By Bill Bryan
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Copyright 2007 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
ST. LOUIS — The temperature outside stood at 13 degrees. Inside her 2 1/2 story West End house - the place she called home for at least 50 years - Maggie Grafton had no central heat.
She owed $7,000 for gas, and service had been cut off months ago.
So the 77-year-old widow and her family were using six space heaters Wednesday morning to fight the chill. One sat on a bed, propped in place by a pillow.
What happened next is a sad reminder of the dangers of makeshift efforts to keep warm. At about 4 a.m., a fire that officials said started with one or more of the heaters trapped and killed the former beautician in her second-floor bedroom.
Three others in the brick dwelling, including her son, John Henderson, 59, escaped unhurt.
He heard a “popping” sound in the circuit breaker box and smelled smoke from his mother’s bedroom, according to police arson squad Detective Mike Wuellner. Henderson saw his mother standing there; the bed and nightstand were on fire.
“He told his mother to get out, but she said she didn’t know how, and he couldn’t get to her because of the heat and smoke,” Wuellner said.
Henderson ran to a neighbor’s home to summon help. Officials said the other two people to escape safely were young women, identified as a girlfriend of one of Grafton’s grandsons and that woman’s cousin.
Steve Henderson, a grandson who was staying across the street, tried to fight the flames with two buckets of water but was driven back.
Police said investigators could not be sure whether one of six space heaters had set the fire or if the electrical overload caused wiring to burn.
Detectives said John Henderson had been sleeping on the first floor because a space heater he used in his third-floor bedroom kept tripping off.
Investigators also found that a space heater on the second floor was connected by an extension cord to an outlet on the first floor. The fire department says space heaters should never be placed closer than three feet from combustibles or run on extension cords.
Grafton, of the 6000 block of Suburban Avenue, had a gas furnace, but service was cut off in November 2004 because of an unpaid bill of $2,100, said George Csolak, a spokesman for Laclede Gas.
Laclede determined that about $5,000 in gas had been diverted into the home illegally after that, and the company disabled the unauthorized hookup last August, Csolak added.
He said Grafton owed the combined amount.
John Henderson disputed Csolak’s account of the unpaid gas bill. Henderson told the Post-Dispatch he and his mother had tried to pay the bill but that Laclede wouldn’t take a check and insisted that Grafton come to the downtown office.
Csolak said Laclede had been in contact with Grafton or a family member on several occasions, as recently as Dec. 4, but they didn’t follow through.
Neighbors said Grafton’s husband, Al, died about 15 years ago.
“When the weather was nice, she liked to barbecue a lot outdoors, play cards and we’d sit and talk,” said Laura Jones, 54, who lives next door.
“It’s really hurt me,” added Jones’ mother, Lillie Hopkins, 70, who also lives next door. “When she was younger, before her health started failing, she liked to fish.”
Grafton suffered from effects of arthritis, Hopkins said.
Hopkins noted that she turned off her own gas furnace because of high bills two years ago. “I use gas for cooking and heating my water. I’ve got a space heater that I’m careful with, and I use an electric blanket,” she explained.
Capt. Steve Simpson of the fire department said he assumes there are many people in St. Louis who depend upon space heaters, and he said the incident underscores the need to use extreme care with them.