Investigators use a dog to search for clues about what started the blaze.
By Elbert Aull
Portland Press Herald (Maine)
Copyright 2007 Blethen Maine Newspapers, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
BRUNSWICK, Maine — Family and friends said Joseph E. Brillant could make a guitar roar until carpel-tunnel syndrome took the quickness out of the fingers that once furiously worked the strings.
Legend has it that the man locals called “Joe Hollywood” once jammed with Eddie Van Halen while a student at Musicians Institute in Hollywood, Calif.
Early Sunday, after a cab driver spotted flames and called authorities at 1:26 a.m., firefighters dragged Brillant out of his burning living room during a fire that claimed two of his life’s greatest loves: his music and his best friend, a German shepherd named Gretchen.
Brillant was pronounced dead at Mid-Coast Hospital a short time later.
Authorities spent much of Sunday trying to determine what caused the early-morning fire, which gutted Brillant’s home on Gurnet Road, about a half-mile from Cooks Corner on what is also known as Route 24.
Investigators said they didn’t know what caused the blaze. They searched for clues in and around the burned-out wood-frame home. They used a dog to search the house for evidence of flammable liquid.
A crew from the State Fire Marshal’s Office summoned state and local police for help, but a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety said it was too early to rule the fire suspicious.
“There were some questions they thought some additional investigators would be able to resolve,” Stephen McCausland said of the detectives’ involvement.
Brillant rented the home from his next-door neighbor, Rhea Pelkey, on and off for about three years.
While police looked for answers, family and friends gathered at Pelkey’s home and recalled Brillant’s love of music and his close relationship with his favorite pet.
“Music was his first love,” said Pelkey, 68.
Brillant grew up in the mid-coast area and moved to California to study music after high school.
Nephew Corey Clavette, 15, of West Bath, said Brillant returned from Hollywood after college with dreams of making it big with a hard-rock band.
He joined a local act in the 1980s, but the group fizzled and Brillant went to work as a clam digger, Clavette said.
He loved hard rock and wore his enthusiasm on his sleeve.
“He would go crazy playing the guitar,” said Pelkey’s grandson, Kyle Olson, 17, of Brunswick.
Olson, who lives with his grandmother, said he saw the flames at 231 Gurnett Road when he woke up early Sunday to get a drink. By the time he called 911, firefighters were already on the scene, he said.
Brillant died during what family and friends called a crossroads in his life. He was disappointed that his career in music never panned out and depressed that carpel-tunnel syndrome had infringed on his livelihood as a clam digger and on his guitar hobby. “His hands would go numb,” Olson said.
Pelkey and Clavette said Brillant was close to his 8-year-old dog. Pelkey said she’s convinced the dog tried to wake him.
“That was the only friend he had, Gretchen,” Clavette said.