber got whuppings every once in a while for messing with it. She wouldn't stick stuff in it, but it might be her hands, and playing with, and just stuff. She knew not to be messing with stuff like that.

But a fire did begin in the children's bedroom, near Amber's toy kitchen, while the space heater was on and Amber was awake. As the fire spread, Amber climbed the child gate and fled to her father's room. She managed to wake him, but in the smoke they were unable to find one another.

_Willingham_ : Because that's another thing I don't understand about Amber is -- I heard her, I heard that last "Daddy, Daddy!" and I never heard her again, you know. I called her name the whole time, until I was in there the whole time, until I got out of the house, and I never heard her name, I never heard her again.

As Willingham was pulling on his pants, Amber was climbing onto the bed he had just left. Firefighter Steven Vandavor found her there.

_Vandavor_ : We went all the way down the hall and to the kitchen, and I let go of the hose, went to the right, the first room to the right, and started doing a search under, you know, on the floor and went through.... You can't see anything. You are just feeling around to feel somebody or something.... I went through the door into the bedroom, and I started checking in there.... I felt a bed. I couldn't really see the bed. I started feeling around on it, and about that time they got what we call exhaust fan set up in the front door, they turned that on. It started blowing some of the smoke out, and I could make out a body laying on the bed.

_Vandavor_ : She was lying about in the middle of the bed face down, and her head was probably about the edge of where the pillows would be at the top of the bed.... There was another fireman next to me, and I tapped him on the shoulder as I grabbed her so he could help lead me back out of the house, and I picked her up and we made our way out in the front yard.... I could not -- all I could really see on her was some of what I would call soot. It was kind of around her mouth and stuff. That's all I could see because I still had my mask on and stuff. It was kind of hard to see.... I couldn't tell [if she was alive.]

Amber was treated on the scene by paramedics. They inserted a tube into her windpipe and began to breathe for her. They rushed her to Navarro Regional Hospital, just two and a half miles away. There she was treated emergency room physician Dr. Grady Carlton Shaw. Shaw testified at Willingham's trial. He described his efforts to revive Amber.

_Shaw_ : She was not breathing, nor was her heart beating.... She was not making any attempt to breathe. We established an intravenous line and gave her medications to stimulate her heart. I called her pediatrician to help me in the attempt to resuscitate her. We continued to do CPR, to artificially compress her heart so that her blood would flow. Our attempts were unsuccessful and she was pronounced dead some 15 minutes after arrival at the emergency room.

_Shaw_ : She was burned extensively about the head and face. The skin was not charred, but was burned, especially on the face and neck and on the arms and hands and on one foot. There was a sock on the other foot; the burns had spared that foot. She had some soot-staining of her trunk and sparing of most of her chest and abdomen from burning. She had on a pair of underpants and that area covered was spared of soot staining and burning.

Amber's burns are consistent with intense radiant heat from above. The upper and upward facing portions of her body were burned.

Dr. Charles Odom performed the autopsy on Amber, the following morning, in Dallas. I quote below from his trial testimony.

_Odom_ : This particular body exhibited burns over its face, neck and its shoulders. The body was that of a young, female Caucasian child that appeared compatible with approximately two years of age and in size was about three feet tall and weighed about thirty something -- twenty-eight pounds. And all of that seemed consistent.

_Odom_ : Internal examination revealed injury in the form of soot or products of combustion from a fire that had been inhaled into the nose and the upper airways and then down into the lungs, into the bronchial passages. The organs were a reddish color; which is what we have come to learn and recognize is the appearance of organs that have a high level of carbon monoxide. And, indeed, blood was collected and tested for the level of carbon monoxide, and it was considerably elevated, at approximately 44 percent.

_Odom_ : Those were the most significant findings on this body. Of negative importance was that there were no other injuries; there were no beating, skull fractures, broken bones, or evidence of blunt-force injury that I could see in the tissues of the body or the internal organs. So, principally, this body exhibited burning on the surface, about 15 percent of the body surface, and evidence of smoke inhalation, with elevated carbon monoxide.

_Odom_ : In my opinion, she died as a result of inhaling those products of combustion -- sometimes termed "smoke inhalation." Carbon monoxide is one of the principal components of that. That eliminates the oxygen, so the cause of death was smoke inhalation.

Dr. Odom was not able to determine whether Amber's burn injuries were caused by direct contact with an open flame or by superheated air.

_Odom_ : I can't determine that with certainty. Either possibility exists. It could be a flame directly to the surface of the skin or it could just be super-heated air that has affected those areas and produced the blistering and burning.

## Chapter 15: The Actual Cause of the Willingham Fire

We will never know with 100% confidence the minute details of the Willingham fire. We can, however, learn enough from the case documents to reconstruct the events of the tragic day with surprising clarity.

The day started chilly enough and it would refuse to warm by even a degree. Warmth would escape easily from the Willingham house, impeded only slightly by cloth stuffed in the largest floor gaps, or by plastic bags pulled over screen doors, or metal foil placed over windows.

The day started as it usually did, with Stacy the first to arise. On that day, she arose between 7:30 and 8:00 AM. She entered her children's bedroom. They were still sleeping. She turned the space heater down.

She woke the twins, removed them from their cribs, changed their diapers, dressed them, and gave them each a bottle. She put them on the floor.

Amber was in her bed. She no longer needed diapers. Maybe just at night. Stacy clothed her with just a pair of underpants and a pair of socks. Stacy left the three children to play while she got ready for work.

She was scheduled on that Monday to work at the Salvation Army. She wasn't supposed to be there until 10:00 AM, but she had several errands to run first. There were bills to be paid, lest their utilities be cut off. She would leave a bit early.

Todd awoke slightly before Stacy left. He recalls specifically that it was 9:13. He remained in bed while Stacy finished preparing to leave. She left around 9:20.

As she pulled out of the driveway, the twins began to cry. Todd arose and went into their bedroom. He gave them each another bottle. He laid them back on the floor, one on either side of the slide that took up the center of the room.

Amber was once again drawn to the heater, to its bright flickering flame, to its warmth, to its forbidden mysteries and charms. Both Mommy and Daddy had caught her before, putting things too close to it. Daddy had even given her whuppings, but he was asleep in the other room, and Mommy was not even home.

Perhaps she wanted to move some of the fire from the heater to her Little Tykes oven sitting nearby. Perhaps she simply wanted to put something inside the heater and watch it disappear.

Maybe a piece of drawing paper. Maybe one of her socks, the one she wasn't wearing when she was pulled barely alive from the house. Maybe it was the sock that was never found.

Whatever it was, when it burned it was scarier than the fire in the heater. It burned closer and closer to her finger and her thumb as she held it at arm's length. But it was so hot. It was the hottest, scariest thing she felt, ever, so she flung it away, and then the curtain was on fire. The curtain between the heater and her little oven was on fire. She was going to get in trouble again. She was going to get another whupping.

Fear of anger and whuppings, though, were quickly overcome by horror. The fire was growing larger and larger and scarier and scarier. She retreated as the fire climbed the wall to the ceiling. The smoke got inside her and made her cough. She could feel the heat on her skin, on her face and neck and shoulders. She had to get away, but the gate was there, blocking the doorway, keeping her from the safety of her Daddy's arms.

Her sisters too were scared. They were crawling away as fast as they could, crawling towards the far corner of the room. One of them made it underneath the crib.

Now the top of the room was on fire, and it was getting dark even though it was just morning outside. She couldn't breath and face burned, and her neck and her bare shoulders, and she wasn't even close to the fire. She didn't want to keep it a secret any more. She wanted her Daddy to save her. She screamed and screamed but he didn't come.

So she did what her sisters could not do. She climbed the child gate and ran to her Daddy's room, screaming for him.

"Daddy, Daddy!"

She couldn't see him because the smoke was there too, in his room. It was everywhere. She could hear him though. He was yelling at her to run, to go outside. But the fire was there where he wanted her to run, and she wanted _him_ to save her. She climbed into his bed, but he wasn't there.

Instead of him saving her, she would save him. She would save him with her screams and her pleas, by awakening him, by telling him of the fire, by taking his place in the bed, by breathing in the smoke that would have filled his lungs instead of hers.

It wasn't heroism that caused Amber to take her Daddy's place. A two-year-old cannot be heroic. She can only be afraid of fire and smoke and dark. She can only be expected to seek the safety of Mommy or Daddy. Amber did everything a two-year-old could and should do. She screamed, she climbed the gate, and she ran for help. In doing so, she bought a reprieve for her father.

The fire, however, would not be denied. Disguised first as justice and then as a needle, it would eventually consume her father just as surely as it had consumed her sisters, just as surely as it consumed her.

## NOTES

In my previous work on the Willingham case, _The Skeptical Juror and The Trial of Cameron Todd Willingham_ , I recreated the Willingham trial and deliberation from the perspective of an imaginary juror. My premise is that a skeptical juror should have voted "Not Guilty" based on the evidence presented at the trail. I think history supports that claim.

My book did not, however, make an effort to establish the actual cause of the Willingham fire. In fact, I am unaware of any writing prior to this monograph which attempts to identify the actual cause. Most of the previous writing, and there is much available, focuses on whether or not the fire resulted from arson. No one yet seems to have considered what may have started the fire, if not arson. Sadly, Manuel Vasquez perhaps came the closest. "I examined this space heater because, you know, if it was an accidental fire, the space heater caused the fire."

For this work, I relied almost exclusively on the trial transcripts, police interviews, and other case documents. You can download the documents yourself from The Innocence Project and PBS web sites.

http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/Cameron_Todd_Willingham_Wrongfully_Convicted_and_Executed_in_Texas.php

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/death-by-fire

I relied on David Grann's excellent article _Trial by Fire_ for Stacy's claim that she remembered leaving the space heater on that day.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann

For the multiple excerpts relating to squirrel initiated fires and the one excerpt related specifically to attic fires, I reference Google. Copy a distinct sentence segment from the excerpt and paste that segment into the Google search field.

For this work, I conducted some simple experiments to better understand the behavior of lighter fluid. I performed my experiments in a gravel bed sheltered from wind and well away from flammable surroundings. I had a fire-extinguisher at the ready. Nonetheless, I caution everyone about experimenting (some would say playing) with fire. I also note that I would not have attempted even my simple experiment if it involved gasoline rather than lighter fluid. Gasoline is exceptionally dangerous.

I also attempted an analysis of how much lighter fluid would have been required to cover and saturate the flooring as Manuel Vasquez described. As with fire, I urge readers to use extreme caution when playing with math.

## ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I write of wrongful convictions and executions. My wife edits and publishes my work. We have three books now available on Amazon, each in print and Kindle format. The books are:

The Skeptical Juror and The Trial of Byron Case

The Skeptical Juror and The Trial of Cory Maye

The Skeptical Juror and The Trial of Cameron Todd Willingham

We have edited and published _Smith's Guide to Habeas Corpus Relief_ , written by Zachary A. Smith, an inmate and jailhouse lawyer. We have seen far too many cases of prisoners defaulting on their right to appeal because they had no defense counsel or (worse) they had inept counsel who simply failed to file within the deadline. In most cases, the would-be petitioners are factually guilty of the crime for which they are imprisoned. In a disturbing number of the cases, the would-be petitioners are factually innocent of the crime for which they are imprisoned. In all cases, someone we have imprisoned has lost one of the few legal rights he or she has left. We hope _Smith's Guide_ will mitigate the problem by allowing prisoners to work more closely with their counsel or, if need be, to file the petition for habeas corpus _pro se_.

My next monograph will address the rate of wrongful convictions in American. You can read early drafts of most chapters at The Skeptical Juror blog (http://www.skepticaljuror.com). After reviewing a dozen estimates of the rate of wrongful conviction, and after presenting two separate analyses of my own, I argue that 10% of those we convict may in fact be innocent. Given that we have 2.5 million people incarcerated in this country, that means we may have a quarter of a million people behind bars for crimes they did not convict.

Of those quarter million who may be wrongfully imprisoned, I am directly involved in efforts to free two of them: Byron Case (Missouri) and Michael Ledford (Virginia). You can learn of Byron Case from my book. You can learn of Michael Ledford from my blog.

You can contact me at mailto:skepticaljuror@gmail.com.

