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in 1996 a fire broke out in a rental home in north carolina one child died another was critically injured
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to the family the fire was a mystery to investigators it was murder [Music] [Applause]
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[Music] [Applause] [Music] tabor city north carolina a small rural sweet potato farming community in the
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western part of the state and home to the henson family merry christmas buddy joshua henson and his sister brittany
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lived with their mother terry and her boyfriend rodney strickland rodney worked in construction
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terry was a homemaker and student on october 19 1996 rodney left to spend the night with his son in fair bluff
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about 15 miles away terry's mother bernice came over to the house that night for dinner i was there
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when she took brittany and josh upstairs to bed and as they were going upstairs to bed
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the last words i heard josh say is i love you because he was just learning to talk
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[Music] after bernice left terry plugged in a space heater to heat the home since it was the first cold
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night of fall she fell asleep on the sofa in the living room around midnight at 4am terry was awakened by screams
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from her children the house was on fire the thick smoke and flames made it impossible to reach the children
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the only thing terry could do was call the fire department the police arrived first and an officer
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also tried to rescue the children he too was unsuccessful he went kind of past me and got almost to
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the top of the stairway and said we can't get in to clear the way terry moved the space
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heater at the bottom of the stairs by the time firemen arrived the upstairs was almost entirely in flames
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the children were rushed to the hospital both in critical condition it's really hard to recognize her as
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brittany she was black from head to toe and they told me when i got there didn't
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think she'd make it brittany was fortunate she survived the fire tragically 17 month old joshua did not
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they finally came out and said that he didn't make it they did ask me if i wanted to see him
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they suggested i didn't but that i could that you know they had to ask and i didn't
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you know i really loved him a lot i really loved him like like he was my actual child
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i loved him like that [Music] i wanted my baby brother to at least have a long life
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he was too young to die when the fire was extinguished local authorities found evidence that the fire
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started in the children's bedroom closet at first they thought that brittany
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might have been playing with matches but when they looked into terry henson's
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background they uncovered information which made them suspect it might have been
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murder britney henson now eight years old remembers the horrible fire that burned
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through her home four years earlier i was burnt all over and i i had died and i was up in heaven and
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leave me that's beautiful and the rivers were rainbow baths and bridges and were gold and the houses were made out
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of clouds which had the names on top that were people of the people that would own them
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i'm special because i had died and i came back alive that's why i think i'm
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special her younger brother joshua just 17 months old died in the fire i just miss him alone
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i wish he hadn't died i mean he was so young with any kind of house fire officials
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try to identify the cause generally a fire burns longest at or near its point of origin
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so the room with the most damage is usually where the fire started most of the damage was in joshua's
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bedroom which was at the top of the stairs investigators found a v-shaped pattern
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on the wall in joshua's bedroom closet it's a pattern that occurs when something combustible is against a wall
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this discovery told investigators that the fire started on the closet floor and traveled up to the attic
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a melted copper electrical wire was hanging from the attic which investigators concluded had been burned
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in the fire and was not the cause of it special agents from the north carolina state bureau of investigation and the
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federal bureau of alcohol tobacco and firearms assisted in the investigation they eliminated the nearby electrical
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outlet as the cause and when they couldn't determine how the fire started they concluded that someone had set it
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intentionally with a match or lighter i was told by the state agent that anyone who was
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in that house that night was a suspect anyone who had been in the house that evening would have been
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investigators first talked to brittany to see if she had been playing with matches that night they were satisfied
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she had not next they wanted to know where terry's boyfriend rodney was at the time of the
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fire rodney had plenty of alibis he was back in fair bluff with his son spending the
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night plenty of people saw him but investigators were most suspicious of terry since she was sleeping on the
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sofa downstairs when the fire broke out instead of in her bedroom upstairs and they also discovered that a few
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years earlier she had given three older children up for adoption the only reason terry let those children
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go was because she did love them enough to want the best for them and at that time
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she could not give them anything not even a home she didn't have a job she didn't have a
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car she didn't have no money she'd have anything people made a leap from
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that event the adoptions to somehow that becoming a motive for killing her other child
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witnesses also told police that at the fire scene terry behaved suspiciously her mama said that she had been
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depressed so she had been bringing books over for her to read at night and her boyfriend said that she would
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sleep on the couch they just didn't think terry was acting the way a mother would act if their if a
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child had been killed in a fire there was just something wrong to them about it she was blamed for the fire she was
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blamed that she's the one who did the fire no she didn't do it she didn't do a
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single thing terry denied having anything to do with setting the fire i was actually the only one considered
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they had to eliminate brittany because she was a child that could have started a fire at that age
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rodney couldn't be considered because he wasn't there he was 12-15 miles away
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police arrested terry henson and charged her with murder attempted murder and arson
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and her nightmare continued when her own lawyer hired an independent investigator
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who agreed with the prosecution that the fire had been intentionally set i mean it took me a long time to realize
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my attorney wasn't going to help me i still held a lot of faith that he was going to do something and
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i finally realized okay he's not if convicted terry could face the death penalty
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for 61 days terry henson sat in a north carolina jail cell waiting to be tried for murder and arson
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eventually terry was released on a 200 000 bond but remained under house arrest and with no one else to turn to
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terry conducted her own research into the fire that killed her son joshua first with her computer
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she made a search on the internet she typed in the word fire i spent several days probably weeks
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looking on the internet for something that would help my case i didn't understand the internet as far
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as there being actually people out there that you could talk to i wasn't sure of
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how to talk to them if i didn't know it was slow going until terry found an article written by a fire investigator
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in sydney australia is it an accidental fire or arson by tony k the article described common mistakes
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investigators make when determining the cause of a suspicious fire specifically it discussed the role of
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bias in fire investigation for example arson investigators tend to look for arson and insurance investigators tend
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to look for insurance fraud the article recommends that fire investigators have a scientific or
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chemical background terry desperately wanted to get in touch with the author i didn't understand email when i saw the
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little envelope thing on his page i clicked on it and it's you know like a blank page pops up for
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you to type in so i just assumed okay well i can send this to him and i still didn't understand how he
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would get back to me the author tony cafe did respond but since he lived in australia he
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recommended dr gerald hurst in austin texas dr hurst earned his phd in chemistry
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from cambridge and he agreed to look into terry's case homeowners burning house down to kill their
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children pretty rare very rare terry sent dr hurst every piece of information she had about the fire
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after reading through it dr hurst was struck by how incomplete the local investigation had been i
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decided to concentrate on the attic precisely because they had said almost nothing about the
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attic in the investigation report the attic was a complete revelation the insulation in the attic was made of
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ground-up newspaper treated with a flame retardant chemical dr hurst checked local weather
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conditions and he discovered that hurricane fran had passed through tabor city north carolina just six weeks
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before the fire terry said the torrential rains from that hurricane leaked through the roof
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and caused water damage in the ceilings dr hurst also found a melted 50-year-old
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electrical wire in the attic insulation terry told hearst there had been some electrical problems on the night of the
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fire her curling iron had been going on and off earlier that evening and when she moved the electric space
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heater for the firemen she remembers it was cold to the touch i picked that with both hands and just
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slid it out of the way and later is when it dawned on me that that heater should have been very hot
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and it had been turned on in full blast that meant that the heater had gone off uh at least a half an hour
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before she became aware of the fire dr hurst and fire investigator ken gibson flew to north carolina to inspect
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terry's home first hand they did not believe the fire started the way the government investigators
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said that's really very simple innocent people are being put into prison or forced into plea bargains for fires
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they did not start after terry henson was charged with arson and murder in the death of her 17
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month old son joshua her only hope was a scientist she found through the internet
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jerry hurst is one of these guys who kind of comes out of left field and can actually save the day in this
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case the findings of the state bureau of investigation and the bureau of alcohol
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tobacco and firearms rested on the theory that the fire started on the floor of the bedroom closet
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and when the cause couldn't be found they concluded the fire had been deliberately set
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atf they call themselves arson investigators the state call themselves arson investigators that's what they're
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looking for is arson that's what they train for that's what they go to school for
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is to catch arsonists what you want is a fire investigator to determine what caused the fire
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dr hurst found evidence that the roof leaked in terry's rented home and tests revealed it washed away the
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flame retardant chemicals on the paper insulation he also found evidence of electrical
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on the day of the fire mysteriously terry's curling iron was going on and off
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and during the fire when terry moved the space heater it was cold to the touch this indicated the heater had not been
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on for at least a half hour before the fire the heater was plugged into a line originally designed for 15 amps
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in the fuse box was a 30 amp fuse which had blown out that means that you're carrying more
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power through that wire than it was designed to carry and when you overload it it heats it
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gets hot a cold snap a 1500 watt appliance on a line that probably never seen that high wattage
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before and the question became did that electrical line over the top of the closet feed
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the heater because if it did you had a correlation you had a potential cause and effect situation
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and that is exactly what he found the cable in the attic fed the outlet used by the 1500 watt space heater and
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the curling iron that's what really frosted the cake for us we had an origin
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cause it could not be disproven scientifically and we had a connection between the differences in what was done
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that night what had been done before and that gives you a very strong presumptive
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case for an accidental fire dr hurst believes several factors created the chain of
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events that culminated with the fatal fire water from the leaking roof washed the flame retardant chemicals off
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of the paper insulation in the attic and further eroded the 50-year-old electrical cable
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over time as the rainwater hit the exposed portion of the electrical cable it arched burning the wooden attic beam
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and leaving behind char marks or carbon tracks wood does not conduct electricity
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but carbon does [Music] dr hurst believes that when terry plugged in the 1500 watt space heater
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that night it heated the electrical wires in the attic which arched those sparks touched a carbon track
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which ignited the paper insulation just above joshua's bedroom closet a wooden ceiling with a an already
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well-built fire that suddenly breaks through produces a holocaust in no time at all
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the fiery debris from the attic fell through the hole in the ceiling onto the floor of the closet
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and did not start on the floor and burn upwards as local investigators suspected
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ken gibson believes that the fire officials rushed to judgment so anything that doesn't fall into the
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theory that that this was part of how the arsonist started the fire to them it's not evidence it's just
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something that's there dr hurst sent the local prosecutor his critique of the government's
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investigation which said their conclusions were based on junk science not only is there a badly melted and arced wire
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it had arc marks on it which could have been caused by the fire but which could also have
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initiated the fire no way to tell and that wire passed across dead center in the hole in the
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ceiling quite a coincidence to his credit the district attorney studied dr hurst's
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report conducted his own investigation and dropped the charges against terry henson
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but by the time it was all over she had lost her home her child and nearly her freedom because
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of an inaccurate conclusion drawn from faulty science fire investigation in general is
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the swamp of forensic science in fact many forensic scientists refused to recognize arsenal investigation
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as a subfield of forensic science i think terry's story in many respects is heroic
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she was not a very well-educated woman although she's extremely intelligent and
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she had just enough computer studies at her community college to know that if she was going to be under house arrest
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she needed some way where she could put herself out into the world even if it was only through her computer and email
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there's people sitting in prison that have gone through what i've gone through
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but they didn't have the help they didn't know how to get it didn't have the money
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and that's not fair terry henson cherishes her freedom and the time she spends with brittany
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yet terry thinks of joshua every day what he would have looked like what kind of person he'd be
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remembering the good times i look around and i see them everywhere [Music] we ran and we played and we had the dog
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to play with he swaying out of the street it's not fair [Music] [Music] you