ARSON MYTHS FUEL ERRORS:
Debunked theories plague fire probes, lead to
wrongful arrests, prosecutions
Series: TRIBUNE INVESTIGATIVE REPORT:
FORENSICS UNDER THE MICROSCOPE; [Chicagoland Final , CN Edition]
Maurice Possley, Tribune staff reporter. Chicago Tribune. Chicago, Ill.:
Oct 18, 2004. pg. 1
Abstract (Article Summary)
THE SCENE FATAL: WORKSHOP FIRE Private fire investigator John
Lentini views the ruins of a Georgia workshop where a fire killed
Beverly Jean Long's husband. She was charged with murder by arson, but
Lentini testified that the prosecution used flawed theories to support
its case. "This fire was a terrible accident," Lentini said.
THE ACCUSED: BEVERLY JEAN LONG Long was charged with striking her husband on
the head with a blunt object, pouring gasoline on him and setting him
ablaze. The case highlighted the growing questions faced by arson
investigators over the accuracy of their work.
THE EXPERT: WITNESS JOHN LENTINI Lentini, who has investigated nearly 2,500
fires over 30 years,
spars with the prosecution during the murder by arson trial of Beverly
Jean Long. Lentini dismissed the findings that authorities said
indicated arson. "What you're left with is a lack of evidence-- which
proves nothing," Lentini said.
THE INVESTIGATOR: [Michael Overbey] The
sheriff's chief investigator testified at Beverly Jean Long's trial that
evidence at the fire scene, including the position and condition of her
husband's body, pointed to an arson murder.
THE EVIDENCE: THE SMUDGE POT
[James Long] said her husband accidentally ignited the fatal fire when
he tried to refuel the kerosene heater with gasoline. Photos by Alex
Garcia. Concrete spalling. Alligator char. Crazed glass. Arson fallacies
For many years, investigators relied on a collection of untested
theories to determine whether a fire was arson. Though many of these
theories have been disproved, some investigators still use them in
court. CONCRETE SPALLING Observation: The breaking off of pieces of
concrete because of intense heat. Fallacy: Brown stains around the
spalled area are an automatic indicator that an accelerant was used.
Fact: Fires without accelerants have been shown to cause spalling.
ALLIGATOR CHAR Observation: The pattern left on charred wood that
resembles alligator skin. Fallacy: Large rolling blisters indicate
rapid, intense heating that could only be caused by an accelerant. Fact:
The blisters have been found in fires where no accelerant was used.
CRAZED GLASS Observation: Glass riddled with an intricate web of cracks.
Fallacy: Crazed glass is evidence of rapid, intense heating, proof that
an accelerant was used. Fact: Such cracks can occur when glass rapidly
cools after being sprayed with water--as in putting out a fire. Sources:
National Fire Protection Association, National Institute of Standards
and Technology
Full Text (5085 words)
(Copyright 2004 by the Chicago Tribune)
The prosecution of Beverly Jean Long for the 2003 murder of her husband
in rural Georgia reveals a tale of two mistakes. One killed her husband,
James. The other put her on trial for murder by arson.
It is a story of authorities who relied on outdated and disproven
theories to wrongly classify an accidental fire as arson.
And it unfolded at a time when veteran arson investigators are
questioning the ability of some colleagues to accurately determine the
cause and origin of fires.
For decades, arson investigators relied on a collection of beliefs and
folk wisdom that was accepted as truth. In the last 30 years, however,
many of these one-time certainties have been exposed by research and
laboratory tests as unclear or just plain wrong.
The problems plaguing arson investigations over the years-- untested
theories, shoddy analysis and a resistance to rigorous review--echo
those found in other areas of forensics. When experts overstate their
findings or rely on outdated thinking, the pursuit of truth in the
courtroom is subverted. In fire investigations, mistakes can lead to the
belief that there is a crime when none was committed.
In 2002, arson was blamed for 350 deaths nationwide and the destruction
of an estimated 45,000 structures. More than 16,000 people were charged
with the crime.
While engineers, chemists and other experts increasingly are employed to
determine the cause of fires, some arson investigators have not accepted
new scientific knowledge.
As a result, prosecutors around the country still seek to convict people
based on theories that have been systematically debunked. At the same
time, defense lawyers are reaching out to private fire consultants to
conduct independent analyses.
Gerald Hurst, a consultant based in Austin, Texas, has analyzed numerous
fires and ruled out arson to help free several defendants. The most
recent was Texas Death Row inmate Ernest Willis, who walked out of
prison this month after Hurst's analysis found "not a single item of
evidence" that a 1986 fire Willis was convicted of setting was arson.
Hurst, who has a PhD in chemistry from Cambridge University in England,
estimates that thousands of fires have been misinterpreted in the last
50 years because of reliance on myths. "God knows how many innocent
people have been convicted," he said.
And the mislabeling of accidental fires as arson by authorities relying
on disproven theories continues, Hurst said. "You've got tons of
holdouts--good old boys who've investigated 5,000 fires and they are
doing it the same way they've always done it."
By the time Beverly Jean Long made a frantic 911 call for help, she was
standing outside her house watching flames and billowing smoke shoot
through the roof of the converted airplane hangar that was her husband's
workshop.
Inside were propane tanks and barrels of diesel and jet fuel, as well as
containers of gasoline for the many chain saws he used in his
tree-trimming business.
So was her husband.
The night of Jan. 23, 2003, was the coldest night of that winter, with
the temperature dropping below freezing. Long would later say she was
watching as her husband, James, 53, tried to thaw out their frozen water
pipes and refueled a heater--known as a smudge pot-- with gasoline
instead of kerosene. When the gasoline vapors ignited, his clothing was
set ablaze.
"He was engulfed in flames," Long later said.
Her husband dropped to the floor and rolled, she said, and she tried to
pull off his coat, but the tips of her gloves caught fire. Neither
effort extinguished the flames. Long said she then ran out of the shop
and into their house to grab her cell phone and make the 911 call.
"What's going on, ma'am?" the operator asked.
"Fire! My husband's burned to death!" Long shouted.
After some confusion about her location, Long shouted at the operator
again, her voice twisting into an almost incoherent, hysterical moan.
"Please hurry. ... Oh, dear God, please help me! I told him not to put
that in there!"
"How did the fire start?" the operator asked.
"He was trying to thaw out the pipes and I told him not to do it and he
wouldn't listen to me," Long said.
The operator urged Long to calm down.
"I can't calm down!" she shouted. "I lost my husband. He's burning to
death. Oh, dear God!"
When firefighters reached the scene, flames had spread to the attached
home. A firefighter tried to enter one end of the hangar but was stopped
by thick smoke.
Two other firefighters managed to get several feet inside the building
from the other end, where they spotted James Long's body, but they could
do nothing because the intense heat quickly forced them out. Even so,
they realized they were too late--Long already was charred beyond
recognition.
Still reeling from the death of her father just 18 days earlier, Long
sat in the yard numbly as the inferno engulfed their home as well. The
roof of the corrugated steel hangar ultimately sagged nearly to the
floor as the heat warped and buckled the steel frame.
By the time firefighters cut a hole in the side of the building to
retrieve her husband's body, Long had been taken to a hospital and
sedated because she was shaking so badly.
Eight days later--after her husband's funeral--Long was charged with murder.
According to Butts County law-enforcement officials, Long, then 53, had
struck her husband on the head with a blunt object, then poured gasoline
on him--twice--and set him ablaze. They said burn patterns and concrete
cracked by intense heat were proof that gasoline had been poured over
him and ignited.
The case would put Long, as well as the science underlying the charge,
on trial.
Tasting for gasoline
For the first 80 years of the last century, knowledge about fire
investigation evolved through trial and error and was passed on from
veteran to neophyte as they picked through rubble and debris.
"Most of the fire investigation into the mid-1980s was taught by word of
mouth by people who had been doing it for 20 years," said John DeHaan, a
fire consultant in California who has been involved with fire and
explosion investigations for more than 30 years. "There wasn't a lot of
science in fire investigation. It was oral tradition."
In some instances, fire investigators confirmed their findings of arson
by relying on confessions of suspects or using evidence of an accelerant
to compel a confession.
Some of their methods were primitive. At one time, arson investigators
tested for the presence of gasoline by actually tasting residue.
"The books said to eat a piece of white bread between tastes to clear
the palate," said Patrick Kennedy, a private arson consultant formerly
from Chicago and now based in Florida.
Kennedy's father, John A. Kennedy, wrote the industry's first textbook,
"Fire and Arson Investigation," a red-covered tome of more than 1,000
pages that examined what was then called the "science" of fire
investigation. The book, published in 1962, codified for the first time
some of the theories of the day and became a guiding force for arson
investigators in law enforcement and fire departments as well as in
private industry, such as insurance companies.
After World War II, the elder Kennedy helped start the Mutual
Investigation Bureau, an association of 50 fire insurers for which he
investigated fires. In 1955, he set up his own firm in Chicago and went
on to found the nation's first fire school at Purdue University.
Now retired, the elder Kennedy recalled how fire investigators worked
back then. "I learned it by doing it," he said. "We--all arson
investigators--were less than completely trained. Back then, when
someone said it was arson--that was the final word."
Those theories now seem crude or have unraveled under closer scrutiny.
"Investigators were instructed to look at the way wood was charred and
that would determine whether it was a fast fire or a slow fire,"
Kennedy's son, Patrick, said. "A fast one was caused by accelerants--an
arson.
"There was no research that supported that. But we all believed that 30
years ago. I was teaching it."
"All these myths came about the same way," he continued. "There was no
science training then. Guys like my dad--they were smart guys, but they
went to a bunch of fires to see how badly charred things were and they
would find gasoline and get a confession. And then, these anecdotal
cases became a body of fact."
For example, the elder Kennedy said, there was little doubt 40 years ago
that a fire fueled by an accelerant burned hotter than fires where no
accelerant was involved.
"We have since found out that normal fires get just as hot without
accelerants," the elder Kennedy said.
That belief became bedrock and launched other unproven theories.
For example, finding melted metal, such as an aluminum threshold or
bedsprings, signaled a heat so intense that an accelerant must have been
used. Finding "crazed glass"--glass riddled with an intricate spider web
of cracks--was proof of rapid heating caused by an accelerant.
In 1977, the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, part of the U.S.
Justice Department, sought to collect arson expertise but relied
primarily on a survey of fire investigators instead of trying to
scientifically establish the accuracy of theories. The resulting book
even noted that knowledge in the field had been subjected to "little or
no scientific testing."
This publication, "Arson and Arson Investigation: Survey and
Assessment," further solidified many mistaken beliefs as truth, arson
experts said.
After his father retired, Patrick Kennedy took over his company and
moved it to Sarasota, Fla. Now, when he looks at the early texts written
by his father, he readily concedes there were many mistakes- -honest
ones, he said.
His father agrees.
"Many of the things I propounded in the red book were absolutely wrong,"
the elder Kennedy said. "I admit it. But it was all we knew at the time."
Deadly fire dispels myths
In the fall of 1991, a brush fire broke out east of Oakland, Calif.,
and, pushed by powerful winds, ultimately destroyed more than 3,000
homes. One of the nation's worst wildfires at the time, property damage
was estimated at $1.5 billion and more than two dozen people were killed.
Two weeks later, a group of private investigators converged on the scene
because it presented a unique opportunity to study the residue of a fire
that was not a product of arson.
Kicking through the rubble and devastation, the investigators made
discoveries that were key developments in an emerging wave of
self-examination that began to undermine some widely held arson theories.
Among the investigators was John Lentini, a private fire investigator
with Applied Technical Services in Marietta, Ga. Lentini has
investigated nearly 2,500 fires for prosecutors, judges and defense
lawyers in a 30-year career that began at the Georgia state crime lab.
After inspecting 50 separate fire scenes in California, the team went
back to laboratories and tried to duplicate its findings to check the
validity of conclusions, Lentini said.
As a result, three long-standing arson "indicators"--melted bedsprings
made of steel, melted copper and crazed glass--were disproved. Crazed
glass, for example, can occur when glass, heated to more than 500
degrees, is sprayed with water, according to a report of their findings.
In other words, the fighting of fires could have caused this phenomenon
in cases that were labeled arsons.
Several months earlier, in March 1991, Lentini had played a key role in
debunking another myth through a unique experiment after the indictment
of Gerald Wayne Lewis for an October 1990 fire in Jacksonville, Fla.,
that killed his pregnant wife and four children.
Investigators for the Duval County sheriff's office said they found
evidence that an accelerant had been used. As proof they pointed to
burning under furniture and "pour patterns"--burn marks that supposedly
occur when a flammable liquid is spread and ignited. The theory behind
these patterns is that the fire burns hotter and faster where the liquid
was because it was fueled by the accelerant.
Lewis said the fire started in a couch and got out of control so quickly
that he barely escaped with his 3-year-old son.
In an attempt to figure out what happened, prosecutors spent $20,000 to
hire experts, including Lentini, to start a fire in a similarly built
condemned house next door to the Lewis home. The experiment became known
widely in the arson investigation field as the "Lime Street fire" for
the street where the house was on.
The fire was ignited in a couch without using accelerants, but the
living room exploded in flames in less than five minutes anyway. When
the fire was put out, authorities found streaks on the floor that
resembled the "pour patterns" in the Lewis house that had been declared
the product of arson.
This surprised investigators because the experiment showed that what
appeared to be classic flammable liquid pour patterns could be the
result of flashover--a naturally occurring phenomenon--and not just the
result of an arson. Flashover occurs when smoke and gas in a room build
to a point where the entire room explodes in flames, consuming
everything within, including the floor.
But that wasn't all the experiment revealed.
For many years, fire investigators widely believed that because heat
rises, evidence of burning on the floor, particularly under
furniture--as was found in the Lewis house--indicated the fire was
started on the floor with an accelerant. But the experiment provided
strong evidence that a flashover fire caused the same damage.
Days after the experiment, the charges against Lewis were dropped.
The case "opened my eyes," Lentini said. "I was ready to send Lewis to
the electric chair."
The Oakland blaze and the Lime Street fire provided unique opportunities
for fire research. Much of the effort to refine and advance the science
occurs at the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives fire science laboratory in Beltsville, Md., and the National
Fire Academy in Emmitsburg, Md. Both facilities train fire investigators
as well.
Private fire experts also provide training. Earlier this year, working
with Nevada fire officials, DeHaan coordinated the burning of duplex
homes scheduled for demolition at Fallon Naval Air Station in Nevada.
"We purchased identical sets of bedroom furniture and used matches to
set the bedspreads on fire to simulate a scenario of children playing
with matches as a training exercise," DeHaan said.
"In both cases, we found the room untenable--that is you would be
overcome--within two to three minutes, and the entire room went up in
five minutes," DeHaan said. "What we've discovered is that the fuels
presented by modern upholstered furniture produce so much heat that they
mimic the behavior of an accelerated fire. That's what we are teaching."
Part of this dawning of understanding was realizing the increasing
presence of synthetic materials in home furniture, such as polyurethane
foam and fiberfill in cushions, which burn rapidly and generate intense
heat--far faster than wood, DeHaan said.
For instance, according to DeHaan, mattress manufacturers 30 years ago
were required by law to make a product that was resistant to smoldering
cigarettes. To do so, mattresses are made in part-- some of them
wholly--of urethane, which is resistant to a cigarette, but goes up
quickly if exposed to an open flame, such as a candle.
Jack Malooley, a federal ATF agent in Chicago, teaches a fire
investigation course at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in
Georgia titled "Myths and Legends."
"I explain what the old-time theory was and how it was reached and how
it's a falsehood and then take a break," he said.
"And guys will come up to me and say, 'You're taking away everything we
use. What's left?'" Malooley said. "Basically, the job they've chosen to
do is far more difficult than they thought it was."
"Spalling of concrete is just one false theory," Malooley said,
referring to a belief that concrete found to be chipped or flaked--
"spalled"--after a fire is extinguished is evidence an accelerant was
used, because the heat was so intense that moisture in the concrete
expanded and exploded it.
"It's one of the myths that doesn't want to die," Malooley said. "But
that's the problem with fire investigations. The old-timers don't keep
up with the developments in the field."
The International Association of Arson Investigators, a group of about
9,000 fire investigators, asserted as recently as 1997 that fire
investigation is not a science and therefore not subject to the rigorous
requirements imposed on scientific disciplines in court, such as a need
for verifiable results.
The association filed a legal brief in a Florida court case arguing a
scientific standard did not apply because arson findings were based on
the personal experience of investigators.
The following year, a federal appeals court rejected that argument.
Since then, the association has come to embrace the idea that fire
investigation properly done is based on science, said Alan Clark,
association executive director.
"And that is a good thing--it has helped to eliminate a lot of stuff
that was inaccurate," Clark said.
"When I started doing fire investigations, it was a lot easier. The
longer I do it, the less I know. It used to be really simple-- if you
had a certain condition, it was automatic."
Setting new standards
Nearly 20 years ago, in an attempt to improve the quality of arson
investigation, the National Fire Protection Association, an
international group dedicated to fire safety, gathered a committee of
experts from the private and public sectors to develop a guide for fire
and explosion investigations.
The guide, first published in 1991 and titled "NFPA 921," went to
considerable lengths to refute most of the field's unproven theories. It
has been revised several times as scientific advances continue to emerge.
DeHaan, who was on the committee, said there was negative reaction to
"NFPA 921."
"It basically is fear," he said. "This was something that could not be
easily dismissed. There were many complaints from both the private and
public sector. They didn't like hearing the s-word-- science."
Robert Duval, senior fire investigator for the NFPA, believes that the
guide as well as advances in technology will ultimately cure what he
calls "a generational thing. ... The number of folks who don't want to
let go of the old-fashioned way will be less and less."
Still, years after the first publication of "NFPA 921," some arson cases
are still prosecuted based on outdated theories.
That's what happened to 27-year-old Eve Rudd, who was indicted by a
Cuyahoga County, Ohio, grand jury for a fire in the early morning of
June 10, 2001, that consumed her Cleveland duplex, killing her 4-
year-old daughter and 6-year-old son.
Charged with arson and murder, Rudd was accused of setting the fire to
get back at her husband because she suspected he was having an affair.
Authorities charged Rudd after finding pour patterns, which they said
were evidence that she had doused clothing and papers in a second-floor
bedroom with cooking oil and set the room ablaze.
But the pour patterns again proved to be a faulty indicator.
Kenneth Gibson, a fire investigator from Texas retained by defense
lawyers, videotaped an experiment with cooking oil and found it was not
an accelerant--in fact, the oil by itself was not flammable unless it
was heated to 540 degrees.
Gerald Hurst, who also investigated the fire for the defense, said there
were so many burn patterns, "you can't interpret them anymore."
Rudd was acquitted by a jury after spending nine months in jail.
Crazed glass and pour patterns were cited in the arson and murder
indictment of Paul Camiolo for the September 1996 fire that destroyed
his home and killed his parents in Montgomery County near Philadelphia.
Camiolo, 33, was standing outside when authorities arrived. Inside the
home, authorities found his 81-year-old father dead of smoke inhalation.
His 57-year-old mother died of fire injuries several weeks later.
In addition to the pour patterns and crazed glass, authorities said they
found traces of gasoline in the wood floor under the carpet.
The state said it was seeking the death penalty when Camiolo was
indicted on charges of arson and murder, as well as insurance fraud.
Authorities said he set the fire to collect on a $400,000 inheritance.
Defense attorneys Thomas Cometa and William Ruzzo hired private fire
experts, including Lentini and Richard Roby, of Columbia, Md., to
examine the evidence. They noticed that the state experts also had found
evidence of gasoline on the wood floor under the carpet in places that
were not burned.
How, they wondered, could that be?
At Roby's urging, a private investigator tracked down the contractor who
built the house. The contractor said the sealer used on the hardwood
floors had been thinned with gasoline.
Lentini conducted lab tests that revealed the presence of lead in the
gasoline. "We all knew that leaded gas had been banned in the mid-1980s
and that it could not have been used to start this fire," he said.
As a result, the charges were dropped, but not before Camiolo had spent
10 months in jail awaiting trial.
Hurst, a retired chemist who spent much of his career in the aerospace
industry, bemoans the lack of sophistication in some fire investigations.
"We still have people doing the same damn thing guys did back in the
1980s, relying on cockamamie theories," he said.
'You know I didn't do it'
Four days after James Long was found dead in his rural Georgia workshop,
Maj. Michael Overbey, chief investigator for the Butts County sheriff's
office, brought his widow, Beverly Jean Long, in for questioning.
Overbey confronted Long and accused her of helping someone else kill her
husband and set him ablaze, according to a videotape of the
interrogation later played in court.
Long repeatedly denied killing her husband and insisted the fire was an
accident caused during the refueling of the smudge pot.
At one point, Overbey left Long alone in the interrogation room. He
would later testify that he did so in the hope that she would talk to
herself and say something incriminating.
Instead, Long leaned over the table, put her head between her hands and
made a desperate, mournful plea.
"Ohhhh, God, help me," she pleaded. "Help me have strength, God. You
know I didn't do it."
But she wasn't believed and was arrested.
Released on bond, Long came to court a month later for a preliminary
hearing. Using the testimony of Overbey, prosecutor Richard Milam
outlined what appeared to be strong evidence to support the accusation
that Long had clubbed her husband and set him ablaze.
Overbey said Long was found on his back with his arms partially raised
above his head and his legs bent, "similar to that of a body that had
been laid, placed, positioned, or even staged. It was not typical for a
fire victim."
Overbey, who testified he had investigated as many as two dozen
arson-homicides in his nearly 30 years in law enforcement, explained to
Judge Thomas Wilson that if Long were the victim of only a fire, the
body would have been found "in what they call a pugilistic attitude."
"It's upon this type of burn damage, the body goes back and assumes ...
a fetal position," he said.
Further, Overbey said, fire officials discovered a fresh crack in the
concrete floor directly under Long's body. "It's referred to as a
spaulding crack," Overbey testified, mispronouncing the word "spalling."
"What is the cause of a spaulding crack such as this?" Milam asked.
"It's the [result of] generation of heat that's held underneath a body
after it's been subjected to a flammable liquid and ignited," Overbey
said. The crack under Long's body, he said, "has the characteristics of
a spaulding pattern associated with an arson- homicide."
After Long's body was removed, investigators discovered an outline of
his body on the floor, Overbey said. The outline was "a pattern that's
typically associated with that of a flammable liquid ... what we refer
to as pour patterns."
Milam asked Overbey how he interpreted the evidence.
"My opinion is that he was down on his back and someone poured him with
a petroleum product at least twice," Overbey said. "They poured the area
around him. ... We found pour patterns that were commonly found in
arson-homicide."
Overbey said he determined a flammable liquid had been poured twice
because "a body just doesn't burn that quick."
"A body that is not repeatedly doused will put itself out.... You know,
the majority of us are made up of water and we self- extinguish."
Fire experts contradict Overbey's interpretation, noting that a severely
burned body by itself is not evidence that an accelerant was used.
Overbey testified at the preliminary hearing that a Georgia state fire
marshal investigator and a Butts County arson investigator "concurred
with our investigation."
The medical examiner had performed an autopsy that showed some small
fractures in the victim's skull, Overbey said at the hearing. The
workshop, he noted, contained many items that could have been used to
strike a blow sufficient to fracture the skull.
In May, more than a year after that hearing, Long came to trial in the
Butts County courthouse in Jackson. She watched as her husband's first
wife and two of her stepchildren testified that Long had not seemed at
all upset about losing her husband or their home. She had not wept after
the fire, they told the jury.
Overbey testified that he believed Long's emotional statements on the
911 call and in the interrogation were an act and that she was faking
her grief.
As part of Long's defense, her attorneys, Wade Crumbley and Barbara
Moon, called Lentini to the witness stand.
The lawyers had asked Lentini to review the evidence after the
preliminary hearing and he not only came to a different conclusion, but
also agreed to handle the case for free.
"I decided I was not willing to let this woman go to prison because she
couldn't afford to pay me," he testified. "This fire was a terrible
accident."
He told the jury that he analyzed results of tests performed on the
smudge pot at the request of the Longs' insurance company, not the
prosecution.
The tests, he said, revealed the presence of gasoline residue. The
exhaust stack, Lentini said, was lined with soot and charcoal flakes
that would remain hot even after the smudge pot was extinguished and
would ignite vapors from gasoline being poured in to refuel it.
"Anytime you put gasoline into something designed to burn kerosene,
you're asking for trouble," he testified. "You would be lucky to get
away from it without getting hurt."
The pugilistic position, Lentini also testified, is not the fetal
position, but is instead exactly how Long's body was found.
"Spaulding" is an incorrect term, he said, for "spalling," the flaking
of concrete--not a crack as described by Overbey. "If they say
spaulding," Lentini said, "It is a clue that they don't know what they
are talking about."
Further, he testified that even if Overbey had used the correct
terminology, spalling is not an automatic indicator of arson.
There were no pour patterns, Lentini said. The patterns that Overbey
cited were actually the result of "heat-shielding," a phenomenon caused
by such items as clothing, tools or even a body.
Overbey, Lentini told the jury, "didn't have a clue ... and what you're
left with is a lack of evidence--which proves nothing."
The jury agreed.
On June 3, after eight days of trial, Long was acquitted.
In a recent interview, Overbey said he still believes Long poured
gasoline over her husband and set him afire. He said Lentini was
"one-sided ... a person paid to come and voice [the defense] point of
view. ... I think he was wrong with his conclusion."
But, Overbey added, "I never contended to be an expert on arson."
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