Framed

The Fire Does Not Lie

JOHN GRISHAM

In 1976, the U.S.

Supreme Court lifted a four-year ban on executions, and the thirty-five death states were off and running.

Since then, 1,572 men and 15 women have been put to death by gas, lethal injection, electric chair, and one by hanging and another by firing squad.

Texas proudly leads the pack with 586 killings.

Oklahoma is second with 123, barely edging out Virginia with 113, a number that is unlikely to change since that commonwealth has now outlawed capital punishment.

The Death Penalty Information Center currently lists twenty executions, half from Texas, of men who were “probably”

innocent.

This number cannot be confirmed because there is no clear-cut, biological proof (DNA) of innocence, and, for obvious reasons, courts tend to lose interest in a case after the defendant is dead.

Journalists and innocence advocates do not.

In the realm of criminal justice, there are few subjects more tantalizing than the possibility that an innocent person has been executed.

Much has been written about these twenty executions, which are described by the DPIC as having “strong evidence”

of innocence.

One case, though, has attracted far more interest than the others.

Not surprisingly, it happened in Texas.

Oddly, though, it is the only case in which the murder weapon was arson.

In 2004, Cameron Todd Willingham was executed for a crime that never occurred.

—

Todd, as he was known, was born in 1968 in Ardmore, Oklahoma.

He died thirty-six years later in Huntsville, Texas, strapped to a gurney in the world’s busiest death chamber.

He spent the last twelve years of his life on death row and never stopped proclaiming his innocence.

He had a rough childhood.

His parents split when he was an infant and his father remarried a woman he always considered his mother.

He dropped out of school in the tenth grade and dabbled in petty crime—drugs, drinking, fighting, and small-time thievery.

He liked heavy metal music, loose girls, beer, whiskey, nightclubs, and honky-tonks.

He also liked fast cars and trained himself to be a decent mechanic, though his employment was sketchy.

When he was twenty, he met Stacy Kuykendall in a bar in Corsicana, Texas, population 24,000.

Her childhood had been more unsettled than his.

Stacy and Todd began living together in a small rental house in a blue-collar part of Corsicana, an hour southeast of Dallas.

Their relationship was rocky and often violent.

He drank too much, spent too much time in beer joints, and chased other women.

They fought and he hit her more than once.

She moved out, then came back.

He moved out, and they patched things up.

Life settled down when Amber was born.

Todd and Stacy took parenthood seriously and doted on the baby.

Before long, Kameron and Karmen arrived at the same time.

With three little girls, all in diapers and his responsibility, Todd decided it was time to grow up.

He and Stacy were married in Ardmore in 1991.

Both struggled to find full-time employment.

Todd worked here and there in construction and as a mechanic while Stacy worked in a bar owned by her brother.

The family was poor, usually broke, with barely enough essentials to get by.

In December 1991, they were two months behind on their rent and other bills were due.

Todd had been laid off again.

Christmas was approaching and they were almost out of money.

On Sunday, December 22, Todd’s stepmother, Eugenia, called and talked to him.

She and Todd’s father were planning a visit from Oklahoma in a couple of days to see the children for Christmas.

Todd was in great spirits, ready for the holidays and enjoying his small children.

He was pleased because he and Stacy had taken the kids to Kmart for family photos and couldn’t wait to share some with the grandparents.

The following morning, Stacy left the house early to shop for Christmas gifts at the Salvation Army.

Todd was babysitting the three girls.

He gave the twins a bottle and they fell asleep in their usual spot, on the floor of their bedroom.

Amber was napping, too.

Todd stretched out on his bed and drifted away.

Around 10:00 a.m.

, he was awakened by Amber screaming “Daddy! Daddy!”

He bolted upright and was immediately hit with thick smoke.

The house was on fire.

He scrambled out of bed and as he was grabbing a pair of pants he yelled, “Oh God, Amber, get out of the house! Get out of the house!”

He could not see her and she never responded.

Staying low to avoid smoke, he headed for the children’s bedroom but could see nothing but black smoke.

He heard sockets and light switches popping.

At the door to the children’s bedroom he tried to stand but his hair caught on fire.

The heat and smoke were too intense and drove him back.

He managed to pat out the fire in his hair, got on all fours, and crawled and groped his way through the blackness.

When he realized he was about to pass out, he scrambled down the corridor and burst out the front door, gasping for air.

When he looked back at the house he was horrified.

Smoke was pouring out of it.

A neighbor, Diane Barbee, saw the smoke and came running.

Todd yelled for her to call the fire department, then found a stick and broke a window to the children’s bedroom.

Fire shot through the broken pane.

He broke another pane and more flames escaped.

A neighbor later told police that Todd was crying “My babies! My babies!”

As the heat intensified, all five windows in the children’s bedroom exploded and flames “blew out,”

as Diane Barbee described it.

The first squad of firemen arrived and scurried around stretching hoses and spraying water.

More neighbors gathered at the commotion and were aghast when they realized the children were still inside.

Todd became even more hysterical.

A police chaplain, George Monaghan, grabbed him and led him to the back of a fire truck in an effort to calm him.

He was crying and saying, “My little girl was trying to wake me up and tell me about the fire! I couldn’t get my babies!”

When a fireman emerged from the house cradling the limp body of Amber, Todd broke and ran to them, then made a dash toward the children’s room, with flames and smoke still roaring through the windows.

Another fireman grabbed him and, with Monaghan’s help, managed to restrain him.

Todd was six feet tall, strong, and never shy about physical contact, and it took several firemen to hold him back.

Monaghan received a black eye in the melee.

A fireman later said, “Based on what I saw on how the fire was burning, it would have been crazy for anyone to try to go into the house.”

Todd was taken to the hospital and treated for minor cuts and burns.

While there, he was told that Amber had died of smoke inhalation.

The burned bodies of Kameron and Karmen were found on the floor of their room.

News of the tragedy rocked Corsicana and there was an outpouring of sympathy and support.

A fund was quickly established to pay for proper burials, and a large crowd gathered for a gut-wrenching funeral.

Todd and Stacy clung to one another and managed to sleepwalk through the nightmare.

—

Four days after the fire, investigators arrived to examine the damage and determine its cause.

Todd gave them permission to do their work, saying, “I know we might not ever know all the answers, but I’d just like to know why my babies were taken from me.”

The small, white-framed house was gutted but still standing.

Half of the exterior was charred and blackened.

Douglas Fogg was the assistant fire chief of Corsicana, and he was soon joined by Manuel Vasquez from the State Fire Marshal’s office.

Vasquez was something of a legend among arson investigators and claimed to have investigated between 1,200 and 1,500 fires with a perfect record.

He was once asked, under oath, if he had ever reached the wrong conclusion as to the cause of a fire.

He replied, “If I have, sir, I don’t know.

It has never been pointed out to me.”

He was colorful, cocky, and enjoyed tossing out such maxims as “The fire does not destroy evidence—it creates it.”

“The fire does not lie.”

And, “The fire tells the story.

I’m just the interpreter.”

And, “I’m just collecting information.

I have not made any determination.

I don’t have any preconceived idea.”

However, during his long career he had found arson in 80 percent of his investigations—an astonishing rate.

The national average was around 50 percent.

Neither Fogg nor Vasquez had college degrees.

Neither had scientific backgrounds.

In Texas, as in most states, anyone could become an expert in arson investigation by taking a forty-hour course, passing a test, and getting a certificate.

Both men had learned on the job, by simply absorbing the tried-and-true investigative techniques that were accepted and handed down.

They began their investigation by inspecting the outside of the house, taking notes and photographs.

Then they went inside, entering the kitchen, which revealed only smoke and heat damage—signs that the fire had not originated there.

In the master bedroom, where Amber’s body was found, they again found only heat and smoke damage.

In the narrow hallway, they noticed charring at the foot of the walls.

Flames burn upward as heat increases, and this fire seemed to burn low, near the floor.

That was the first suspicious sign.

The second was in the children’s bedroom, where they noticed burn patterns on the floor.

An accelerant—gasoline, lighter fluid, paint thinner, etc.—poured on a floor and ignited will cause a fire to concentrate in what investigators call “pour patterns”

or “puddle configurations.”

To Fogg and Vasquez, that was the first clear clue that perhaps an accelerant had been used.

Then they noticed the metal springs under the burnt mattresses had turned white, a sign that intense heat had risen from the floor.

Most house fires involve broken glass, either from doors, windows, or dishes.

For decades, investigators relied on a reaction commonly known as “crazed glass,”

a spiderlike pattern on some broken glass.

Crazed glass was believed to be a key indicator that a fire had been very hot.

It was also commonly believed that fires caused by accelerants burned hotter than fires caused by electrical wiring or burning wood.

A hotter fire caused glass to fracture.

The fire left a trail, a “burn trailer,”

that Fogg and Vasquez tracked from the children’s bedroom along the hallway and out the front door.

At the door they were surprised to discover burnt wood under the aluminum threshold.

The front porch had a concrete floor and on it they noticed brown stains, which they believed were caused by accelerants.

Examining the fire patterns, it became evident, at least to Fogg and Vasquez, that the fire had originated in three separate places: the children’s bedroom, the hallway, and the front door.

To fire investigators, multiple origins meant only one thing: The fire was intentionally started.

Once again, Vasquez, the legendary arson sleuth, had found what he was looking for.

Arson.

Someone had poured accelerants throughout the children’s room and down the hallway and all the way to the front door to create a barrier so the children could not escape.

Fogg and Vasquez sent samples of burnt items and materials to a lab for testing to detect the presence of an accelerant.

In the sample taken from the threshold at the front door, a chemist found substances often used in lighter fluid.

Crime solved.

A triple homicide.

And Todd was the only suspect.

The authorities did not hesitate to accuse him of perhaps the most heinous crime imaginable—burning his children alive.

—

Police went through the neighborhood searching for witnesses and left no doubt that Todd was now suspected of setting the fire.

The crime was so horrific and shocking that people immediately believed it.

The sympathy the town had shown only days earlier quickly turned into disgust.

Those who had witnessed the fire and given detailed, even dramatic, versions of Todd’s efforts to save the girls now had second thoughts.

Perhaps he didn’t try hard enough.

Perhaps he was just putting on a show.

Even Father Monaghan, the chaplain who got a black eye trying to restrain Todd, said, “Things were not as they seemed.

I had the feeling that Willingham was in complete control.”

—

Two weeks after the fire, the investigators asked Todd to sit for a round of questions, strictly routine.

He had no idea he was a suspect and was not advised of his Miranda rights.

He readily agreed to the meeting and arrived without a lawyer.

He told the story of the fire and walked them through his exact movements.

When asked if he had any idea how the fire started, he said no, but it was probably in the children’s room because that’s where he saw the flames.

He and Stacy used three space heaters to keep the house warm and one was in the children’s room.

It had been a cool morning and he felt sure the heaters were on.

Vasquez asked Todd if he had put on shoes before fleeing the house?

He said no.

That was the clincher.

Vasquez knew then that Todd had killed his children.

If the floor had been soaked with accelerant, as they believed, Todd could not have escaped without burning his feet.

His medical exam that day revealed no injuries to his bare feet.

Todd insisted that the fire was near the ceilings and not the floors, but Vasquez did not believe him.

He would testify later that, in his opinion, Todd lit the fire as he was retreating toward the front door.