Page 28 - Arson Fire News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

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 don't know to, wow, we have an accelerant here, this must be an arson, and that changes people's opinions. >> to prosecutors, the presence of gasoline meant murder. based on this evidence, prosecutors believe that paul poured gasoline on the living room floor while his parents were upstairs asl...

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 camiolo's 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 living room floor? i have a cold

Ignition, the living room would reach flashover, blowing out the window. >> the entire room becomes engulfed in flames because there's so much burning and so much hot gas that it's completely uninhabitable. >> but the police witnessed the window breaking five or six minutes after paul called the fire department. to roby, this meant that gasoline couldn't have been used to start the fire. >> he would have had a tough time actually getting to the front door without being engulfed in flames. that's one of the things our model showed. so, we look at the arson scenario and there is inconsistency af...

The living room, but paul's 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 recognized fire expert, to find out what happened. lentini retested the samples of hardwood floor using atomic absorption spectroscopy. >> it's ...

If a significant volume of gasoline was poured. >> and avato wasn't the least bit suspicious of paul's behavior on the night of the fire. >> it's not unusual for people in a fire to exit a building through the way that they're most comfortable exiting. if they typically come and go through the front door, no matter where they are in the house, they'll exit through the front door. >> avato told local investigators that he believed the fire was accidental, and he was roundly dismissed. >> they portrayed him in the media that he was, you know, an apprentice fire investigator that really was not e...