By Troy Graham
The Philadelphia Inquirer
BELTSVILLE, Md. — The bedroom where Stephen Edwards and Michelle Henry were fatally burned in 2007 had been reconstructed to the same dimensions and filled with the same kinds of carpet and furniture, arranged in the same pattern.
Now the research team was ready to set fire to the chamber in hopes of learning more about the arson, set by the Glassboro couple’s son, Jason Henry.
The 16-year-old told police that he had burned the house for the insurance money. Detectives thought he had meant to kill his parents.
Re-creating the fire could help decide whether the high school honor student was telling the truth.
Brian Grove, section chief at the Fire Research Laboratory in this Washington suburb, ran through his checklist.
“Suppression Team One.” Check.
“Suppression Team Two.” Check.
“Safety’s a go. Stand by. Let me know when you’re ready to pour. OK, start pouring.”
A technician dumped gasoline throughout the room, then set a torch to it. The line of fire led straight to the bed, and, instantly, black smoke billowed from the doorway.
The ceiling temperature, recorded by strings of sensors, soared. Grove called out the degrees: 250 . . . 300 . . . 400.
Within 30 seconds, the place was engulfed in flames. The room soon reached 600 degrees, and the fire broke through the ceiling.
“Suppression! Suppression!”
Firefighters rushed in, and Grove pointed to a monitor that tracked the heat spikes.
“Ten seconds in, we already have a very dangerous situation,” he said.
This test burn and five others related to the Jason Henry case were conducted last summer at the laboratory, a first-of-its-kind proving ground run by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
Gloucester County prosecutors requested that the ATF re-create the fire as they built an arson and murder case against Henry.
The ATF allowed The Inquirer to attend some of the test burns, under the condition that articles not be published until Henry’s case concluded.
Henry, now 18, pleaded guilty this year to two counts of aggravated manslaughter and was sentenced Friday to 20 years in prison.
“This was an unusual case,” Gloucester County Prosecutor Sean Dalton said. “Typically you don’t see a 16-year-old try to cause such serious and fatal injuries to family members.”
According to arson investigators, Henry poured gasoline around his sleeping parents’ bed, under the windows, and out the bedroom door, virtually ensuring they would be trapped.
“It seemed like . . . his intentions were clear as far as killing his parents,” Dalton said.
Shortly after the blaze, Henry was questioned with his grandmother present. He first denied setting the fire, then later confessed.
The teenager told detectives that he had burned the house down because his family needed the insurance money, and that he had assumed his parents would escape.
Michelle Henry had battled leukemia for years, and recently decided to give up her fight, family friends said. Edwards was out of work, and money was tight.
Jason Henry said he had gone back inside the house three times to help his mother. She died a week later. Edwards, who ran to a neighbor’s, died the day after the fire.
Almost immediately, family, friends, classmates, and Henry’s old Boy Scouts troop leader came to the youth’s defense, describing him as a loving son and detailing the stress the family had been under.
Dalton said he had asked ATF to enter the investigation partly because of those circumstances.
“We wanted to make absolutely certain . . . that we covered all our bases,” he said.
The six tests were conducted using various amounts of gasoline, based on “educated guesses” from the initial investigation. Detectives had found two empty gas cans at the scene.
To re-create the room, ATF agents went to Henry’s home, took samples of carpet and wall paint, and shot video of the floor plan.
They re-created the bedroom in one of the lab’s indoor burn rooms. Sensors — hung on floor-to-ceiling “trees” spaced a foot apart — measured the temperature and gases. Three trees were hung in the bedroom, one in the doorway and two in the hallway alcove.
The idea was not to confirm or refute the prosecutors’ theories about the arson. It was to study conditions that existed during the fire that killed Edwards and Michelle Henry.
“We want to get a better understanding of what happened in the first couple of minutes,” Grove said. “We’re taking a snapshot of what they would have passed through.”
The eventual report challenged Henry’s contention that he had gone back to help his invalid mother. “The juvenile should have some evidence of thermal injury to his skin had he been in the area of the alcove,” the report said.
Henry had only a small burn to his hand, which he said had come from grabbing a hot wrought-iron chair. Prosecutors say they believe he suffered that burn when he lit the accelerant.
The prosecution and the defense disagree on the role the ATF’s findings had on the case.
Prosecutors say they believe the agency’s report would have been central in a trial.
“It definitely changed the tone of the negotiations” for a plea, said Assistant Prosecutor Dana Anton, who handled the case. “It’s empirical data to present to the defense attorney. Really, his story wasn’t feasible.”
Henry’s public defender, Jeffrey Wintner, said the report had “played no role” in plea negotiations. He labeled the test burns nothing but “bells and whistles” meant to impress a jury.
“They set a fire in a crude model and said how hot it was,” he said. “It was hot in the house. We already knew that.”
Wintner said he had sought a plea because his client risked a longer sentence if convicted by a jury.
He would not say how he would have responded to the claim that Henry could not have reentered the house.
Henry did not speak at his sentencing Friday, though family and friends maintained their support.
Investigators might never know what motivated Henry to start the fire, Dalton admitted. But he credited the ATF with “poking some serious holes” in the teenager’s story.
Dalton said the test burns had shown how Henry created a “firewall” that separated his parents from a safe exit. Video of the tests showed how quickly the fire would have spread and how little chance Edwards and Michelle Henry had.
“Obviously, no one can appreciate the intensity of heat created by that fire,” he said. “Oh, my gosh, I can’t imagine what it would have been like.”
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