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Smothered the little town in the blue ridge mountains. february 19th, 2003, just before 9:00 a.m. winter or no, virginia was unused to this. the white blanket, a piercing sound. fire alarm. now the snow storm was the last thing on the fire chief's mind. >> the tone went off for fire of occupants possibly trapped inside. ramps everything up to full force. >> the alarm on a quiet street lined with starter homes. >> a lot of kids in the neighborhood. you are running a lot of things through your mind when you go in there? who are the occupants that you're going to have to rescue? >> the fire truck...

Home of a recently separated woman named ann charles and her three children. thick black smoke poured from the second story eaves. part of the roof had already burned away. >> we were concentrating on getting up the steps and getting into those rooms that we were pretty sure we had victims. >> neighbors crowded in behind police barricades and one was an 18-year-old who lived up the street with a single mom. an awkward sort of kid. a bit immature for his age. he had strep throat that morning, was taking antibiotics but nothing could keep him from this. his name was robert davis. >> everybody go...

This time, about one of the murder weapons. >> there's an item that you touched, right? that left some particles on it that did some damage to somebody. >> i think it was a bat. >> a bat? >> a baseball bat. >> all right. some type of -- >> clubbing device. >> clubbing device. >> snead knows the weapon was really a metal rod. >> then i hit her two times. because they said if it was -- if i didn't it would be -- >> wait a minute. now i got somebody else clubbing her, robert. i got someone else doing that act. >> robert has it wrong. >> jessica already confessed that rocky clubbed ann charles. >>...

To a truck that was maybe 100 yards, 200 yards away. it felt good being able to help out. >> kari greenly lived next-door. she stood beside robert, watched the fire. worried about the pretty young mother trapped in there. and charles. >> she would come outside and play with the kids and we would talk here and there. but she was a really nice person. >> and then something good. ann's two daughters, katie and wendy, escaped unharmed from the downstairs bedrooms. but that left ann and little thomas, just 3 years old, unaccounted for. somewhere upstairs. >> we put the fire out and then we started ...

But as investigators quickly discovered, this fire was no accident. evidence pointed to arson and the murder of the young mother as detectives search for suspects, the neighborhood's heartbreak turned to fear. who would want ann charles dead and was the murderer still in their midst? here again is keith morrison with "the interrogation." >> at first, it was just a rumor that sped around crozet, virginia, february 2003. pretty soon everybody knew it was true. it wasn't any ordinary fire robert davis witnessed out on cling lane. >> you hear about it in the grocery store or the gas station or stu...