Page 12 - Arson Fire News Today

>> reporter: firefighters able to hold the fire in montebello to a little more than 200 acres. a federal fire official tells me they have never seen so many simultaneous and spread-out fires since 2007. in the west triple-digit temperatures. wind. the ravages of drought. the perfect firestorm. more than 25,000 firefighters now battling blazes in 10 states. the national fire preparedness level at 5, the highest. almost two dozen fires scorching washington state alone. resident is praised crews. >...

Gathering strength. at two minutes, it would be moving across the ceiling. at four minutes, temperatures and gas levels in the room would be fatal. at 5 1/2 minutes, the fire reaches flashover and the window blows out. this was consistent with paul camiolos version of events. >> matches up with everything that paul camiolo was saying and with other objective evidence that he has nothing to do with. >> but important questions remained. if the fire was an accident, why was gasoline found on the li...

Committing these crimes and then living a life crime-free. it doesnt matter. hes a thief. hes a rapist and hes a murderer. he just got old. thats all there is to it. >> all the scientific, forensic evidence, were going to see a lot more cold cases being solved based on the advancements in technology. in the aftermath of a fatal fire, one question remained. was it an accident or was it arson? it took the physics of a burning cigarette, the chemical composition of a flame, and a computer-simulat...

Gasoline found on the wood floors in the living room, but pauls defense team was suspicious of this finding. >> they took samples of the carpeting, the carpet padding, and some newspaper, and there was no gasoline in any of those samples. it was only in the hardwood floor. and it was just inconceivable. how can you pour gasoline in a family room and not get the gas on those other items if that was going to be the cause of the fire? >> so the defense team hired john lentini, a nationally recogniz...

Fire. >> there was money there in the form of insurance money. and that in and of itself is a powerful motive. >> i believe he received about $200,000 in insurance benefits. >> a second motive that some of the investigators believed existed was that paul camiolo was tired of caring for his infirmed parents. >> fire investigators searched through the rubble and found something very suspicious. >> in the center of the room there was a pattern that looked like perhaps it might have been associated ...

The fire was an accident, they conducted their own investigation and hired dr. rick roby, an expert on the science of fires. >> what makes it difficult is, fires burn up a lot of the evidence. >> roby studies fires while theyre burning. to do this, he sets fires like this one in model rooms. fires progress differently depending on how theyre set, the size of the room, airflow and hundreds of other considerations. all of this data is then entered into a computer. >> its a fully 3d fire modeling s...

Rosalie worked in the computer industry. their only child, paul, a 31-year-old computer programmer, lived upstairs. he took care of his parents since they had difficulty getting around. >> its not that they were bedridden or complete invalids, but they certainly werent athletic and able to respond, in my opinion, to an emergency situation. >> just before dawn in september of 1996, paul made an emergency call to the fire department. >> 911, what is your emergency? >> we have a fire in our living ...

Explain how the gasoline would be in hardwood floor but not in carpeting and padding above it, if a significant volume of gasoline was poured. >> and avato wasnt the least bit suspicious of pauls behavior on the night of the fire. >> its not unusual for people in a fire to exit a building through the way that theyre most comfortable exiting. if they typically come and go through the front door, no matter where they are in the house, theyll exit through the front door. >> avato told local investi...

Porch severely burned and barely conscious. but there was no sign of her 81-year-old husband, ed. firefighters later found him inside. he had been unable to escape. >> the victim that was located was in a rear bathroom, and he was in cardiac arrest at that time. >> ed camiolo was pronounced dead at the hospital. rosalie died, too, a result of smoke inhalation. >> how horrible it must have been for my uncle, what he went through to be burned, and my aunt, how horrible it must have been for her. >...

The molecular components of the samples, and the results showed there was evidence of gasoline on the wood floor. >> and the single biggest piece of evidence for them to conclude this was an arson fire was the finding of gasoline in the hardwood floor, because how else would you explain gasoline in a living room? >> when the test results come back, it changes from i dont know to, wow, we have an accelerant here. this must be an arson, and that changes peoples opinions. >> to prosecutors, the pre...