Arsonist’S Trail Isn’T Always Hot It’S The Little Things That Count In Solving Fires

Fire gutted the basement room.

All it left were specks of ash so small they slipped through the holes in wire mesh the size of a window screen.

“We literally put the entire room through a screen,” said Spokane fire Lt. Michael Zambryski. “I don’t know what I was looking for, but if I saw it, I would’ve known it.”

In this case, however, finding nothing amounted to finding something. Without evidence of an accident, investigators were left with one logical explanation: arson.

Sheriff’s detectives continued the investigation and arrested Robert Wood for arson and murder on Feb. 24, 1999, 10 days after investigators had sifted through the ashes from his home.

Wood was charged with killing his 11-year-old son, Chris Wood, for insurance money, then setting his home on fire to try to cover up the crime.

The process of elimination that led to Wood’s arrest is common in arson investigations. When authorities are lucky, they find gas cans or matches at the scene of a fire, but it’s more common to discover arson because nothing else fits the evidence.

That intangibility also makes arson one of the most difficult crimes to solve and prosecute. Most arsonists never are caught.

According to FBI statistics, only 16 percent of arson offenses in 1998 were cleared with arrests. Even fewer led to convictions. Those trends are borne out locally, officials say.

In the Spokane area, fire departments face a large number of fires to investigate each year with limited staff. The city’s two-man investigative division handled 260 fires last year. Valley Fire, with three investigators, typically handles 100 investigations each year and enforces the district’s fire code.

The departments tackle fires ranging from smoldering trash cans to large arsons like the Mars Hotel & Casino fire last July, which caused $3 million in damage and left homeless more than 100 people who’d been living in the neighboring six-story Fairmont Apartments.

It’s important to investigate trash can fires because they’re often the start of a larger arson spree, said Spokane Fire investigator Joel Fielder.

Ian C. Smith, 33, was arrested earlier this month for allegedly setting Brown Building Materials ablaze. Authorities say Smith admitted lighting 16 small fires on the South Hill since January.

A firefighter noticed Smith at the scene of the Brown Building blaze and recognized him from an earlier fire scene.

Arsonists often like to watch the fires they set, Fielder said. They also tend to operate within a geographical area near where they live.

“Most arsonists don’t drive. Most ride a bicycle around,” Fielder said.

One reason could be because many have suspended licenses, Fielder speculated.

That has largely eliminated Smith as a suspect in a string of small fires set behind businesses in the Valley this spring.

The Mars Hotel fire, which was declared arson a week after it burned to the ground, is still under investigation.

The Spokane Fire Department is also still searching for clues in the New Year’s Day fire that destroyed the former El Toreador Restaurant downtown. The blaze was caused by a human, but could have been accidental, said Fielder.

Arson investigations follow the same procedures as any criminal inquiry.

In the Robert Wood fire, Valley Fire Marshal Paul Chase arrived on the scene as flames shot through the windows of the home in Newman Lake.

He began the investigation immediately by noting the locked doors and footprints leading away from the house in the snow, which ruled out a break-in. He and sheriff’s deputies began interviewing witnesses and firefighters to get a sense of where and when the fire started.

“Sometimes investigators like to just jump right into the ashes without talking to anybody,” Chase said.

Wood showed up at 11:42 a.m., three hours after the blaze had been sighted by a bus driver. When interviewed, he didn’t seem distraught over the loss of his house or the fact that his son was missing, Chase said.

The body of Chris Wood was found two days later near Deer Lake, 40 miles north of Spokane. An autopsy showed he’d been strangled.

Before Chase called in Zambryski and other investigators to go through the ashes, he found the spot where the fire began - the first task in an arson investigation. It’s a complicated process that takes into account the rate at which different materials, like wood, metal and plastic, burn.

Fires start at one point and burn up and out. Investigators start at the areas with the least heat and smoke damage and work their way toward areas with the most visible damage.

In Wood’s house, Chase traced the fire to a basement rec room and then to the couch.

The afternoon of the fire, officials brought in a dog from the Post Falls Fire Department trained to sniff out fire scenes for accelerants, such as gasoline. No traces of accelerants were found.

After pinpointing the spot where the fire began, Chase began to eliminate possible causes. By the end of the first day, he’d checked the wiring and could say that the fire wasn’t electrical.

Chase and the fire sleuths sifted the room again four days later. They examined what remained of the electrical outlets and florescent lights and determined that they hadn’t sparked a fire.

By the end of their search, Chase felt he’d eliminated every possibility other than someone having set the couch on fire.

Sheriff’s detectives continued the criminal investigation, and found evidence linking Wood to his son’s death. Vomit was found on Christopher Wood’s clothes that matched vomit in the bed of Wood’s fourwheel-drive pickup and the fender of a Mazda Miata parked inside his garage the day of the fire.

Two weeks after the fire, Robert Wood was charged with arson and murdering his son.

Two months after the fire, Chase wanted evidence that could be used in a trial. In order to establish a timeline, investigators wanted to know exactly how long after being ignited it would’ve taken for the couch to burn and how much heat it released.

Investigators bought three identical couches and intentionally lit them.

Working backward from when the fire was discovered, Chase was able to determine how long it would’ve taken the fire to have grown that big.

The couch was gone in 10 minutes without the help of any accelerants such as gasoline.

“It doesn’t take that long and boom, it’s gone,” he said.

Investigators believe the father killed the boy for insurance money, then set the fire as a way to cover up the crime, possibly by setting the couch on fire with a match.

They will never know for sure, however. Wood hanged himself in his cell at the Spokane County Jail on May 31. He never confessed to the arson or the murder.