The King without a Crown: The Seattle arson fires of 1984-92
May 22, 2019 3:53:19 GMT
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Post by hi224 on May 22, 2019 3:53:19 GMT
unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/Seattle_Arsonist
I first heard about this case, as I’m sure a lot of people outside of Seattle did, from the Unsolved Mysteries episode of September 30, 1992. The segment on several fires which destroyed businesses in the Seattle area featured interviews from Seattle fire officials and arson investigators who dubbed the perpetrator of these fires “the King of Arsonists”. The King allegedly used “homemade accelerants” to make his fires burn much hotter than a typical building fire—up to an astonishing 7000 degrees Fahrenheit. Arson investigation experts believed that the King was responsible for as many as 20 building fires in the US and Canada, fires which resulted in the deaths of two firefighters. In the episode, “the King of Arsonists” was called the most dangerous and clever arsonist in American history.
The problem is that the King of Arsonists never existed in the first place.
Interest in the “King of Arsonists” began after the Blackstock Lumber Company fire of September 9, 1989. The fire burned the lumber warehouse to the ground and was responsible for the death of a Seattle firefighter, 32-year-old Matt Johnson. At first, officials believed that the fire was caused by a vagrant setting a small fire to keep warm. However, an arson investigator named Dennis Fowler soon claimed that “patterns” seen in the rubble of the fire were reminiscent of a 1984 fire at the nearby Carpet Exchange Warehouse. The Carpet Exchange fire was a brutally intense fire that reduced the warehouse to ashes in 20 minutes and was hot enough to boil the concrete floor of the facility. Fowler argued that he saw similar burn patterns in the Blackstock fire.
Fowler and his team next researched several similar fires all over the United States and Canada over the previous ten years. They identified at least 20 (some sources say 25) other fires which shared characteristics of the Blackstock and Carpet Exchange fires. Curiously, one of the commonalities of the fires was that, although they burned at an extremely high temperature, no traces of accelerant were found at any of the scenes. Fowler and his team theorized that the fires were started with a new and unknown type of fuel: a volatile accelerant that burned between 5000 and 7000 degrees Fahrenheit but left no measurable traces behind.
With the help of a group of chemists, the Fowler team identified a handful of possible candidates for the mystery fuel. The most likely of these was tested at an abandoned shopping center in Puyallup, Washington. According to Fowler, the center “burned to the ground in minutes” leaving no trace of the accelerant behind. Although the Seattle Fire Department kept the fuel and its formula secret, it did state that the fuel was a compound of several commonly-available ingredients, but (in the words of the Unsolved Mysteries episode) “only an expert with sufficient knowledge of chemistry” would be able to combine them.
Having identified the accelerant used in the blazes, Fowler then put forward some other theories about the man he now was calling “the King of Arsonists.” He believed that the mastermind behind the arsons might be a structural engineer or at least someone with knowledge of building design, because he argued that the arsonist knew exactly how much fuel he needed to bring each building down without leaving any wasted accelerant behind. He also—somewhat surprisingly—claimed that the “King” did not set the fires himself. Rather, he hired or persuaded others to set the fires using his precise instructions.
That last part became key to the investigation of the Blackstock fire, as witnesses identified at least two different persons of interest. One suspect was seen driving a late-model Mercedes away from the lumber yard just before the fire started, and the other was seen walking away from the fire “paying no attention” to the blaze just as a crowd started forming. With the witnesses providing two very different descriptions, investigators felt that one of the suspects might be the “King”, and the other might be the person hired to start the fire.
And that, apparently, was as far as the investigation got by September 1992, when the Unsolved Mysteries episode aired. The episode made Fowler’s findings seem like established fact: clearly, a dangerous and cunning arsonist was on the loose.
Unfortunately for Fowler and his team, cracks were already starting to appear in the foundation of their argument.
One problem came in the form of a man named Paul Keller. Only eight days before the Unsolved Mysteries episode was shown on national TV, Keller started a fire at Seattle’s Four Freedoms retirement home, resulting in the deaths of three of its residents. Keller continued to set over 100 fires in the Seattle area before he was caught the following year. At his trial, Keller admitted to setting the fires, including at least one which was attributed to the “King of Arsonists”. But Keller was no master criminal: his usual method of starting fires was to throw a common accelerant like gasoline on the side of a building, light it with a match, and run away. And he didn’t look like either of the sketches of suspects in the Blackstock fire. So while Fowler and his team were chasing the “King”, there was another serial arsonist setting dozens of fires in Seattle, some of which weren’t even originally identified as arsons. It wasn’t a good look for the arson investigation team.
A bigger problem, though, came when the Blackstock fire was re-examined by the Seattle Fire Department and a team of independent investigators. The family of Matt Johnson, the firefighter who died at Blackstock, had long contended that Fowler’s claim that the fire was an arson carried out by a “master criminal” was a coverup designed to hide the fact that the fire department ignored safety rules at Blackstock, leading directly to Johnson’s death. (Article in Seattle Times) The re-investigation came up with another possible reason that the fire might have looked suspicious: a 440-volt electrical line was still connected to a live power panel as the fire raged, and could have been the source of sparks and enormous heat. Lumber and flammable chemicals stored at the yard also could have increased the heat of the fire. Lastly, the fire originally was deemed to be a controllable, relatively low-temperature blaze when firefighters first arrived at the scene, but later the fire suddenly burst out of control—probably when the fire reached the live power line. If Fowler’s “King of Arsonists” theory was correct, the fire would have been burning hot from the outset. The re-investigation, although eventually declaring the cause of the fire to be “undetermined”, considered that the original assessment—that a vagrant trying to stay warm accidentally started the fire—might be the correct one.
Lastly, an expert investigator for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms named Steve Carman started a review of the fires identified by Fowler and his team as “high-temperature accelerant” (HTA) arsons. Not only did Carman find that most of those fires were likely not HTA arsons at all, he revealed some things about the Puyallup test fire that Fowler and his team had kept quiet for a long time. Firstly, the test fire didn’t mimic a high-temperature accelerant at all. The hottest temperature recorded at Puyallup was about 2300 degrees Fahrenheit, way lower than the “up to 7000” degrees theorized by Fowler or the 4000-5000 degrees which Carman designated as the typical burn temperature of an HTA arson. That’s still hotter than a normal fire…but then the Puyallup fire was set with 462 pounds of accelerant according to Carman. Not exactly something an arsonist—or his accomplice—could casually carry into a building. Oh, and about the Puyallup fire burning the shopping center “to the ground in minutes”? Carman reported that, even though “buckets of fuel were placed around support columns [of the shopping center] with the intent of maximizing damage,” the building suffered no collapse and the fire didn’t even burn through the ceiling. The fire hadn’t just failed to burn the shopping center to the ground in minutes—it had failed to burn the center to the ground AT ALL, despite every attempt by Fowler and his team to stack the deck. (Carman's entire report can be found on PDF here.)
It appears, then, that there is ample evidence that “The King of Arsonists” was really just a ghost. Most of the HTA arsons attributed to him weren’t arsons at all. And Carman found that, of the HTA arsons that were likely deliberately set, some were fires set with standard accelerants which burned hotter because of certain materials stored at the site of the fire, while other possible HTA fires had any one of a number of possible HTA accelerants involved. There simply wasn’t any evidence of someone roaming the country with a “mystery fuel” HTA accelerant setting off fires.
However, there are still many unanswered questions around this case. For a start, Steve Carman believes that the Carpet Exchange Warehouse fire was deliberately set and that some HTA might have been used there, possibly thermite.
But the bigger question revolves around Dennis Fowler and his “King of Arsonists” theory. In retrospect some of his findings seem ludicrous—even fires started by rocket fuel don’t reach 7000 degrees, for example—or at best a stretch (his claim that the arsonist hired someone else to set the fires never appeared to have any evidentiary basis). The misrepresentations regarding the Puyallup test fire also seem suspicious in hindsight.
So what led Fowler and his team to push the “King of Arsonists” theory? Was it—as Matt Johnson’s family argued—a coverup to hide failures at the Seattle Fire Department? Or was Fowler simply a victim of bad science and a willingness to seek links where links didn’t really exist? It’s been recently argued that "just about everything we thought we knew about arson is wrong", and several fires long thought to be arson have now been revealed to be accidental in origin. Was Dennis Fowler just one in a long line of arson investigators to make mistakes? Or was there a more sinister reason behind the creation of the King?
I first heard about this case, as I’m sure a lot of people outside of Seattle did, from the Unsolved Mysteries episode of September 30, 1992. The segment on several fires which destroyed businesses in the Seattle area featured interviews from Seattle fire officials and arson investigators who dubbed the perpetrator of these fires “the King of Arsonists”. The King allegedly used “homemade accelerants” to make his fires burn much hotter than a typical building fire—up to an astonishing 7000 degrees Fahrenheit. Arson investigation experts believed that the King was responsible for as many as 20 building fires in the US and Canada, fires which resulted in the deaths of two firefighters. In the episode, “the King of Arsonists” was called the most dangerous and clever arsonist in American history.
The problem is that the King of Arsonists never existed in the first place.
Interest in the “King of Arsonists” began after the Blackstock Lumber Company fire of September 9, 1989. The fire burned the lumber warehouse to the ground and was responsible for the death of a Seattle firefighter, 32-year-old Matt Johnson. At first, officials believed that the fire was caused by a vagrant setting a small fire to keep warm. However, an arson investigator named Dennis Fowler soon claimed that “patterns” seen in the rubble of the fire were reminiscent of a 1984 fire at the nearby Carpet Exchange Warehouse. The Carpet Exchange fire was a brutally intense fire that reduced the warehouse to ashes in 20 minutes and was hot enough to boil the concrete floor of the facility. Fowler argued that he saw similar burn patterns in the Blackstock fire.
Fowler and his team next researched several similar fires all over the United States and Canada over the previous ten years. They identified at least 20 (some sources say 25) other fires which shared characteristics of the Blackstock and Carpet Exchange fires. Curiously, one of the commonalities of the fires was that, although they burned at an extremely high temperature, no traces of accelerant were found at any of the scenes. Fowler and his team theorized that the fires were started with a new and unknown type of fuel: a volatile accelerant that burned between 5000 and 7000 degrees Fahrenheit but left no measurable traces behind.
With the help of a group of chemists, the Fowler team identified a handful of possible candidates for the mystery fuel. The most likely of these was tested at an abandoned shopping center in Puyallup, Washington. According to Fowler, the center “burned to the ground in minutes” leaving no trace of the accelerant behind. Although the Seattle Fire Department kept the fuel and its formula secret, it did state that the fuel was a compound of several commonly-available ingredients, but (in the words of the Unsolved Mysteries episode) “only an expert with sufficient knowledge of chemistry” would be able to combine them.
Having identified the accelerant used in the blazes, Fowler then put forward some other theories about the man he now was calling “the King of Arsonists.” He believed that the mastermind behind the arsons might be a structural engineer or at least someone with knowledge of building design, because he argued that the arsonist knew exactly how much fuel he needed to bring each building down without leaving any wasted accelerant behind. He also—somewhat surprisingly—claimed that the “King” did not set the fires himself. Rather, he hired or persuaded others to set the fires using his precise instructions.
That last part became key to the investigation of the Blackstock fire, as witnesses identified at least two different persons of interest. One suspect was seen driving a late-model Mercedes away from the lumber yard just before the fire started, and the other was seen walking away from the fire “paying no attention” to the blaze just as a crowd started forming. With the witnesses providing two very different descriptions, investigators felt that one of the suspects might be the “King”, and the other might be the person hired to start the fire.
And that, apparently, was as far as the investigation got by September 1992, when the Unsolved Mysteries episode aired. The episode made Fowler’s findings seem like established fact: clearly, a dangerous and cunning arsonist was on the loose.
Unfortunately for Fowler and his team, cracks were already starting to appear in the foundation of their argument.
One problem came in the form of a man named Paul Keller. Only eight days before the Unsolved Mysteries episode was shown on national TV, Keller started a fire at Seattle’s Four Freedoms retirement home, resulting in the deaths of three of its residents. Keller continued to set over 100 fires in the Seattle area before he was caught the following year. At his trial, Keller admitted to setting the fires, including at least one which was attributed to the “King of Arsonists”. But Keller was no master criminal: his usual method of starting fires was to throw a common accelerant like gasoline on the side of a building, light it with a match, and run away. And he didn’t look like either of the sketches of suspects in the Blackstock fire. So while Fowler and his team were chasing the “King”, there was another serial arsonist setting dozens of fires in Seattle, some of which weren’t even originally identified as arsons. It wasn’t a good look for the arson investigation team.
A bigger problem, though, came when the Blackstock fire was re-examined by the Seattle Fire Department and a team of independent investigators. The family of Matt Johnson, the firefighter who died at Blackstock, had long contended that Fowler’s claim that the fire was an arson carried out by a “master criminal” was a coverup designed to hide the fact that the fire department ignored safety rules at Blackstock, leading directly to Johnson’s death. (Article in Seattle Times) The re-investigation came up with another possible reason that the fire might have looked suspicious: a 440-volt electrical line was still connected to a live power panel as the fire raged, and could have been the source of sparks and enormous heat. Lumber and flammable chemicals stored at the yard also could have increased the heat of the fire. Lastly, the fire originally was deemed to be a controllable, relatively low-temperature blaze when firefighters first arrived at the scene, but later the fire suddenly burst out of control—probably when the fire reached the live power line. If Fowler’s “King of Arsonists” theory was correct, the fire would have been burning hot from the outset. The re-investigation, although eventually declaring the cause of the fire to be “undetermined”, considered that the original assessment—that a vagrant trying to stay warm accidentally started the fire—might be the correct one.
Lastly, an expert investigator for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms named Steve Carman started a review of the fires identified by Fowler and his team as “high-temperature accelerant” (HTA) arsons. Not only did Carman find that most of those fires were likely not HTA arsons at all, he revealed some things about the Puyallup test fire that Fowler and his team had kept quiet for a long time. Firstly, the test fire didn’t mimic a high-temperature accelerant at all. The hottest temperature recorded at Puyallup was about 2300 degrees Fahrenheit, way lower than the “up to 7000” degrees theorized by Fowler or the 4000-5000 degrees which Carman designated as the typical burn temperature of an HTA arson. That’s still hotter than a normal fire…but then the Puyallup fire was set with 462 pounds of accelerant according to Carman. Not exactly something an arsonist—or his accomplice—could casually carry into a building. Oh, and about the Puyallup fire burning the shopping center “to the ground in minutes”? Carman reported that, even though “buckets of fuel were placed around support columns [of the shopping center] with the intent of maximizing damage,” the building suffered no collapse and the fire didn’t even burn through the ceiling. The fire hadn’t just failed to burn the shopping center to the ground in minutes—it had failed to burn the center to the ground AT ALL, despite every attempt by Fowler and his team to stack the deck. (Carman's entire report can be found on PDF here.)
It appears, then, that there is ample evidence that “The King of Arsonists” was really just a ghost. Most of the HTA arsons attributed to him weren’t arsons at all. And Carman found that, of the HTA arsons that were likely deliberately set, some were fires set with standard accelerants which burned hotter because of certain materials stored at the site of the fire, while other possible HTA fires had any one of a number of possible HTA accelerants involved. There simply wasn’t any evidence of someone roaming the country with a “mystery fuel” HTA accelerant setting off fires.
However, there are still many unanswered questions around this case. For a start, Steve Carman believes that the Carpet Exchange Warehouse fire was deliberately set and that some HTA might have been used there, possibly thermite.
But the bigger question revolves around Dennis Fowler and his “King of Arsonists” theory. In retrospect some of his findings seem ludicrous—even fires started by rocket fuel don’t reach 7000 degrees, for example—or at best a stretch (his claim that the arsonist hired someone else to set the fires never appeared to have any evidentiary basis). The misrepresentations regarding the Puyallup test fire also seem suspicious in hindsight.
So what led Fowler and his team to push the “King of Arsonists” theory? Was it—as Matt Johnson’s family argued—a coverup to hide failures at the Seattle Fire Department? Or was Fowler simply a victim of bad science and a willingness to seek links where links didn’t really exist? It’s been recently argued that "just about everything we thought we knew about arson is wrong", and several fires long thought to be arson have now been revealed to be accidental in origin. Was Dennis Fowler just one in a long line of arson investigators to make mistakes? Or was there a more sinister reason behind the creation of the King?