Investigators rule out arson as probable cause of death
By Matthew Franck and Phillip O'Connor
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri)
Copyright 2006 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
All Rights Reserved 

ANDERSON, Mo. — Investigators have found nothing that indicates the deadly fire at a group home for the mentally ill and mentally retarded was deliberately set, law enforcement and fire officials said Tuesday.

"I do not foresee any arrests. I don't see anything that would lead us to believe this is an arson," Missouri Highway Patrol spokesman Jason Clark said.

The fire at the Anderson Guest House killed 10 people. Eleven people remained hospitalized Tuesday night, including four in critical condition.

Results of the investigation were to be announced this morning at a news conference, Clark said.

More than a dozen investigators could be seen Tuesday afternoon studying charred debris at the north end of the building, which was fully engulfed in flames when firefighters arrived shortly after 1 a.m. Monday.

Firefighters found people in the hallways and bedrooms, and many were disoriented by smoke, said Anderson Fire Chief Shelby Turner.

Six people were already dead when they were pulled from the fire. They died of smoke inhalation, the coroner said.

Firefighters were not able to recover four of the dead until the fire was brought under control, and autopsies were to be performed on them. Those four were found in the north end of the building, where a large living room was located, Turner said. The natural gas furnace was in a closet adjacent to the living room.

Turner said the furnace had been badly damaged. He would not speculate about whether it was the source of the fire. Anderson Mayor Bob Corcoran said the home was supposed to be making repairs to the furnace.

Several people with connections to the group home and its injured and dead came to view the ruins. Among them was John McLaughlin of Noel, Mo., whose daughter was burned extensively on her arms.

He said his daughter has yet to speak and remains on a ventilator. While he never had concerns about the group home's safety, now he wonders.

"I wish we would have investigated better," he said. "I didn't know it didn't have a sprinkler system."

The lack of sprinklers has led some state officials, including Gov. Matt Blunt, to contemplate new regulations for privately run group homes like the Anderson Guest House.

Corcoran, the mayor, said a resident told him he walked outside to smoke a cigarette early Monday, and when he opened the front door and stepped back inside, he felt a "swoosh" and a gust of air and fire shot up the wall.

Several residents told their guardian, Teresa Moore, that they awoke during the fire and escaped through windows. Among them was Francis "Frankie" Walker, 47.

"He said he heard an explosion, opened his door and saw flames down the hall," said Moore, who oversees his care as the Barton County public administrator. "The only way out was through his window. Frankie said he threw up the window, kicked out the screen and scrambled out."

Turner, the fire chief, said a mattress fire in a resident's room Saturday was not connected to the blaze Monday, nor were two nearby wildfires Friday night. The Fire Department did review the group home's fire evacuation plans after the Saturday fire and found no problems, he said.

Turner said the small blaze Saturday night was the first he can recall at the group home in the past 20 years.

Brandy Hertl, a former employee of the home, said it had plenty of fire extinguishers and routinely practiced fire drills. He and others said the hallways were marked with colored tape to point to escape routes.

The front and back doors of the home were unlocked, Turner said. Windows and doors in the residents' rooms were not equipped with locks. The windows could be used for escape, he said.

Turner said the municipal water supply was inadequate to fight this size fire. "We had enough equipment. We didn't have enough water to flow through it," he said.

License defended

Investigators questioned many of the 18 survivors Tuesday. Investigators also visited the headquarters of Joplin River of Life Inc., which owns the group home and several related facilities.

State regulators defended their licensing of the facility to Joplin River of Life, which was founded by a man later convicted of defrauding Medicare. Robert J. Dupont Jr., 62, spent six months in a federal prison for his part in a scheme with others in the 1990s to falsely bill Medicare for services never rendered, according to court records.

State law forbids the Department of Health and Senior Services to license a nursing home that has an "operator" or "any principles on the operation" convicted of a felony involving a health care facility.

Nanci Gonder, the agency's spokeswoman, said the agency will investigate Dupont's role in the nonprofit group. But she said he hadn't been listed on the nonprofit's licensing forms since 2002 and that the law doesn't prohibit anyone convicted of a felony from owning the land or from having a relative of the convicted person operating a facility.

A month after pleading guilty of the felony in 2002, Dupont, his wife, Laverne, and four others began Joplin River of Life Ministries to take over running the Anderson Guest House and several other facilities owned by Dupont, according to articles of incorporation.

Robert Dupont's name was later taken off the list of directors of the nonprofit group; his wife's name remained. By the time he was released from prison in September 2004, he was not listed on any of the annual reports the nonprofit filed with state or federal regulators.

But in a 2005 filing in a bankruptcy case, he said he had been the executive director of River of Life Ministries for 3 ½ years, being paid more than $55,000 a year in salary. That didn't count the $600 a month in profit earned from leasing land for the Anderson Guest House and other facilities to the nonprofit group. The bankruptcy was later dropped.

Also, hours after the fire, Robert Dupont signed a statement on behalf of the nonprofit group, using the words "we" and "us" to express sadness and assure that the displaced residents were being cared for. The statement did not list his role with the group, but residents of one of the ministries' four group homes around Joplin say Dupont was a regular presence at the group's offices. He was also inside the ministries' headquarters this week as state investigators questioned him, other employees and survivors of the deadly fire.

Robert Dupont could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Helping the living

As authorities continued their investigations Tuesday, teams of grief counselors toured hospitals in the region providing support to the survivors.

Paula Baker, head of the Ozark Center, which contracts with the state to provide mental health services in the region, said people suffering from chronic mental illness risk having their conditions worsen as they deal with the fire's aftermath.

"It's very scary when overnight your whole world is turned upside down," she said. "That's what happened to these people, and they also lost some of their closest friends."