The Time Capsule: Solving a case, with help from Holmes
IPTV ran a recent special on Sherlock Holmes, calling him a man who changed the world. Credited with being the first detective, fictional or otherwise, who focused on forensic evidence, Holmes was said to have opened avenues of investigative science that revolutionized law enforcement.
The program featured several criminalists who said they’d been inspired by Holmes. They brought to mind a murder that took place in southwest Iowa 30 years ago. Sherlock was there and, as always, came through splendidly.
The call came from a county dispatcher during the early morning hours of a Sunday in the summer of 1984. A woman had died in a house fire in rural Pottawatomie County. The scene was wrapped up, the cause a television, the death a routine case of smoke inhalation. The county medical examiner, ruling the incident to have been an unfortunate accident, had the body taken to a funeral home. No autopsy or toxicology was deemed necessary. Would I—at the time an agent with the state’s arson and explosives bureau—care to come over and confirm their findings?
I arrived about daylight. A deputy, left on the scene for security, showed me around the elegant, ranch-style house. He explained that the victim, a woman in her mid-50s named Maria, lived there with two teen-age daughters. Her husband had abandoned the family a couple of years earlier, absconding with a savings account and an attractive young lady. Maria suffered a stroke and had limited mobility, walking with the aid of a quadra-cane. The daughters had dates on Saturday evening. Maria apparently was waiting up for them. The fire, it was theorized, had filled the living room with smoke, she tried to escape, fell, and died.
In the living room the ceiling and several inches of cellulose insulation had fallen, covering the floor with a thick layer of debris. The location of Maria’s body was apparent, as when moved it left a ‘protected area’ of floor that was relatively clean. In front of the chair where she’d been sitting was a coffee table; behind it a reading lamp. In cleaning the table I found several objects, including a book. The book was resting, open, with the pages down and the hard cover up. I brushed it off and felt a peculiar chill. A similar copy of “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” was home on my nightstand. I turned the charred book over. Someone had been reading “The Red-Headed League,” a story I’d finished only days earlier.
The feeling was an eerie one, as if Holmes was looking on. What, I wondered, would he think? He quickly shared his insight. “There are only three people living here,” Holmes pointed out. “Girls of 14 and 15 do not read Watson’s stories, therefore the victim was. ‘The Red- Headed League’ is near the center of the book, so she had read several prior adventures. We deduce, then, that she was a regular. No regular, my dear fellow, would read one of these tales with a distracting television. Hence the television was not on, and did not start the fire.”
We moved on, cleaning the floor around the outline of Maria. I caught a whiff of what might have been gasoline. More debris was removed, uncovering a blue plastic cap; the type used on milk jugs. A one-gallon milk container, without a cap, was on the garage floor. Inside there remained a few drops of gasoline.
Who had reported the fire? A teen-age neighbor boy. This warranted more digging and, to condense several days into a few words, the boy wanted to date a daughter. Maria said no. He’d fumed, watched as the girl and her boyfriend departed, then went to the house. As he entered the unlocked home Maria put the book down. An argument followed. The boy went to the garage, picked up the container of gasoline. Maria fell or was pushed, he doused her and tossed a match. He eventually confessed and when I last saw him, he was on his way to prison.
The charred book has a special place, and seeing it reminds me that Holmes hasn’t lost the edge.
Roy Marshall is a local historian and columnist for the Red Oak Express. He can be contacted at news@redoakexpress.com.