Forensic Files - Season 7, Episode 34 - Fire Proof - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] in 1992 there were more than 75 suspicious fires set in seattle washington during a
six-month period of time all appeared deliberately set it was the biggest arson case in
american history solved with behavioral profiling hypnosis and a piece of art [Music]
on the night of august 9 1992 firefighters outside seattle washington faced a disaster
three churches were engulfed in flames at the same time just a few miles from one another
when we arrived the fire was probably at its peak the flames were shooting above the
sanctuary which was a very large sanctuary you know i would guess you know it must have been
[Music] three stories high the next morning parishioners of trinity lutheran arrived
to find their church in ruins reverend rouse made an unusual decision he would conduct services anyway
the parking lot was turned into a makeshift church and in the midst of smoking embers
the congregation held their sunday service as i looked in the faces of many of my
parishioners you could see the the sorrow the disbelief many were crying tears of of sorrow my staff
were crying and holding each other they thought this can't be true arson dogs were brought in to look for
traces of flammable liquids but they found none and chemical tests of the rubble
couldn't find accelerants either there was really very little trace evidence for us to recover at the seeds
there was no vandalism at the fire scenes so the motive appeared to be thrill seeking
and all of the fire started the same way on the ground floor at chest level over the next several weeks there were
eight church fires six were lutheran churches eventually the arsons moved on to businesses and
homes in one night alone there were 12 different arson fires all of the fires were set at night
without the use of accelerants i watched people burned in the middle of the night out of
their homes losing all their possessions standing literally their night clothes with nothing but their life
left with their children sobbing we heard stories about people jumping out of windows or being lowered out of
windows a lot of stories about just devastating financial impacts one victim was inside her home when the
fire started i was just getting out of the tub when i started to hear strange crashing
noises outside my house like glass breaking i opened the bathroom and there was the
front door and i just the wall to the left was entirely in flames it was up in flames
she grabbed her roommate and ran frantically to the front of the house we opened the front door and the entire
front porch is up in flames so our access to get out was denied and that was absolutely terrifying that was when
you make a split second decisions am i going to live i've got to move the two made it out the back door and
were lucky to be alive from august to january barely a night would go by without another family getting burned
out of their home with each fire the arsonist was getting more daring he was becoming very emboldened
and he would actually set a fire uh literally looking through the window at the family at dinner
miraculously despite extensive damage no one had been killed no one until the arsonist made his next move
in the fall of 1992 residents of seattle and the surrounding area were under siege
a serial arsonist had set over 25 buyers targeting churches businesses and homes
all of the fires were set at night in the same way by someone igniting buildings at chest level without the use
of accelerants i called our arsonist a guerrilla fighter because he under generally cover
of night would go out prowl around be unseen hit his target and be gone basically
before his target becomes known to anybody as a fire he was very very quick he was extremely covert
residents formed vigilante groups to protect their neighborhoods local fire companies mounted all night
patrols but still the fires continued the arsonist appeared to be taunting fire investigators
he would draw out the fire department we would have one fire and one part of town and then he would
go a fire station would be nearby and he would set another fire on the other side
so he knew where the fire departments were a task force was formed to coordinate
the investigation they commissioned a psychological profile of their suspect by interviewing past arsonists and
identifying the traits they all have in common psychologists gain important information
about the type of individual who commits these crimes the profile described the arsonist as
white in his late teens to early twenties with an alcohol and or drug problem he was intelligent but an
underachiever who had probably just experienced some major trauma in his life he would probably be working as a
salesman or delivery person since he seemed familiar with many sections of the area
the arsonist left no clues but two months into the fire spree when he started fire number 28
he got careless [Music] investigators found two fingerprints near the window where the blaze was set
the prints were run through a computer and checked against hundreds of thousands of prints on file
there was no match which meant it was likely the arsonist had no prior criminal record
two weeks later at fire number 42 he made another mistake urine was found in the snow near the
fire forensic scientists carefully gathered the sample for dna testing but since the urine was mixed with snow
it was difficult to isolate any cells for analysis forensically we were told that there
were just so few uh cells in there that were capable of extraction that it was not feasible
months went by and the fires continued the task force was no closer to identifying a suspect
there was a concern that there were more occupied dwellings that were being targeted
and i mean a large concern that we were going to start seeing people dying unfortunately
just after midnight on september 22nd 1992 those fears were realized a fire broke out at a senior citizen
home that housed more than 400 people three women all residents of the home died
i felt personally responsible for their deaths whether it was true or not the guilt of that the misplaced skill of
that was so severe that shortly afterwards i really lost all will to live now police were searching not only for an
arsonist but a killer eventually the press coverage generated the first lead in the case
a woman called police to say that a well-dressed man bumped into her near one of the fires this individual stood
out to her fashion it was his clothing the mannerisms some odors that she detected both
alcohol and an aftershave or cologne she said the man was intoxicated and had mentioned the fires
she got a glimpse of his license plate number but didn't write it down the incident happened weeks earlier
and she had only a vague recollection of what the man looked like in their desperation
investigators made an unusual decision they decided to try forensic hypnosis [Music]
after 60 suspicious fires had been set in seattle washington investigators finally had a lead
a woman near one of the fires had seen a suspicious looking man who had bumped into her he was intoxicated and talked
about the fires but this had happened weeks before and she couldn't remember much about him
so investigators decided to try forensic hypnosis we're trying to find that specific
unique event uh in her memory that can kind of trigger the rest of the memories to flood out
so it's a relaxation technique we go back in time with her to this this point in time and have her really kind of like
watch a movie for us and tell her what she sees this was one of the first times in u.s
history that forensic hypnosis was used in a high-profile case and it was risky once a witness is hypnotized most state
laws prohibit an individual from testifying at a trial as the witness keyed in on the alcohol
she smelled on the man's breath it unlocked images from the night of the fire and she began to remember what she
saw she recalled a man tall thin with hair pushed back off his face well dressed
wearing an oxford shirt he appeared intoxicated and his car a sedan possibly blew
was unusually clean when asked if she could remember the license plate number she recalled the
first letter i see the letter okay she was asked if she could recall anything else she said she saw a four
and an m that was all she could remember she was very receptive a great candidate
actually i believe that she probably had a photographic memory after talking with
her after the interview she has the ability for some some recall that most people do not
have and i was probably unique of all the the interviews i've done there were 500 000 sedan cars in
northern washington that had license plates with the letter k so investigators believed that the
physical description of the suspect provided by their witness was the key piece of information
to put this on paper they brought in composite artist john hines he interviewed the witness who was once
again hypnotized she's the only witness i've ever done a composite drawing of who's
been under hypnosis and that was kind of an unusual circumstance [Music] heinz asked her to divide the man's face
into sections and try to recall specific details of his appearance composite artists categorize the human
face by features there are for instance nine different eye shapes five different head shapes
and so on each feature described by the witness is marked on a fact sheet an fbi facial identification catalog is
also used to jog the memory it contains thousands of pictures of facial features
all visual cues for the witness they're taking a visual image verbally telling me what that image is and i'm
having to take that verbal description and turn it back into a visual image and that's difficult
using the information from the interview heinz drew what the witness described the process is an unusual combination of
interviewing skill and drawing talent each feature was put on paper with painstaking attention to every
detail the witness remembered after two hours of meticulous work an image was formed
perhaps this was the first look at the arsonist when the drawing was finished pine showed it to the witness
she said that it looked just like the neatly dressed man she'd seen months into the fire spree the task
force released their composite drawing to the press they also released two others as a
control to help guard against false leads the psychological profile was also given
to the press it wasn't long before the hypnotically enhanced composite drawing paid off
the day that the composites appeared in the herald i just became physically ill [Music]
when the composite drawings and psychological profile of the arsonist were released to the media this man
george keller believed he knew the identity of the arsonist he immediately went home
and looked through his cell phone records and discovered that one of his business
phones was used on the dates of the fires from locations near the fires and his business credit card receipt
showed that one of his cards was used to purchase gasoline in areas near the fires on the same dates
george keller faced a gut-wrenching choice the person using these company credit cards
was his son paul who bore a striking resemblance to the hypnotically enhanced composite drawing
i said there is a considerable resemblance between these pictures and my son paul then i went through the
profile and because i was looking for a significant personality trait or something that
might disqualify paul but as i went through all the items of the profile it i couldn't eliminate any paul keller was
27 years old and employed in the family advertising business he was the oldest of three children in a
deeply religious lutheran family which possibly explained why lutheran churches were targeted
paul keller's sales routes took him all across the areas where the fires had been set
he was certainly emotionally rattled very upset but as time went on we also understood
for him or from him and from his wife that paul's presence in their family had been unsettling from almost the time
paul was born his father told police that paul had an obsession with fire he said his son had applied for a
firefighting job but had been rejected and that he had set a fire when he was nine years old
he fit other aspects of the profile he was intelligent but had done poorly in school had problems with alcohol and
most striking had suffered an emotional crisis just before the arson spree began
he at that time was going through a divorce he was filing for bankruptcy his life was
falling apart he was drinking heavily and the first three numbers of his license
plate were exactly what the hypnotized witness remembered the task force put paul keller under
surveillance for 10 days they followed him hoping they could catch him in the act
the task force people were trying to keep him paul under surveillance which was real challenging
and they would lose him periodically and everybody would panic eventually they decided to take him into custody hi
all right detective isaac's from the everett police department yes yes yes it [Music]
when keller arrived at task force headquarters his father was waiting for him george keller is a bear of a man and as
he embraced him he put his mouth very close to his ear hugged him tightly and said it's over son it's all over
i said it's all over and i said the light life as you knew it before this morning
is over at first paul keller said he was innocent am i going to jail today or am i going to be
released on my own since i've never got anything wrong 15 minutes into the interview
the task force agents complimented him saying he was the best arsonist they'd ever
seen [Music] and with that keller confessed to setting 75 fires including the fatal fire at the
retirement home paul keller's fingerprints matched the ones found on the window at one of the
arson fires his method of operation was surprisingly simple he just walked up to each site and
started the fire with the cigarette lighter did you commit the service yes just blocked the stairs there was
corrugated you can see where some of it's left yeah i'll do the same thing just that fast i pulled around and the door
was just wide open there i was in that state of mind and i lit a chair and she just went that was the only one that i
really ever stayed to watch of all it went real fast very fast it also went to multiple
alarms very fast very fast keller also said he was sexually molested by a volunteer fireman when he
was 12 years old paul keller was convicted of arson and murder and was sentenced to 99 years in
prison he won't be eligible for parole until he is 113 years old again a word to the victims all our life
we will be sorrowful for your pain and your loss we shall never forget to pray for your healing
restoration and peace may god in his help in his grace help all of us paul keller's arson spree
was the biggest in us history it's very hard to rationally explain why i did that because there's no rational
reason i was not angry at trinity i was not but i was very empty and perhaps i thought that others needed to be as
empty as i was but it was not a valid thing to do and investigators say he may not have been caught
if not for the forensic hypnosis and the composite drawing [Music] [Music] [Music]
[Music] you

A serial arsonist starts several fires that cause millions of dollars worth of damage and the deaths of three people. He is discovered, partly through the use of forensic hypnosis.

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 details the 1992 Seattle arson case and the capture of arsonist Paul Keller through forensic hypnosis.

Key points

The Biggest Arson Case. In 1992, Seattle faced the largest arson case in American history, with over 75 fires.
A Community in Ruins. After a devastating fire, a congregation held services amidst the ruins of their church.
A Killer Arsonist. The arsonist escalated his attacks, leading to tragic fatalities at a senior home.
Forensic Hypnosis Used. Investigators employed forensic hypnosis to unlock crucial memories from a witness.
The Shocking Confession. Paul Keller confessed to setting 75 fires, including one that resulted in fatalities.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This can't be true!

Reverend Rouse witnessing the aftermath of the church fire.

2:19WatchDec 10, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

More from Forensic Files

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.