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Willingham letter to Stacy Kuykendall
Todd Willingham letter to his stepmother
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CORSICANA — As a key witness in the capital murder trial of Cameron Todd Willingham, then-Deputy State Fire Marshal Manuel Vasquez testified that the fire that killed the defendant’s three daughters was "a crime of arson."
"In your opinion, could this fire have been started accidentally?" Vasquez was asked. "No sir," he replied. "It was not accidental."Seventeen years later — and five years after Willingham was executed in connection with the case — nine fire experts have raised the possibility that the blaze may have indeed been accidental, citing revised standards in arson investigations.Some circumstances in the Willingham case were similar to those in the case of Ernest Ray Willis, who was convicted of setting a 1986 fire that killed two sleeping women in the small West Texas town of Iraan. Willis, who spent 17 years on Death Row, was released in 2004 after then-Pecos County District Attorney Ori White dropped the murder case after an inquiry that strongly suggested that the fire was an accident. Authorities were also accused of concealing evidence and giving Willis anti-psychotic drugs that left him dazed during his trial."The science of arson investigations was very different in the late 1980s than it was in the late 1990s," said White, who is now Pecos County attorney. "The scientific evidence exonerated him, and that’s why I dismissed the case." The fire marshal’s arson finding was the dominant element in the prosecution’s case against Willingham, an unemployed mechanic who denied setting the blaze.Retired Judge John H. Jackson, who, as assistant district attorney at the time, prosecuted the case, said the finding unquestionably showed that the fire was deliberately set, despite "paper experts" who are now challenging the findings. Waco attorney David Martin, who represented Willingham and has since said he believes that his client was guilty, says an expert for the defense also concluded that the fire was arson. But Craig Beyler, a fire scientist hired by the Texas Forensic Science Commission to review the case, has concluded that an arson finding "could not be sustained," saying Vasquez, who died in 1994, used concepts that "are often inconsistent with modern fire science."The arson investigation into the Willingham case was conducted before the 1992 publication of what has since become the standard for arson science: NFPA 921, a Guide to Fire and Explosion Investigation, published by the National Fire Protection Association. Vasquez and Douglas Fogg, then assistant fire chief for Corsicana, cited more than 20 indicators to conclude that the fire was intentionally set. But several of those indicators have since come under question in light of the newer standards in NFPA 921.Among them:"Crazed glass," a weblike pattern earlier assumed to be caused by use of a liquid accelerant. Now it is also attributed to the rapid chilling of hot glass by water from fire hoses."Pour patterns," "trailers" and "puddles," markings suggesting that someone dumped accelerant. A "post-flashover fire" — which spread from single objects to engulf an entire room, reaching temperatures of more than 2,000 degrees — can also produce floor burn patterns that cannot be distinguished from those caused by liquid accelerants.
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