a gasoline fire only gives off large intense flames for around a minute. by the time a piece of furniture begins burning on its own, the gasoline will have already burned off. from that point on, the gasoline fire burns at around the same temperature as a normal fire would. what s more, if an accelerant had been used to start the willis fire, it would have taken an enormous amount to generate such a large pour pattern. the pour patterns indicated that somewhere in the vicinity of 25 to 30 gallons of accelerant such as gasoline was used to start this fire. white further concludes that willis may have been physically unable to start this fire. i had just had back surgery, back-to-back two weeks apart. i couldn t pick up five gallons of gasoline, much less carry it and spread it around a house. after an eight-week investigation, hurst and his colleague ken ryeland issue a report to district attorney ori white. they conclude that the fire was
to 1200 degrees fahrenheit, it s got enough energy to ignite everything below it. every exposed surface catches on fire. the aftermath of a fire like this will often leave behind irregular burn patterns on the floor of a structure, much like the ones investigators found in the willis fire. you will find patterns in the room that look like you would imagine a floor and lower walls would look if they had been exposed to the fire from a liquid accelerant such as gasoline which had been poured. this phenomenon is known as flashover. it is called flashover because the fire gets so hot that it literally rolls over engulfing the entire room in flames. this is the moment that flashover occurs. flashover produces patterns that cannot be discerned from those produced by liquid accelerants except that flashover does a better job than
and retired chemist named gerald hurst. hurst starts his investigation by examining the state s strongest evidence, the so-called pour patterns. without those patterns on the floor, no case would have ever been developed. based on the new science, there is a different explanation for the patterns the investigators found. it is not arson. what occurred between 1987 when he was tried and convicted and 2004 was a development in the science of arson. where suddenly, the pour patterns could be explained. as this fire investigation experiment demonstrates, accidental fires sometimes behave in ways that could lead fire investigators to believe arson is involved. over the course of several minutes, this fire reaches temperatures so hot that it begins to burn down. radiation goes in all directions. including down. and when the temperature of that hot gas layer gets to about 1100
the flames awaken ernest willis. i woke up in the early morning hours, i don t know, 4:00 or so. and the house was on fire. so i ran through the house trying to get to the back bedroom. i couldn t get there. so i run out the front door and around the side of the house and started breaking the windows and yelling for everybody to get out. his cousin, billy willis, makes a last-minute escape leaping out a bedroom window to safety. the two women are still trapped inside. it s too late to save them. the local fire departments responded. upon arriving at the scene, they found two subjects outside the residence and that there was two subjects still left in the residence. the house was almost totally engulfed in flames. gale alison and elizabeth belue ended up dying as a result of the fire. as firefighters struggled to extinguish the flames, police on the scene interview ernest and
the thresholds. much of the furniture, including a large dining room table, has been reduced to piles of ashes. they thought that any fire intense enough to make a large heavy dining room table go away was more intense than a normal fire. after days of sifting through the home s remains, the investigators reach a conclusion. this fire was no accident. on top of the forensic evidence they ve gathered, police believe that survivor ernest willis is lying about what really happened the night of the fire. he was the only likely person that could have put the accelerant on the floor and probably lit it and still gotten out of the house with what little bit of burns and stuff he had. a pecos county grand jury hands down an indictment. charging ernest willis with capital murder. if convicted, willis could face the death penalty. i received a phone call saying that they had a warrant