By Mark Puente and John Caniglia
The Plain Dealer
CLEVELAND — The investigation into the deadliest crime in the city’s history has been completed since January, police said, but no charges have been filed.
The slow pace of the investigation into who set fire to a house on East 87th Street more than three years ago has outraged relatives of the nine people — eight of them children — who died in the blaze.
“We have been kept in the dark,” said Don Taylor, a Cleveland firefighter whose godson, Earnest Tate Jr., was killed in the fire. “I have always inquired.”
Arson cases are typically handled by the Cuyahoga County prosecutor’s office, but federal prosecutors took over the case in the spring, according to a memo written by Cleveland’s public safety director.
On Tuesday, a woman who survived the fire, Capritta Bell, said she had received a subpoena to testify before the federal grand jury.
Bell, who spent three weeks in a burn unit recovering after the fire, declined to comment further.
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason said his office still might file charges. The delay, he said, is because his office is continuing to investigate the crime.
Mason’s explanation contradicts that of Deputy Police Chief Ed Tomba, who has helped supervise a task force including Cleveland police arson detectives and agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The investigation was finished eight months ago and turned over to prosecutors, Tomba said.
Sources with detailed knowledge of the case say personal conflicts between investigators and Cuyahoga County prosecutors have gone on for years over investigative techniques.
In fact, sources said, federal agents and detectives have a suspect who is in a state prison for a drug conviction. That’s one reason why prosecutors have had time to look over the investigation closely.
Mason said he won’t comment on the investigation. But he stressed his office is committed to gaining a conviction for the nine people killed, and that’s why the investigation has taken more than three years.
“It has been a long time and I want to see justice too,” Mason said. “But before we take a case to the grand jury, we need to make sure we have the evidence to support it.”
Shortly before 3 a.m. on May 21, 2005, someone broke into Medeia Carter’s rented home and doused her living room with gasoline, lit a match and ran.
Despite the warning, Carter, 33, and the children, ages 7 to 15, died in upstairs’ bedrooms of smoke inhalation, according to authorities.
Mason said the fire haunts him.
Mason said no determination has been made on who would prosecute.
“It’s the largest mass murder in Cleveland in my lifetime,” Mason said.
William Edwards, the acting federal prosecutor in Cleveland, declined to comment.
Using a public records request, The Plain Dealer found a note Safety Director Martin Flask wrote to Mayor Frank Jackson about the fire. In the May 15 memo, Flask said county and federal prosecutors met in April.
“The investigation is now in the hands of the federal prosecutor,” Flask wrote.
He declined to comment Tuesday, other than to say that investigators are working hard.
But the pace has angered family members.
Rosalind Golden, whose 13-year-old grandson Miles Golden Cockfield died in the fire, sat on her front porch Tuesday and wondered why it took so long to reach the point where a grand jury is investigating.
“Those nine people were so mercilessly taken,” she said.
Copyright 2008, The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)