Arson & Fire
Cases where fire was the weapon, the cover-up or the key evidence.
16 cases
The Burning Barrel
On a July evening in 1981, Charlotte Grabbe never came back from the soybean fields of her family's Marshall, Illinois farm — her tractor parked in the shed, her lunch box untouched, and her divorce from the violent Fred Grabbe still unfinished.
Models Inc.
On June 28, 2007, Paige Birgfeld drove home from a picnic with her high-school-sweetheart ex-husband and vanished — and the search for the Grand Junction, Colorado mother of three uncovered a secret life no one around her suspected.
A Unicorn Among Beasts
On Maui's laid-back North Shore, red-haired Charli Scott called herself 'a unicorn among beasts' — until the night she drove out past Ke'anae to help her ex-boyfriend Steven Capobianco with his stalled truck and never came home.
The Dinner Theater Murder
Hoping to rekindle a stagnant marriage, Steven Hricko booked a Valentine's weekend at a Maryland resort featuring a murder-mystery dinner theater show. His wife Kimberly — a surgical technologist whose job included disposing of unused drugs — was suddenly, surprisingly affectionate.
The Llama Farm Murder
Seventeen-year-old Leanna Walker told friends she planned to run away with Sky McDonough, a self-styled Rastafarian who quoted Bible verses about killing a wife who leaves. When she vanished from Milford, Pennsylvania, the search closed in on the woods around a llama farm.
Fossil Creek
Konstantin Simberg arrived in Phoenix from Russia dreaming of the America he'd seen on MTV — fast cars, easy money, beautiful girls. Then he fell for Kseniya, a dancer at Christie's Cabaret, and his American dream began a dark slide toward a place called Fossil Creek.
Worlds Worst Mom
Driving near Lake Tahoe at dawn in June 1984, Maybel Harrison spotted flames beside the highway: a young woman burning on a makeshift pyre, bound, gagged, and unidentifiable. Nearly a decade later, Terry Knorr told police a story about her own family that no one believed.
A Strange Case
Firefighters dousing a blaze at an abandoned Louisville house on Memorial Day weekend 1990 found the headless body of schoolteacher Kathleen Strange in the ruins. The search for the rest of the truth ended in the last place anyone expected: her own vegetable garden.
The House on Chipman Street
After a Saturday night dinner date in January 2007, Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom lingered in a Knoxville apartment parking lot, unaware of the shadows moving between the cars. The carjacking that followed became one of Tennessee's most horrific crimes.
The Kennedale Murders
Eight days before Christmas 2009, a house fire lit up a quiet street in Kennedale, Texas — the home of John Hummel, his wife Joy, their five-year-old daughter, and Joy's father. Investigators soon realized the fire was only the cover story.
Over Our Dead Bodies
When fire tore through the Prairie Village, Kansas, mansion of physician Debora Green in October 1995, her children were still inside — and investigators would learn the flames were not the family's first brush with poison and ruin.
The Port Arthur Massacre
Martin Bryant, a jobless young millionaire with a childlike smile, set an alarm for the first time in his life on April 27, 1996 — then loaded an AR-15 into his yellow Volvo and drove toward Port Arthur, Tasmania.
MOVE
The neighbors on Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia had complained for years about the fortified house at 6221, home to John Africa and his followers. In May 1985, the city's answer arrived from a police helicopter.
The Long Ride Home
Nineteen-year-old psychology student Özgecan Aslan boarded a minibus home from campus in Mersin, Turkey — a ride that would end in the hills and ignite protests across the entire country.
Reduced to Ash
Ten-day-old Delimar Vera was presumed dead in a Philadelphia rowhouse fire in 1997, though no remains were ever found. Her mother, Luz Cuevas, never stopped looking at one particular child at family gatherings.
The Sleepover
Ashley Freeman turned sixteen on December 29, 1999, and her best friend Lauria Bible stayed over at the family trailer near Welch, Oklahoma. Before dawn the trailer was in flames, and the two girls were gone.
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