Flora Fire ////// 538 | Forensic Files

so [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to true crime garage wherever you are whatever you're doing thanks for
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business all right everybody gather round grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime
[Music] four young sisters who all died on a fire at their family home still unclear how the fire started
investigators are looking at the first floor electrical system [Music] the girl's mother injured along with two
police officers who tried to save the sisters lives [Music] such an early age such a heavy loss
i miss them [Music] she was a single mom working very hard and like i said her babies were her angels
i can't imagine what she's going through [Music] sadly on november 23rd 2016 the carroll county comment ran the
following report with the headline four sisters parish and floor fire the article read in part
an early morning fire monday november 21st 2016 in flora claimed the lives of four sisters
ages 11 9 7 and 5 and sent their mother and two police officers to the hospital the victims names have not been released
911 was called at 3 35 a.m to a two unit apartment building located at 103 east columbia street
when emergency personnel arrived flames were visible according to florida town marshal paul redman
the victims families resided on the main level which also includes an upstairs bedroom where the girls slept
officers and volunteer firefighters removed the girls who were not breathing from the residence
redmond said they worked hard to resuscitate them but could not the victim's mother was airlifted to an
indianapolis hospital for treatment a county deputy was flown to a fort wayne hospital for treatment of smoke
inhalation and burns to his hands and face a flora police officer was transported to a lafayette hospital for
treatment of smoke inhalation the couple occupying the upstairs apartment escaped unharmed
fire units from delphi camden burlington and cutler also responded according to redmond the fire was
knocked down quickly also helping at the scene were the carroll county sheriff's
department indiana state police and other police units the indiana department of homeland security and
state fire marshal along with local authorities are conducting an investigation as to the cause of the
fire redmond said the victims were students at carroll elementary school carol's counselors as well as others
from nearby school corporations and local ministry were available at the school to help students and staff cope
with the tragedy the comment will run dozens of articles about the fire and fatalities for the
weeks and months to come we have covered several house fires and arson stories on true crime garage
and unfortunately there were fatalities in those fires as well but stop and really think about it for a
while there are few things more terrifying than a house fire imagine waking in the night
the house still dark the smell of smoke is strong you jump out of your bed with one
thought my children you rush from the room only to be confronted with a wall of black smoke so
thick your eyes water your throat burns and your lungs sees up the heat searing your skin to the point
where you are sure that you are on fire screaming is impossible as you are overtaken by coughing and you stagger
out the front door choking and gasping for air and your children are still inside
this is what happened in the middle of the night on november twenty first two 2016 in flora indiana
later we learned that this deadly house fire was no accident this is true crime garage
and this is the floor fire case [Music] in november of 2016 little girls kyoni kiara kiana and carial
lived with their mother galen rose in a rented apartment inside a duplex in the tiny town of flora indiana the house was
situated on a corner right next to downtown florida this is a town of just one square mile occupied by 2000
residents the small town of flora is located in carroll county indiana the house galen and her girls lived in
located at 103 east columbia street was divided into two separate apartments the
family of five our family that we're discussing lived in one half and other tenants a mom and
her two kids occupied the other half of this duplex galen and her kids slept on two
different floors of the home the girls slept in bedrooms upstairs and galen occupied a room on the main level the
four sisters were normal little girls who loved to play outside and were big time into cheerleading and that is an
understatement i cannot emphasize that enough big time into cheerleading they were on various competitive
cheering teams and they ranged in age from five to eleven so preschool age up to the sixth
grade neighbors would later tell the media that the kids were always playing outside they were very nice and polite
children they said the mom was friendly and would say hello the girls loved to play with other
neighborhood kids dogs and were always smiling and dancing one flora resident said they were so joyous they were very
happy girls i've never seen them not smiling always on the front porch waving at everybody that went by they didn't
know a stranger well let's get to the details of this tragic event okay captain so on the weekend of november
18th through the 20th 2016 the girls had a cheer competition on that saturday afternoon
on sunday kiana who was big into basketball she had a game so the five members of this family went to the
grocery store and went home to eat dinner after this basketball game and after dinner it would be bedtime for the
girls on sunday night this is the 20th the girls all went to bed around 10 p.m upstairs in their room
galen slept alone downstairs so she says that she went to bed around the same time as well
but around 3 30 a.m galen wakes up here's what happened per fox 59 news it says everyone was asleep
the girls were upstairs and galen was in her bedroom on the main floor until she said intense smoke woke her up
the whole entire house was full of smoke i couldn't really see galen said i pretty much tried to save my babies by
running up the steps i got halfway i couldn't breathe and i just ran out of the house to try to help now galen stood
in the front yard in her nightgown screaming but other screams could be heard as well
coming from inside the house a neighbor one of many awakened by the sounds of the distraught mother called 9-1-1 the
first to respond was carroll county sheriff's deputy drew yoder he rushed into the house when galen screamed at
him that her children were still inside he was quickly forced to retreat from the burning structure
second to respond was flora police officer josh dissinger the two officers attempted to enter the home several more
times but they had to pull back each time on another attempt disslinger had to pull yoder out
of the home because the smoke was so dense the flames so hot later yoder said to the journal and
courier the third time is when things went bad all i remember is waking up in the
ambulance with dissinger standing over me telling me that everything was going to
be okay firefighters were able to be on the scene very quickly by the time they arrive we have smoke and flames that are
billowing from the house galen rose stood on the front lawn screaming hysterically
the two law enforcement officers were down by this point injured by their repeated
attempts into the home right so shortly after 3 30 a.m we have an emt who lived next door to the family her name is
angela francis she was awakened by the screaming she ran out to help and was immediately
you know thrown into the situation where she's helping and assisting anyone that
she can including the ambulances that are now arriving on the scene we also have
neighbor chassis fox her and her husband also went outside of their home that night and watched horrified as
as sadly the first responders failed to save the children per fox 59 galen rose recalled the ambulance man
told me that my babies was no longer here and after that moment i don't remember anything
galen was sedated and airlifted from the scene to a hospital in indianapolis her
condition was listed as critical but stable she was in the hospital for nearly a
week the flora firefighters were eventually able to put out this fire one by one emts brought out four little
bodies on stretchers deputy yoder suffered burns to his hands and face and smoke inhalation
he was airlifted to a burn unit in fort wayne where he stayed for several days he wrote a handwritten note to officer
dissinger that read quote you saved my life josh he later says he has no recollection of
writing this note dissinger was treated at the lafayette hospital he too had smoke inhalation but he was released
monday night the two men had done everything in their power to try to save all four girls
unfortunately they just failed that the smoke was too bad the fire was too big i
just think i have little fires at my house you know outside you know little bonfires
you're moving around those firewoods and boom you get hit with some smoke and you start
coughing and choking immediately and that's of a little fire and you're surrounded by fresh air can you imagine
how you'd react or how the body would react when you're hit with smoke and when you're gasping for air all your
body is getting is more smoke the residents of the other half of the home remember we have a woman with her two
children that lived there she was able to escape that night without any injury at all luckily her
children were not home with her that night carroll county coroner jd cree announced that all four girls had died
of asphyxiation due to smoke inhalation manner of death was listed as accidental
this was obviously devastating to the family but also all the firefighters that were involved
in trying to save these girls lives and it devastated the whole community so they held the funeral at the local high
school this is one of those horrible situations that we hear about captain where the
first responders are now traumatized for months and even years to come the funeral itself must be unbearable
we're talking about four children here the carroll elementary school provided grief counselors for the students who
all knew the girls students created banners and cards and posted them all along the walls of the school and a
candlelight vigil was held on tuesday evening of that week afterward people delivered meals to
galen rose and her family and fundraisers and sales from a cookbook raised money for her to help try in some
way to rebuild her life deputy yoder who we have already talked about who was on the scene and tried
several times to get back in the house he was obviously devastated by the incident as was everyone
he when he learned that the girls had not been saved he was crushed he says you know i know these girls i
drove through flora all the time for work and i would see them he says quote those girls were always
outside on a nice day dancing around and the greatest thing is they would all stop smile and wave
as you pass by he had often spoken with galen who was a cashier at a gas station in town so he
knew her as well this is one of those situations it's a small town not a lot of people
and he shows up and he's responding trying to save people that he knows people that he has seen in his everyday
life well first responders get to know gas station attendance a lot because they stop in and get coffee
at all hours of the night and in a small town if you're a cashier anywhere you really
get to know a lot of people in the community these four girls were absolutely beautiful girls absolutely beautiful and
captain you know 20 years ago i worked at a gas station and i've always recommended here if you work at a gas
station offer free coffee to all the officers to first responders get those people in
your stores and take care of them on that monday captain this was like 3 30 in the morning on
that monday so now we have all this tragedy that happens in the middle of the night
and we have fire investigators who are going to have to begin the process of sifting through the debris rubble and
ash to try to determine the point of origin because we have four fatalities here we
have an investigation that has to happen exactly so we have assistant chief of the burlington fire department derrick
jackson that said it's just a fire that happened at night people were sleeping and didn't wake up in time right but it
was not really that simple as we know the indiana state police they were the official lead investigative agency on
the case the actual on-the-scene fire investigation would require experts the fire would be investigated by the
indiana state fire marshal's office which is part of the indiana department of homeland security and this would be
well a rather extensive and ongoing investigation in the first few days fire investigator dennis randle
would only say that the fire was categorized as undetermined pending review of the structure by an electrical
engineer most house fires and even business fires are electrical at the point of origin right and so i'm
assuming that that's what they were thinking they could be looking at here in this particular fire and it's also
older building that's correct throughout the years the electric codes change and part of the house possibly wasn't up
to code and so after a few days of investigation they were not really sure what caused
the fire they were still listing the official ruling as undetermined even at that time
they were able to determine that the fire had started in the kitchen possibly behind the refrigerator and there are
other reports out there that say that the fire started at the back of the house on the ground floor i want to be clear
about something here it's not been we're going to go through this along our timeline here
and even in these early stages of their investigation the first couple days in we're getting conflicting reports about
the origin of the fire where it started they've not officially released to this day
where that fire started so when you hear us reading off different points of where
the fire could have started right just know that nothing is absolutely official on those statements these are from
reports that have come out since the investigation has been going on well a lot of people think that it's possibly
it was started behind the oven as well you you hear that on several reports the sad fact is
they're renting this house this is a mother a single mother of four trying to put her kids in the best
situation that she can they're renting a house without smoke detectors yeah the the official
statements that i have or at least the reported statements that were coming out early on
was that no foul play was suspected that a canine officer on the scene had found
no presence of accelerants and further investigation had found that a smoke detector at the top of the
stairs on the second floor had no batteries in it and it was melted from the heat of the fire
and there is a portion of this statement here captain that says there were no working smoke
detectors in the part of the house where the family lived right by early december
the federal bureau of alcohol tobacco and firearms had officially joined the fire investigation it's not clear
whether their assistance was requested or if they decided to jump in to this investigation
the case went quiet shortly after that as the investigators did their thing and that is the end of any normalcy in
this tragic case from here on out it goes kind of haywire in my opinion a little wonky donkey two months after the
fire on january 28th there was big news so remember we've been told already by this point in our timeline that there
was no reason to suspect foul play right and that there were no detected accelerants by the canine
officers that the girls deaths were still listed as accidental at this point and so on but now
as of that january 28 2017 a press release from the state fire marshal's office stated that the fire
was the result of arson again we have fire investigator dennis randall he said in a statement released on that saturday
quote the november 21st 2016 flora indiana fire has been ruled incendiary at this time there are no suspects
investigators determined the fire to be incendiary after accelerants were found in several locations of the structure
end quote so as you can imagine captain this is huge news accelerants are found in several locations
based off of this statement yeah and this is several locations inside the house occupied by galen and the girls
so the fire is no accident or the result of faulty wiring or even electrical short
this we're now being told is a fire that was deliberately set [Music] four young sisters who all died on a
fire at their family home [Applause] still unclear how the fire started investigators were looking at the first
floor electrical system [Music] the girl's mother injured along with two police officers who tried to save the
sisters lives [Music] such an early age such a heavy loss i miss them [Music] she was a single mom working
very hard and like i said her babies were her angels i can't imagine what she's going through
[Music] [Music] all right we're back and we just want to take a quick minute to wish all of you
guys and your family a happy turkey day a happy and safe thanksgiving to everybody out there talk
hands in the air right cheers cheers now for anyone who's paying attention to our cases that we cover here in the
garage and the dates and locations that we have discussed so far you may realize something pretty
significant flora that little town abuts another small town in indiana that was rocked by a crime in which two girls
were murdered abby williams and libby german were murdered on the monin high bridge trail in delphi indiana on
february 13 2017. this was literally just three months after the flora fire so now we have six young girls
who have all died under suspicious circumstances in just a period of three months and about a
distance of eight miles away all in carroll county indiana again these budding counties
they share community they share community events but they also share family members so you have one county re
grieving and now you have another one grieving as well it's very tragic time for that region and then you have the
effect that this was going to take some of the resources away from the floor fire investigation that being the delphi
investigation so for one thing as we know newer cases always get the most attention from law enforcement but some
people have wondered whether this was a race related issue and if the four daughters that were
killed in the floor of fire were white some have said that the investigators would have continued their investigation
with more vigor yeah i don't know how much vigor it had but the investigation definitely continued so the four sisters
case got no televised press conferences no national news exposure no public outcries
that the culprit would be brought to justice in fact robert ives the carroll county
prosecutor at the time somebody who we've quoted here before when we've talked about the delphi case right says
he wasn't even notified that arson was suspected six months after the fire he told fox 59 labs tests have been done
lab results have come back but i haven't received anything like a final police report not one suspect had been brought
to his attention he said he goes on to say quote the floor of fire has had as much investigation put
on it as many people involved as much serious consideration as probably any other case i've ever been involved in
except for the delphi murder obviously it's going to be investigated by law enforcement but this investigation is
going to be trumped because it's going to be investigated by the firefighters as well
but i think one of the reasons why it didn't get as much coverage initially is because
the reports was this is an accident okay if it's an accident it's a tragic event
and we're going to talk about it and and now we're going to have these funerals the community is going to come together
and now let's start working to move past this if it came out the night of the fires or the next day that no we
believe this is a hundred percent arson then you're looking at a murder investigation right away and i think
that's one of the reasons it didn't get the coverage that it deserved yes this is a horrible horrible
situation nobody's denying that neither nobody should even be comparing which situations more tragic they're equally
tragic and i think you're spot on here captain a part of the reason why we have less
information or at least less news coverage and national outcry for justice here is the fact that you
just said it was originally ruled or thought to be either undetermined or accidental
and so that takes a little bit away from that sentiment from everybody to begin with but the other thing too
i don't know that it's really truly fair to kind of compare the investigations or
the efforts put forward on these two cases it doesn't feel to me like we're comparing apples to apples
it's a little more apples to oranges here because very few we've been doing this a very long time
i have seen very few cases that have received as much attention as the delphi murder cases yeah
so well look it it'd be like every child that is murdered saying it's not fair that jonbenet
ramsay's case got covered more than theirs that's a good example and then on top of that in the true crime podcast
community a lot of the creators we know are more likely to cover unsolved murder case than
uh unsolved arson case they're just not covered as much in the true crime world yes and i feel like with the delphi case
really the there's only a handful of cases that i think have received as much or more
publicity than the delphi case and i mean we're talking jonbenet the o.j simpson case
there's very few out there now what i do believe here in this case for the floor
fire case is i would have liked to seen more eyes and ear balls on this from the get go
because i do think that there's somebody out there that might know something but the investigation itself has been a
little weird and that's why i said earlier that that's going to be the last of the normalcy in this case in in this
investigation yeah because we what we have here is first off arson is very difficult to
determine and investigate right now the other problematic thing for the investigation itself is
most states and cities do not have a high clearance rate when it comes to arsons to clearing arson
cases meaning most of the time they don't make an arrest or get a conviction in the arson
case like you said it's a tough investigation because smoke destroys evidence fire destroys evidence
similar to a crime happening and the victim being placed into water that water is going to destroy so much
evidence and before we move on too far into the investigation captain i want to make sure that i point something out too
that really kind of ticked me off as i was going through my research and looking into
this horrible fire case here at some point when there was no news of a good suspect or
finger pointing to people outside of the home at some point some members of the public
started pointing their finger at galen rose the mother of the three girls and i found that incredibly
i think disgusting is the best word i understand that their suspicion and that when there has been no answers and
you cannot find the culprit of something so horrific as this that you want to find somebody to blame
that you want to point the finger and say i think that's why i think that's the person that did it and that's why we
don't have the answers i get that end of it but everything that i can see she does not
make a good suspect other than the fact that we know she was in the home that night i see a woman here that has been
destroyed absolutely destroyed you think that community was destroyed by this event
her life has been it's been hell i'm sure every day for her has been hell and now we're coming up on five years
since that horrible night well my issue is that she's a she's a victim in this tragic event
law enforcement know that firefighters and their investigators know that to me you have a duty to
investigate this hard and fast and if you can rule her out initially again you didn't say it was arson right away
so it gets less coverage with less coverage less people talking about it less likely you're going to have
somebody talking and and have somebody confessing to a friend or something of that nature
but also when you know that she was home rule her in or out very quickly and that's law enforcement you know
three days into their investigation if they know that she is not a suspect you come out
and you stand hard that she is not a suspect and if you do that then you stop the
rumor meals and you stop having people online speculate and throw blame on this lady that is already suffering so i said
that the investigation itself was a little weird and i think everybody will agree with me because what we have here
is remember the press release that we just went through where they are now changing the undetermined status to
arson and so essentially if it is arson these four girls were murdered now the problem with that statement with
that press release was we said indiana state police is the lead on this case they were unaware
that that press release was going to be issued this was not agreed upon by all of the
investigating agencies that hey we're ready to announce the public that we've made a determination of arson here in
this case and then in june of 2017 we have arson investigator dennis randall who abruptly resigned from his
position he was the one that released that press release saying that the fire was deemed arson after accelerants were
found in several locations in the house now he is on record saying time and time
again that this disagreement between the agencies had nothing to do with him resigning you
know some people work at a job for a very long time or have a career we all retire at some point but one thing that
we should note here is some of this disagreement came about because there was a senior fire
investigator from michigan working for an insurance company on the fire case he did not agree with randall's
assessment of the accelerants or how the investigation was being conducted so in february of that year he wrote a
critical email to the indiana department of homeland security director and the indiana state
fire marshal stating the following the january 28 2017 press release by the state fire marshal about the conclusions
of their investigation are not correct and completely based on speculation and not evidence
also the press release statement about accelerants being discovered in several locations is absolutely not based on any
evidence discovered at the scene during the investigation and the investigator dennis randle was not performing a
proper origin and cause investigation based on the current procedures of the nfpa
921 2016 edition this report filed and press release given by dennis randle is truly unfortunate and potentially a
grave injustice for the four little girls that perished in the fire well colonel what's your opinions on this
i think what we have here captain is a situation where we might have too many cooks in the kitchen
we have about seven agencies involved in this investigation and it seems to me like
communication wasn't great between these different agencies and i think at points in the
investigation some of their findings seem to be contradicting themselves along the way or
other agencies findings right so i think everything was set up with good intentions of working this thing
together in the beginning but again you have about seven agencies that are involved
in this investigation i kind of feel like it was going to go wrong at some point
given the number of people involved we have seen in many arson investigation where one expert states that this is
a hundred percent definitive that it's arson and then years later they come back and say no this is
clearly accidental this was faulty wiring it becomes very convoluted and very hard
to determine because we're not experts ourselves in this field no and we've seen that expert opinion change
throughout the years this is a science that they're still working on that they're still working to
perfect like everything else and so where we have cases that we've looked at that are
20 30 years old we look at them now in hindsight and go i don't know if they got it right based
off of the way that we see the science today right and we could break down each point of this investigation but it would
take us hours upon hours there's a lot of minutia but maybe colonel you can just break down the major points of this
well sadly captain in its simplest form what we are being told by the experts the ones leading this investigation
members of that seven agency team is at first it wasn't foul play undetermined next it was foul play accelerants were
found in multiple locations inside the home then uh hold up it might not be foul play we are still investigating
to going back to eventually it was in fact foul play it was arson but accelerants were only found in one spot
and one location and we're not being told exactly what that location was yeah when you have the community crying out
for hey if this is arson where are the suspects tell us who these guys are is there somebody that we should be
afraid of in our community but this investigation can't get on the same track on if it was an
accident or arson to begin with well in 2017 and in december they did a peer review which
i always like when these agencies do a peer review so the indiana state police requested that the indianapolis fire
department send in experts to investigate the evidence that was collected at the flora
fire and we have on record sergeant kim riley anyone familiar with the delphi case will know kim riley he says quote
it's a good practice to have fresh eyes review an investigation and since this case is believed to be arson
the indianapolis fire department was asked to conduct the peer review by the end of
january of 2018 the report from the indianapolis investigators was in they confirmed that
the fire was intentionally set however accelerants were found in only one location in the home not several
in the wake of this report the indiana state police announced that the criminal investigation would continue so as
things started to look promising when we have doug carter again people familiar with the delphi case no doug carter he's
the indiana state police spokesman he spoke with local news stations at this time and he said over time
people are starting to talk to us about that place about that home about that area and around the home what might have
been some of the activities in and around that residence in the days weeks and months leading up to the fire he
said police were not yet in a place where they could make an arrest but quote i believe that we will end
quote since that finding by seasoned arson investigators over three years have passed with no arrest
no publicly named suspects and really no new information so here we sit five years after the fire
and all we figured out by this point is that it was intentionally set it is an arson fire
there was four fatalities and accelerants were found in one location regarding this fire well we're
not getting a lot of information from investigators so maybe we can get some information from the lawsuits in this
case yes captain in may of 2018 galen rose's attorney filed a federal lawsuit claiming that her landlords this
is birch tree holdings were negligent because there were no working smoke detectors
in the part of the house occupied by her and her children they also made a product liability claim
against sears in whirlpool the documents filed claimed that an oven and range manufactured by whirlpool and sold by
sears was the cause of the fire because it was defective fire investigators had removed the range for testing
this part of the lawsuit however was dropped in 2020 this after extensive testing revealed that the
stove was not defective galen also alleges in her complaint that the house also had a back door that had no
functioning lock and some outlets in the kitchen that did not work repairs to the outlets
took place just a couple of weeks before the fire obviously arson mitigates the fault
on the part of the landlord but the reality is the non-working smoke detectors present a huge
huge problem for the landlords yeah i feel like they're still that's still neglect and again you have a situation
you have a single mother raising four children she's in a situation where again trying
to provide the best home environment for her kids this might just be what she can afford and then
sometimes you don't feel like you have a leg to stand on to go well the house doesn't have this and
the house doesn't have that and you need to make these changes because you're afraid well if they evict
you for whatever reason that you might not be able to find a better situation yeah and we have the mother and family
who have stated over and over again that they kind of feel like this case isn't being worked as hard as
it possibly could be that maybe it's been shoved under the rug since so much time has gone by we do
have the indiana state police that have pushed back on that idea a little bit they have
outwardly said you know we don't have any suspects in this case or we've not named a suspect in this case they've
said we have persons of interest we have people that we would like to talk to people that we'd like to track down and
speak with that we've not been able to do yet so a little pushback coming from indiana
state police and in fact we have some words from doug carter the spokesman that addresses
some of that he said too that he was frustrated by the stagnated investigation but he also said that the family has
failed to provide critical information to move forward the investigation saying quote i'm hurt that they think we
haven't done anything indiana state police investigators have taken trips to illinois kentucky
ohio and california in the hunt for clues carter hinted that the investigation had stalled because of a
lack of cooperation he said that while galen spoke with investigators after the fire she has avoided conversations with
investigators about who had access to her home carter said quote it's very important that we understand who's been
at the house who had been at the house what those dynamics were and people who did visit the home and right now we
don't know what those answers are we have to get access to the entire family period end
quote well again all first responders to this whether it's an accident or it was
on purpose the end result is for dead children that shouldn't be dead and those first responders are going to have
to live with that for the rest of their lives and to think that doesn't affect them or that these
the law enforcement doesn't want to solve this case it's just i i can't believe that that is the case
no i'm with you captain i don't think that that is the situation here i think that this arson investigation is a
difficult one i'm not going to sit here though and pretend that i don't think that they have
made some stumbles the investigators themselves along the way and there's been a little bit of controversy in
regards to the original fire investigator and the investigation as it were that dennis randle that we've talked
about his wife uh was stealing money at one point we're talking thousands and thousands of
dollars from attorneys right and she was eventually sent to do some jail time some prison time for
that theft so there was already kind of a budding of heads between the indiana state police carroll county
and the fire department because while some of this investigation is going on they're also deposing dennis
randall to talk to him about his wife's misdealings and to see if that he is in anyhow
involved or knowledgeable about what she was up to now in the end to be perfectly clear
they ruled that he had no knowledge of his wife stealing money so while she was out doing these wrong deeds he doesn't
seem to have any awareness of it right at least off of the based off of their findings but it's
not a good look from the outsider looking in that's going look it's been five years what happened here well you
can't deny that he was distracted correct because of this investigation into his
you know let's just say how it is his dirt bag wife and i don't want to call the delphi double homicide case a
distraction but it certainly doesn't help keep your focus on this horrible situation which has been deemed a crime
it's been deemed an arson right now as far as suspects go i think we can touch on that a little bit here because that's
one thing that's missing from a lot of the news reports i think it's fine right it's been five years indiana state
police i've had your guys's back for a long time when we've talked about delphi and many
other cases but sadly an indiana state is just like any other state there are many cases that are
unsolved but i cannot i'm not going to shy away from my frustration that i'm starting to have with indiana state
police and their poor record so far of clearing these very important cases well that's to say how it is we have six
victims and then thousands of victims that are connected they become victims because they're
connected to the murdered victims yes and those murdered children there's six murdered
children that you have no goddamn answers for come on they're they're batting a zero
right now and i feel like i'm still going to have their backs for a while i'm going to give you another
opportunity here indiana state police but the sad truth of it is in regard to these two cases it's not been a good
look and if you were on my baseball team we probably would have cut you a long time ago well if they don't get their
[ __ ] together i'm cutting their funding well i'll tell you that i'm not going to
send any more beer fund money their way since very few people were talking about
suspects let's try to talk about some suspects here and again this is going to be
speculation on our part as we are not on the inside of this investigation and they've not allowed really anybody on
the inside of this investigation so a man named mike virgin is one of the people who has been on the
inside of this investigation and been inside the house since the fire he runs his own fire investigation company he
was hired by the mother of the four girls and her attorney he has not worked with them for months
by this point but he has said on the record that he still thinks about the house and the
case often he said that he spent more than 15 years as a certified fire investigator with
the atf before starting his own company so this dude's legit right he knows what
he's doing he's been to more than one thousand fire scenes and investigated this one just weeks after it happened
there are still things that he does not want to share even while we're at the five year marker
here here's an exchange from an interview with him and a news team the reporter here is
stephanie zeppelin basically captain he's saying no relation to lead he is saying that
where he thought the fire started is where it started okay so his initial suspicions whatever his initial
suspicions were right when he got there and conducted his investigation his suspicions were confirmed zeppelin
goes on to push him and say and that is where and virgin says i can't really say
right now because if we get to a point in the investigation that they make an arrest
the only people that should know where the fire started is the person who said it and the investigators right he says
that he believes that the fire was an arson but that the goal was not to kill the
children he is also not sure whether everything possible is being done to solve the case
if it's not to kill the children then what was it for why was the fire started he does he's he's being vague on purpose
because he thinks that the answers to these questions would lead you to the person or or may
confirm once you have the correct suspect across from you at the interview table
right well because the delphi case has been covered considerably more than this case
there are people out there that have tried to connect the delphi murders to the floor of fire i think it's fair to
do so we're talking about time and proximity to the two cases are relatively close
and the victimology is very similar we're talking about young girls here in all the situations but to me captain i
look at this and i go in the delphi case those girls were absolutely targeted now how premeditated
that was is up for debate right but here at the floor fire case you could almost say that the house
was targeted and i say that because i did quite a bit of research on serial arsonist
and a lot of times they will start setting fires to structures that are not occupied right and then they will
graduate for a lack of better word to structures that may have occupants inside of them
some of them get so bad and so deranged at some point that they are purposely seeking out a structure
with occupants to set fire to one of the things i start questioning too is like like you said maybe the house
is the target and not the individuals in it because we have it's a it's a duplex
a lot of these older houses they were at one point in a single family home and then
converted into like a duplex or to shared living so again it could just be as simply as
well there's no lock on the back door so this you know droopy dookie dung bucket
found an entrance point into this uh residency if the fire was set inside and that's the interesting thing there to me
because if you have a ruling of arson right typically in these situations and again it doesn't have to be a serial
arsonist but that's the statistics that are available for us to review so that's
the route that i went here and what you have with a serial arsonist typically they are only setting fires to
structures from the inside when they are doing that to structures that they know to be unoccupied right
they're not going into a home or into a business and setting the fire from inside now
the ones that quote graduate to setting fires to structures that are occupied typically they're setting those fires to
those structures on the outside and often if it's a home it would be to the porch area either the front porch or
back porch maybe a garage so something that's attached to the home but not necessarily inside of the home
well again like you said you have to look at the victims surroundings the the the people that
they're involved with in their lives but it's again a shared residency so not just
one side's relatives and their connections but the other side's relatives and connections as well and
one thing that is certainly a possibility here that could leave the door open for
not only the house was itself was targeted but the occupants were somewhat targeted whether they were known by name
or or what have you is look there is a potential that this could be a hate-related crime that this
is some type of hate crime yes we have a small population of people but we only have
about .3 of them being african-american in flora right and this is no i want to be clear here this is no
direct disrespect to the people of flora because you can have an outsider come in and commit a hate
crime in your tiny town and then leave right but it's something that we should examine
you could target that house by saying well i know that african-american people live there
and so that is something that has been speculated on and unfortunately until we have somebody
standing in front of a judge we won't know what the motivating factor was here for the person that set the
fire i want to use the words of the investigators from what little words that they've released to us that i think
might provide some insight to who may have carried out this crime again everything that i'm seeing captain and i
think you might agree with me points to the words that they're saying make it sound like the fire started
inside the home that they believe that it was started inside the home yeah i agree and i think what backs that up is
they're looking at the the range and the stove they're also talking about we we heard
the rumors or early statements that the fire may have started in the kitchen we hear the mother complaining about
outlets not working in the kitchen area and i'm with you i feel like a serial arsonist does not feel likely here but i
did spend a decent amount of time looking into that because for some bizarre reason flora has a terrible
record with house fires and has a what i have to believe is a higher than normal
fatality rate due to house fires at least in the months in the years around this flora case so i went looking into
those because sadly once one thing that is not terribly uncommon when you have a serial arsonist
is that it is in fact a first responder in fact i'll give you a quote here ninety-four percent of serial arsonists
are male very few are caught sixteen percent approximately are caught but set maybe 30 or more fires before
being caught first responders set fires premeditated with intent to return to the fire in a professional capacity
that's beyond strange to me it's not likely but it's not terribly uncommon and like you said not a high success
rate in this town i mean you're having a lot of house fires again some of that is
going to be due to just older buildings and not buildings that are kept up i mean when i lived in richmond indiana
the thing that i was really shocked by you know where i come from in columbus when you're renting you're normally
renting apartment or apartment unit when i lived in richmond if you're renting you're probably more
likely to be renting a house a single family house or a single family house that they turned
into shared living and again not a great success rate anywhere in this country at
solving these arson fires but to give you some kind of background here on what we may be looking for as far as a
speculation into a physical description profile of of a likely offender if it was
somebody that was setting an arson fire that didn't have any ties to the family that wasn't inside the home or was not
invited into the home then what we're probably looking at here captain and these are just national
statistics 44 of the arsons that are cleared in this country are committed by white males under i'm sorry
44 of the arsons that are cleared in this country are committed by individuals that are under 18 years of
age and 64 are under the age of 25. males make up as we said earlier that high percentage number of offenders
and 75 percent of those arrested are white 23 percent are black so if you're going to put a number if
you're gonna play a numbers game here on the physical description of a likely offender again
if this is an arson not tied directly to the mother or anyone in the family were probably looking for a rather young
guy or somebody that was 25 or even let's even go 29 and under at the time of this fire
and given the makeup of the general area and the statistics that we see nationally
it's highly likely that it might be a white male that committed this crime where the
thing gets tricky is again back to those words makes it sound like they believe that the point of origin to be somewhere
inside the structure which then takes away from the probability of it being a serial
arsonist that makes you go back to what doug carter has said that they don't believe
that they've been given full access to the family or full access to the dynamics and what was going on in and
around that home leading up to the fire meaning let's say it didn't have a faulty lock
we would want to know things right like who had a key who had access to the home
who frequented the home what would they do while they were there these are all things that the indiana
state police would like to know especially if they believe that the fire started inside and
if they believe that it was through the use of accelerants they've probably identified the accelerant now you said
something off mike that is very important to remember people keep accelerants around their homes
they're part of our everyday life this is one of those cases right where we have very little information and
unfortunately it doesn't sound like they feel like they can come off of any of that information because
later a conviction might teeter on the idea of who knows what but also the public is really kind of
handcuffed here where we can't offer much help because we don't know one who they're
suspicious of what kind of accelerant we should be looking out for who was coming and going from that area
and if they're even right if the investigators are even correct that it might be somebody that is tied
to the family well again i want to go back to the possible connection with that delphi i just sent you a picture
through text message it was one of the it was just a news article talking about the floor of fires
it was talking about local businesses donating stuff to the family and you see a worker that looks like he
is coming down the steps and he was probably in charge of boarding up the windows at the time
and this picture kind of sparked a lot of online detectives armchair detectives going
like well look at this guy he kind of looks like bridge guy and kind of looks like he's wearing the
same jacket as bridge guy kind of has that dumpy pouch look in the front of the jacket like he almost has items
in his front pockets or something of the jacket and look i don't i don't know how much
weight there is to this but i i really think it's just simply it was a picture and an image this guy
caught this person's eye or caught these sleuthers eyes and then used this as a possible connection
between delphi and flora fires it feels to me like anybody with eyeballs somebody somebody that can see
has made these comments i feel like bridge guy a lot of people look like him obviously that's one problem that
indiana state police have had in that investigation so many side by sides so many people giving tips that are simply
this guy looks somewhat like him i don't even think that we have a great picture
of delphi of the bridge guy to begin with correct uh so i think that that's caused a lot of confusion and a lot of
problems i see two very different cases here um me too based off i just wanna i just
wanted to point out that like yeah when you see this picture and somebody goes oh well that's happened right by delphi
and doesn't that guy look a little bit like bridge guy somebody could go oh well i could see
somebody going down a rabbit hole and trying to figure out who this individual was and how are they connected uh not
just to the floor of fires but how are they connected to delphi but i think it's a
it's just a rabbit hole well speaking of rabbit holes one that i found myself in
in regards to the serial arsonist or first responder arsonist angle to it this is a very weird portion of the
story and i want to make sure that i cut everyone off at the pass here rather than them contacting me and saying did
you look at this josh dislinger the officer that was one of the good officers that was trying to
help trying to get victims out of this house who was sent to the hospital himself oddly
enough this is not the first time that he's responded to a house fire that has ended in fatality right
from the information i could find captain this is the third situation in about six seven years
where he's responding to a fire and running inside so i want to make sure that we are clear
here that we're not throwing him under the bus because this would be two very different people
that we're talking about one this guy's running into burning buildings trying to save people
that's a much different guy than our suspicions of a first responder serial arsonist right i want to be very clear
about that i also want to make sure that we point out here while the floor of fire that we're discussing today has
been deemed an arson the other two fires that i could find that he was one of the first responders
to in fact i believe he was the first responder to the other fires they were deemed
yeah one was electrical yeah one was an electrical fire and the other uh they know the cause of so we're not talking
about a situation here where he's report repeatedly showing up to arson fires yeah i could see somebody having a
suspicion that oh you start this fire and then you show up and then you save the individuals and
then you become a local hero because of it but again anybody that would do anything
like that is deranged in my opinion one thing i do want to point out and give kudos to a web sleuther for you know i
don't want to i don't want to get too heated at the whole webs luther community here i i like the webs luther
community and yes maybe they come up with some far-fetched ideas sometimes but the more that people are looking
into these cases the more that people are talking about them the more pressure we have on law
enforcement to actually solve these cases i personally i find that the internet has
a lot of far-fetched ideas in these cases as far as the actual web sleuthers go right i feel like they're a lot more
spot-on or more realistic and logical in their pursuit of justice in these cases
so i want to make sure that we point out here something very different from somebody just going oh this guy looks
like that guy um well i do want to point out that true crime garage it's been it's a proven fact
that true crime garage listeners are one the best webs luthers more knowledgeable
on on crime in general and the best looking and best smelling listeners of all true crime podcasts
and that's a fact that is a fact that's backed up by science science and edison research this
is something that's gone unreported or i don't know if that's the correct word here not reported however you want to
put it but one thing that i think that's interesting here is that three weeks before the fire a man named john tayden
filed for divorce from galen rose and again there are literally no reports in any of the media about this
or her even having a husband at all right the only reason we know about this is because a savvy web sleuther user
found the marriage dissolution petition so i'm not saying that there's any that this is any way connected to one another
but it is fact it is something that did happen so we know that john filed for divorce on
october 31st of 2016. and the court website listing the parties to the petition as john's
address was listed in texas so we don't know where he was in relation to flora indiana i mean he
very likely could have been at his home in texas and had been there for weeks and months and months
but that is something that we did uncover when looking into this case well again this case is very confusing you
want to know why law enforcement is saying that she's the mother of these four children what why
she's not being as cooperative as they think they sh that she should be and also could be a situation hey she's
going possibly through this divorce is she afraid to come forward and and to tell law enforcement to look into
different individuals we don't know that could she not trust the investigation itself is where i
think that we might stand here and i think that would make the most sense because look you're not coming out right
away saying whether it's arson or an accident she was very cooperative in the early
parts of this investigation well and maybe her lawyer is saying look because the law enforcement has
flip-flopped back and forth maybe they're going to flip back eventually and say oh you know what more findings
we don't think this is arson well part of it and will that affect a later lawsuit a civil lawsuit down the
line part of it too though galen lives in california now which last time i looked at a map is
nowhere near indiana and so where the investigation decided may have stalled and where we have
indiana state police on record saying we don't feel like the family's being overly cooperative with us at this point
in our investigation i i would like to know why are we to believe that who is at fault
because of that is it simply that she doesn't live in indiana anymore and we've not made a great deal of effort to
speak with her or is it simply the fact that she was a mother of four children that died in a
fire and some people don't recover from that well that's why she moved to california
she said you know early on the the the community and she has thanked the community time and time
again her and her family have thanked the community for their handling of this tragic situation and the way that they
treated her and her family afterwards and tried to lift them up in any way that they
possibly could but you know she said i couldn't live there anymore i i lived there with my four children i drove by
that house it's near downtown florida she's like i would pass that house and my my
life would be ruined over and over again yeah i'm waking up to the same nightmare
every day well i'm thinking about like her job like you said if she's a gas station attendant the amount of locals
she's seeing every day you know if i went into that gas station i'd want to give her a hug out i'd want to tell her
hey i'm sorry for your loss hearing that hundreds and hundreds of times a day as as heart
felt as it might be it just it's like a dagger every time and sadly what i'm worried about here captain as
more time passes we know how all these cases go be it arson or otherwise it just becomes less likely
that we will get justice for these four girls and that we will get some answers this
is such a tragic case take the time to go to our instagram or twitter or facebook we'll be posting
pictures of these four beautiful girls and other photos that are related to this case you
can find those again true crime garage wherever twitter facebook instagram indiana state police
are still investigating this sad and tragic case they are still looking for the person or persons responsible
they would like information leading to the arrest of those persons or the person
responsible for this fire remember four young girls were killed in their flora indiana
home on november 21st 2016. this was determined to be an arson fire there is a reward for information if you have any
information please please reach out to the indiana state police you can call them at 1-800-382-4628
[Music] thank you so much for listening thank you for letting us whisper in your ear
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Flora Fire ////// 538

Part 1 of 1

www.TrueCrimeGarage.com

The headlines were horrific. One read - “4 sisters perish in Flora fire.” On Monday, November 21, 2016 the tiny town of Flora, Indiana woke up to a terrible tragedy. At 3:30 AM a family of five woke up in a nightmare. Unfortunately only one member of the family made it out of the house that morning. Later it was determined that the fire was intentionally set and the reason that four beautiful little girls lost their lives was arson. Now it’s been five years and here in the Garage we are getting very frustrated with the handling of this case. The investigation involves multiple agencies, overseen by the Indiana State Police. An agency that we have always had a lot of faith in. But we have been told by the ISP that this investigation is a “full court press” to find justice for this family and the community. After five years that is simply hard to believe.

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Brief Summary

Four sisters died in a house fire ruled arson; investigation ongoing with no suspects identified.

Key points

Tragic Fire Claims Four Sisters. A devastating house fire in Flora, Indiana, took the lives of four young sisters.
Tragic Community Loss. Six young girls have died under suspicious circumstances in just three months in Indiana.
Investigation Controversy. The investigation into the Flora fire raises questions about coverage and attention compared to Delphi.
Legal Action. Galen Rose's attorney filed a lawsuit against her landlords for negligence regarding smoke detectors.
Frustration with Indiana State Police. The speaker expresses growing frustration with the Indiana State Police's handling of the case.
Connection to Delphi Murders. Speculation about a possible connection between the Delphi murders and the Flora fire case.

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3:10WatchNov 26, 2021

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