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in the aftermath of a fatal fire one question remained was it an accident or was it arson
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it took the physics of a burning cigarette the chemical composition of a flame and a computer simulated fire to
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determine how the fire started and who was responsible [Music] [Music] [Music] for 25 years ed and rosalie camiolo
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lived in an affluent suburb just outside of philadelphia ed was a retired government worker
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rosalie worked in the computer industry their only child paul a 31 year old computer programmer lived upstairs he
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took care of his parents since they had difficulty getting around it's not that they were bedridden or
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complete invalids but they certainly weren't athletic and able to respond in
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my opinion to an emergency situation just before dawn in september of 1996 paul made an emergency call to the fire
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department what is your emergency we have a fire in our living room it's getting really bad get out of the
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house where the firepower coming out when police arrived they found paul on the front lawn
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getting dressed paul said his mother and father had gotten out through the back door
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when the officer went to the backyard to check there was an explosion she found rosalie on the back porch
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severely burned and barely conscious but there was no sign of her 81 year old husband ed
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firefighters later found him inside he had been unable to escape the victim that was located was in a
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rear bathroom and he was in cardiac arrest at that time ed camiolo was pronounced dead at the
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hospital rosalie died too a result of smoke inhalation how horrible it must have been for my uncle what he
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went through to be burned and my aunt how horrible it must have been for her the firemen at the scene didn't see
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anything suspicious there was a general consensus that the fire was accidental in nature and most
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probably the result of the careless handling of smoking materials either a cigarette or
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a match to light the cigarettes paul camiolo told investigators his mother was a chain smoker and that she
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probably started the fire accidentally [Music] paul said he was asleep upstairs when he
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heard his father calling him he said there was a small fire on the sofa which his mother was trying to put
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out he ran to the kitchen got a pitcher of water and threw it on the sofa but it
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made the fire worse he told his parents to go out the back door he called 9-1-1 then he went out
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the front door to his car he was in his underwear i believe at the time had his car parked out in front and had
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a gym bag in his car and he felt he could get some shorts or clothes to put on what doesn't make sense to me was
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paul's story to this day i have problems with what he says happened this incident raised eyebrows among
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investigators he went in an entirely different direction i mean i think common sense
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dictates that you're going to make sure your folks get out of the house and the
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way to make sure that your parents get out of the house is to follow them out of the house
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paul camiolo admitted his behavior was a mistake but said he was dazed and confused
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you know i remember feeling guilty about it because i was the able-bodied one and i didn't cut them out
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but when a suspicious substance was found on the living room floor all eyes turned once again
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to paul camiolo [Music] ed and rose camiolo were laid to rest in the family plot
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just a few miles from their home the cameolos lives before the fire had not been easy
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their son paul was their primary caregiver you know he did have that responsibility
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to help assist his parents he would do the grocery shopping for them if they wanted something from a
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department store a lot of times he would go to the mall and buy it and bring it home
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investigators wondered whether paul may have had something to do with setting the fire
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there was money there in the form of insurance money and that in and of itself is a powerful motive
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i believe received about 200 000 in insurance benefits a second motive that some of the
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investigators believed existed was that paul cameola was tired of caring for his
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infirmed parents fire investigators searched through the rubble and found something very
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suspicious [Music] in the center of the room there was a pattern that looked like perhaps it
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might have been associated with a liquid pour what they refer to when someone might have poured
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an accelerant to see if an accelerant was used investigators removed samples of the
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carpeting the padding and the hardwood floor the samples were sealed in paint cans to
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prevent any gases from escaping and sent to the forensic lab gas chromatography can identify the
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molecular components of the samples and the results showed there was evidence of
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gasoline on the wood floor and the single biggest piece of evidence for them to conclude this was an arson fire was the
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finding of gasoline in the hardwood floor because how else would you explain gasoline in a living room when the test
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results come back it changes from i don't know to wow we have a we have an accelerant here
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this must be an arson and that changes people's opinions to prosecutors the presence of gasoline
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meant murder based on this evidence prosecutors believe that paul poured gasoline on the
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living room floor while his parents were upstairs asleep he then set the room on fire and called
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the fire department the heat and smoke made it impossible for paul's parents to make it out of the
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house alive paul strongly denied these charges my mother and father knew the truth and
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god knows the truth and that's all that mattered to me paul camiolo was arrested and charged
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with two counts of first degree murder his request for bail was denied i had no problem justifying
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arguing for the death penalty i mean i just i can't think of anything more vile
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than killing the very people that brought you into this world they were saying i tried to burn them to
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death you know i that's that's just you know horrible beyond words the press depicted him as a cold-blooded
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killer yet his family stood firmly behind him anybody that knew paul knew he couldn't do anything like that
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he loved his parents very much and they were very devoted families that boy was good to his parents we were
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all there to support him and we all like we all went to the hearings and [Music]
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several of us visited him on a regular basis we all believed that he was innocent
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as the trial approached paul camiolo and his defense team looked for some way to prove that the fire was
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an accident i couldn't imagine how the gasoline got in there there had to be another explanation as
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to why gasoline was in that floor [Music] the firemen responding to the cameolos
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house fire were all volunteers but one of them had an unusual background steve avata was also an agent with the
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bureau of alcohol tobacco and firearms he had been a philadelphia policeman prior to going to the atf so he was not
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somebody just out of the academy he had been someone involved in police work for
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a number of years the atf took no part in this investigation but personally avado was dumbfounded
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when he learned paul camiolo had been charged with arson to him it just didn't
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make sense that finding shocked me uh i hadn't anticipated that it seemed very
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difficult to explain how the gasoline would be in hardwood floor but not in carpeting and padding above it if a
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significant volume of gasoline was poured and novato wasn't the least bit suspicious of paul's behavior on the
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night of the fire it's not unusual for people in a fire to exit a building through the way that
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they're most comfortable exiting if they typically come and go through the front door no matter where
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they are in the house they'll exit through the front door avato told local investigators that he
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believed the fire was accidental and he was roundly dismissed they portrayed him in the media that he
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was you know an apprentice fire investigator that really was not experienced and really didn't have the
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qualifications to be offering opinions he was treated like dirt by the locals and by the attorneys
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involved in this case when the defense team learned about steve avato's opinion that the fire was
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an accident they conducted their own investigation and hired dr rick roby an expert on the
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science of fires what makes it difficult is fires burn up a lot of the evidence roby studies fires while they're burning
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to do this he sets fires like this one in model rooms fires progress differently depending on
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how they're set the size of the room air flow and hundreds of other considerations
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all of this data is then entered into a computer it's a fully 3d fire modeling software that actually
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allows you to model the development and growth of a fire in a building for this assignment roby and his staff
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built a virtual reality replica of the cameolo home then they entered all known information
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about the fire into the computer roby conservatively estimated that it would take at least one gallon of
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gasoline to create a poor pattern the size of the one found in the living room five or six minutes after paul camiolo
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called the fire department the outside window exploded the explosion was the result of what is
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called flashover when flashover occurs temperatures in the room get so high that items ignite even without coming
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into contact with the flame as you can see here and in fact unfortunately there are
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firefighters killed every year by having been caught in flashover conditions because it happens so rapidly
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sometimes it's very difficult to escape from those conditions after roby entered this information into
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his computer program he lit a virtual match within 30 seconds hot gas fills the room
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within one minute smoke and gas spread up the stairs to the second floor and three minutes after ignition the
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living room would reach flashover blowing out the window the entire room becomes engulfed in
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flames because there's so much burning and so much hot gas that it's completely
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uninhabitable [Music] but the police witnessed the window breaking five or six minutes after paul
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called the fire department to robie this meant that gasoline couldn't have been used to start the
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fire he would have had a tough time actually getting to the front door without being
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engulfed in flames that's one of the things our model showed so we look at the arson scenario and there's
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inconsistency after inconsistency next roby tested paul camiolo's story paul said the fire started by accident
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with a cigarette or a match his mother had been using at one minute the fire would be about two feet tall
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and gathering strength at two minutes it would be moving across the ceiling at four minutes temperatures and gas
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levels in the room would be fatal at five and a half minutes the fire reaches flashover and the window blows
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out [Music] this was consistent with paul camiolo's version of events matches up with everything that paul
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camiolo is saying and with other objective evidence that he has nothing to do with
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but important questions remained if the fire was an accident why was gasoline found on the living
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room floor i was horrified it felt like i was in my own horror film defense attorney thomas kameta strongly
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believed his client paul camiolo was innocent that he never set fire to his family's home in order to kill his
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parents facing the death penalty for a crime that he was convinced and we were convinced
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first of all didn't he did not commit but a crime that didn't occur that this
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was an accidental fire so yeah there were high stakes in this case there's no doubt about that the
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reason paul camilo had been charged with first degree murder was the gasoline found on the wood floors in the living
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room but paul's defense team was suspicious of this finding they took samples of the carpeting the carpet
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padding and some newspaper and there was no gasoline in any of those samples it was only in the hardwood floor
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and it was just inconceivable how can you pour gasoline in a family room and not get the gas on those other items if
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that was going to be the cause of the fire so the defense team hired john lentini a
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nationally recognized fire expert to find out what happened [Music] lentini retested the samples of hardwood
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floor using atomic absorption spectroscopy it's a way to measure the concentration
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of metals in a solution the wood flooring was dissolved in acid then analyzed to see how the solution is
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absorbed through the flame the amount of light absorbed is proportional to the concentration of the
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element in the solution and what was the element found in the solution lead this meant that it was leaded gasoline
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on the cameolo's wood floors but how did this happen since leaded gasoline hadn't been sold
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in this country for over 15 years many of the poorly constructed houses that i've
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looked at were built in the early 70s and they were built by contractors who were cutting corners
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flooring contractors often used gasoline as a thinner so the varnish would go onto the wooden floors more easily
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this was cheaper than using high quality thinners no one refuted the fact that that was a
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common practice that they did use gas in finishing of the hardwood floors so i'm
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convinced that's where that gas came from so that was really the moment where he
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said here's the final piece of the puzzle if this is leaded gasoline it all makes sense and it makes sense that it
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would be there and why forensic tests also revealed how the fire started a cigarette dropped onto a polyurethane
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sofa will simply smolder but when a match is dropped on the same material it's almost like an explosion
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and tests revealed that another aspect of paul's story was correct that when he poured water on the fire it
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got worse the average person wouldn't know that polyurethane melts and then when you
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throw water on it it actually flares up like a grease fire when prosecutors heard about this to
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their credit they conducted their own test they secured from the manufacturer the
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same fabric that was on the camiolo sofa and i cut off a four inch by four inch portion of this fabric
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and we dropped the match on it and it ignited immediately and at that point i knew that the case
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was in trouble serious trouble and the alleged poor pattern on the living room floor
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many now believe it was simply the result of normal wear and tear you would expect that people walking
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back and forth on the carpet would thin the carpet and therefore any heat that's
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imparted on that would pass through that carpet area more quickly than in other areas
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when all of this overwhelming body of evidence came to light all charges against paul camiolo were
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dropped in this business you have people that for a certain amount of money will tell
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you anything you want to hear these experts where not of that ilk and no it wasn't tough it wasn't a sad day
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it was the right thing to do and if it's the right thing to do then do it and i'm not saying that it was malicious
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and intentional i'm saying that unfortunately they had gut feelings and years of practical experience that led
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them to conclude this had to be an arson fire so they let common perceptions outweigh
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logic and science and luckily logic and science prevailed in this case paul spent 10 months in jail
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facing a possible death sentence for a crime that never happened there there are days i can't bear to
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look at pictures of my mother and father because i i just remember the fire and there
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are other days that you know once you've been in jail yummy field at times you have a
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scarlet ladder he spent 10 months in jail he'll never get that time back that was liberty that
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was taken away from him that he'll never get back it was a time that he should
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have been grieving for the loss of his parents and instead he was fighting for his own life
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john lentini says fire investigation still has a long way to go before its application is as
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dependable as other forensic sciences it's a matter of a profession that is largely controlled and dominated by
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hacks and these people didn't set out to become hacks but they don't know what
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they're doing they're making complicated decisions about chemistry and physics
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and they never took chemistry in physics [Music] when asked how it felt to be right all
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along not surprisingly steve avato had no comment but his colleagues spoke for him
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his courage was was later recognized by his fellow fire investigators when the international
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association of arson investigators named him investigator of the year for standing up to the enormous peer
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pressure that came down on him when he said wait a minute guys i don't think we've really
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got an arson here [Music] [Applause] [Music] you