Matt Campbell
The Kansas City Star
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The woman charged with arson, murder, assault and causing a catastrophe in a blaze that killed two Kansas City firefighters admitted her guilt almost immediately after being arrested, according to testimony Wednesday.
Thu Hong Nguyen said to a fellow detainee in the Jackson County jail that she set a fire that killed people using flammable liquids in her salon, according to testimony from Ryan Zornes, a senior special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who headed the 138-member investigative team.
Zornes said Nguyen told Misty Levron that she didn’t expect things to go wrong and that she had set fires before but was never investigated.
Zornes said jail phone records confirm that Levron told her husband she had important information before it was public knowledge that Nguyen had been arrested for the three-alarm fire that resulted in the deaths of firefighters John Mesh and Larry Leggio. They were killed when a brick wall collapsed onto them during the Oct. 12, 2015, blaze that destroyed a three-story commercial and residential building in the 2600 block of Independence Boulevard.
An ATF national response team swooped onto the scene within 24 hours of the fire and spent 10 days combing through debris, collecting witness accounts and applying fire analysis techniques.
Key among the evidence were the reports of firefighters who reported flames and intense heat from both sides and from above the storeroom of the nail salon on the first floor that was co-owned by Nguyen.
Once investigators had pinpointed the point of origin of the fire — the northeast corner of a storeroom at the back of the salon — they turned to determining the cause. The only heat source in the storeroom was a ceiling light fixture, which was eliminated as a cause.
That left at least eight gallons of flammable acetone and rubbing alcohol that were stored in the room. And those substances are not known to spontaneously combust.
“We determined that this fire was intentionally set,” Zornes testified, “and we classified it as incendiary.”
The trial is continuing Wednesday.
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©2018 The Kansas City Star (Kansas City, Mo.)