Forensic Files - Season 10, Episode 4 - Up In Smoke - Full Episode | Forensic Files

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

When an elderly couple died in a suspicious house fire, their son became the prime suspect. Investigators turned to forensic science to determine if the fire had been set deliberately, or if it was an unfortunate accident.

Forensic Files is the longest-running true crime series in television history. Evidence and interviews with experts help solve real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world.

Brief Summary

The episode examines the wrongful accusation of Paul Camiolo for his parents' fatal fire, revealing flaws in the arson investigation.

Key points

The Fatal Fire. In September 1996, a fire claimed the lives of Ed and Rosalie Camiolo, leading to a complex investigation.
Suspicion Falls on Paul. Paul Camiolo, the couple's son, becomes a suspect after the fire reveals suspicious evidence.
The Evidence of Gasoline. Investigators discover gasoline on the living room floor, leading to murder charges against Paul.
Charges Dropped. After extensive investigation, all charges against Paul Camiolo were dropped, revealing the fire was accidental.
Recognition for Integrity. Steve Avato's courage in questioning the arson claim earned him recognition in the fire investigation community.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

How horrible it must have been for my uncle.

Reflecting on the tragedy of the fire.

2:40WatchJan 14, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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