fashion nova army dress

fashion nova army dress

   07.16       Fashion 2017

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[music playing] narrator: washington, dc isa city steeped in history. little known is thatit's home to one of the largest arsonsprees in us history. in setting hundredsof fires, the arsonist left clues to his identity. and in the ashesscientists found them. [theme music] [sirens]

narrator: justbefore dawn, there was a house fire in a middleclass suburb of washington, dc. firefighters put it outbefore anyone was hurt. but it was clear, itwas deliberately set. phillip proctor:there was someone in the home at the time. he had to have know it. and he didn't seem to care. narrator: the fire originatedon the front porch where

investigators found remnantsof a melted plastic gallon container and a cloth wick. raymond kuk: there wassome fabric material that was present, whichturned out to be consistent withan athletic sock. narrator: this was the secondfire in the city in less than a week. both had been set the sameway, with an accelerant inside a plasticone-gallon container.

a gas chromatographytest of the debris identified theaccelerant as gasoline. scott fulkerson: they were beingset in the early morning hours between hours of2:00 am and 6:00 am. they were occurring atsingle family residences. and the origin of the firewas being found either on the front porch or therear porch of these homes. narrator: the clothwick gave the arsonist plenty of time to get away.

scott fulkerson: none of ushad seen that type of device before. we were so used to havingmolotov cocktails where they were lighting them and throwingthem against the structure. this was one thatwas actually being placed against a structure. and basically you'relighting it and walking away. narrator: investigators fromthe bureau of alcohol, tobacco, and firearms, or a atf, foundanother interesting item

in the debris. remnants of plasticshopping bags revealed how the arsonistcarried the containers of gasoline andavoided detection. scott fulkerson: and when you'redealing with one individual who has showed a pattern of usinga device, which we had not seen on the streetsvery frequently. we knew that it was goingto be a very difficult case. narrator: investigatorsurged citizens

to be on the lookoutfor individuals carrying plastic shoppingbags in the middle of the night between2:00 and 6:00 am. david statter: the publicneeds to know this. they need to know theyhave a serial arsonist in their neighborhood. just like you needto know there's a rapist workingyour neighborhood. narrator: but it didn't help.

over the next two weeks,there were four more fires, all within a few milesof one another, all set with gasolineinside a plastic gallon container placed on a porch. investigators asked thesurrounding fire departments to compile a list ofall suspicious fires over the past year that startedon the front porch of a home between 2:00 and 6o'clock in the morning. the results were astonishing.

they were 20additional fires, all set when people wereinside the homes. david statter:this has been going on for a year or two years. and we want to know,now, what's going on. we want the answers. narrator: tragically, one ofthose fires claimed a life. 86-year-old lou edna jones wasunable to get out of her home and died of smoke inhalation.

she had five children,15 grandchildren, and 20 great-grandchildren. all were traumatized by thissenseless act of violence. darlene lloyd: i havebeen so heartbroken. i will never be the same again. since that-- and i mean,the way she left here. a senseless death, becausesomeone wanted their kicks to sit back and watch a fire. how cold-hearted could you be?

scott fulkerson: this isa first-degree murder. we knew that, not only had hekilled one person that we knew of in the past, was itgoing to happen again? narrator: the atf and thelocal fire investigators formed a task forceto find the arsonist setting thewashington, dc fires. there were 20 fires set withplastic gallon containers full of gasoline andcloth socks used as wicks. to gain some insight intothe identity of the arsonist,

investigators calledin ron tunkel, an a atf criminal profiler. ronald f. tunkel: well, how aperson acts in the commission of their crimes is areflection of how they will act in their day-to-daynoncriminal lives. when we look at acrime scene, we're looking for the moreemotional clues left behind. narrator: in thiscase, the fires were set in predominantlyblack neighborhoods.

for tunkel this was acrucial piece of information. ronald f. tunkel: we're probablydealing with a black offender. a white offender oran asian offender probably would have stood out. narrator: tunkel believedthe arsonist was very skilled and organized, most likelya male in his late 20's to early 40's, and was probablyunmarried since the fires were set between 2:00 and 6o'clock in the morning. narrator: investigators wereconvinced that the arsonist

followed hisexploits on the news and knew in that in one ofhis fires he'd killed someone. david statter:setting so many fires, terrorizing so manypeople, he's right up there with some of thegreat criminal minds, or terrible criminalminds, that we've dealt with in thewashington area. scott fulkerson: if we didn'ttake him off the street, he wasn't going to stop.[siren]

narrator: and that'swhat happened. a few months later,there was a fire in a nearby apartment building. over 100 residentswere evacuated safely. the fire startedon the fourth floor using the incendiary device. scott fulkerson: there weremultiple one-gallon containers of gasoline placed outthroughout the hallway. narrator: but thistime, investigators

got a badly needed break. one of the residents,57-year-old paul dubois, had some suspiciousburns on his hands. and his clothessmelled of gasoline. his apartment was on the fourthfloor where the fire started. dubois had a ph.d. fromcornell university, was $8,000 behindin his rent, and was about to be evictedwhen the fire broke out. david statter: somepeople got very excited.

oh my. this was going to do theserial arsonist when they arrested him-- thatthat was the guy. but that didn'tring right to me. narrator: that'sbecause the other fires were set to singledwelling homes. james trusty: whatwas striking was that it was in his ownapartment building. and we began to think thatwas a little bit inconsistent

with everything else that hadhappened up until that day. narrator: and the incendiarydevice in dubois' apartment building was differentfrom the others. it didn't have a wick. was it possible thatdubois was a copycat and learned how to make thedevice from media reports? scott hoglander: at onepoint, the media actually put the device on tv, what theythought was being used. and that wasparticularly hard for us

to deal with as a task force,because now potentially anybody can go out there, recreate this,and we would not know if we're dealing with thearsonist or a copycat. narrator: but whiledubois was in custody, [sirens]the fires continued. investigators concludedthat dubois set the fire in his apartmentbuilding, but that was it. scott fulkerson: mr. paul duboiswas not the serial arsonist, however, responsiblefor setting the fire

in his apartment complex. he was not the arsonistwe were looking for. james trusty: well, we learneda lot about his background and his life, whichwas certainly colorful. but it was prettyclear, within weeks i would say, that this was notgoing to be the person that was responsible for these fires. narrator: however,dubois was convicted of setting his apartmentbuilding on fire

and was sentenced to12 years in prison. over the next two months,there was a fire in every week. by this time, therewere over 30 of them. then investigatorsfound something. a piece of the cloth wicksurvived one of the fires. was it possiblethat the arsonist may have left his dnaon the burnt cloth? if so, scientists hopedthey could find it. in most of the fires set bythe washington, dc arsonist,

the incendiary devicewent up in flames. but in one case, a piece of thewick, which was a cloth sock survived. on a hunch, scientists swabbedthe cloth with sterile water, put the swab in a vial, andadded a digest buffer that eliminates everythingexcept humans cells. miraculously, the sockcontained skin cells. and they provided a dna profilepresumably of the arsonist. kary tontarski: to havesuch good dna results

for an arson case ispretty remarkable. when you think about the qualityof the evidence in terms of how burned, or how much heat itmay have been subjected to, it's excellent to beable to obtain results. narrator: why wereskin cells on the sock? the arsonist hadn'tlaundered it. unfortunately, thedna profile did not match any in the databaseof known criminal offenders. but investigators gotanother huge break.

three young men, coming homefrom work around 2:00 am, saw someone sittingon their porch. initially, they thought he wasa burglar and chased him away. -hey, you!what the hell you doing? -waiting for carlos? -carlos?carlos who? -i must have the wrong place.-yeah, you must. -what's happening?-he said he had the wrong place. narrator: afterwards,they found a shopping bag

with a plastic containerfilled with gasoline and a sock tiedaround the handle. scott fulkerson:this is our chance. we finally have aneyewitness, not only one, but we have three. three witnesses that hada conversation with what, in our minds, wasthe serial arsonist. narrator: analystswent over every inch of the bag and theplastic container

and got yet another break. they didn't find fingerprints. but sticking to theoutside of the container was a single human hair. raymond kuk: so at thatpoint, we had a hair. we didn't know wherethe hair came from. narrator: the hair wasconsistent with an african american. and it contained the root.

dna testing of thehair root matched the dna from the burned wick. the three mendescribed the suspect as a middle-aged blackmale with short hair, approximately six feet tall. police released thiscomposite sketch to the media. but the arsons continued. james trusty: we realizeas that process wore on, it was much more likelythat this case was going

to be solved forensicallythan through any sort of eyewitness testimony. narrator: then the arsonistchanged his pattern. instead of using whiteplastic shopping bags to carry the incendiary devices,he switched to black ones. these were uncommon. scott fulkerson: the bottom ofthe black back, read in part, made in china for the corneliusshop, that portion of the bag survived the fire.

narrator: the atf spoke withthe manufacturer in china and learned that only two storesin the washington, dc area bought these blackshopping bags. both stories were in the generalvicinity of the arson fires. and the owners agreed tohelp with the investigation. scott fulkerson: the storeowner provided us access to his store, to his products. we established24-hour surveillance, physical and video surveillance,on both of these locations.

narrator: and investigatorscame up with a way to individualize everybag the stores used. scott fulkerson: thetask force purchased a series of alphanumericsteel chips. these steel chips hadthermal testing done on them and would survivefuture fire scenes. narrator: they fasteneda different numbered chip on to the bottom of each bag. if investigators found oneof these chips at a fire,

the number wouldidentify the date, time, and location of the store. and security cameras wouldshow every individual buying plastic gallon containersin that time frame. as the black bags wereput into circulation, investigators discoveredsomething else. an arson dog detected gasolineon a pair of military dress pants discarded across thestreet from one of the fires. they were the typeworn by the marines.

scientists swabbed thewaistband and discovered human skin cells. the dna profile ofthese skin cells matched the hair found on theincendiary device and the skin cells from the burned wick. scott fulkerson:the arsonist either is a current member of themarine corps, a former member of the marine corps, orhas a close association with the marine corps.

so what do we do? we go to the marine corps. narrator: fire investigatorscontacted the naval criminal investigation service aboutthe pair of marine pants found across the streetfrom one of the arson fires. james trusty: when we wentdown to the naval yard to meet with thencis investigators, i think we had fairlythin hopes that they were actually going tobring us a suspect.

narrator: but that opinionwas a bit premature. naval investigatorssaid they too were searching for a serialarsonist who had been setting fires to cars in a parking lotused by military personnel. a surveillancevideotape showed a man leaving the scene in his car. from the license plate, hewas identified as 55-year-old thomas sweatt, a civilian whohad a friend in the marines. sweatt was unmarriedand worked as the night

manager of a fastfood restaurant. david statter: never heardthomas sweatt's name. when i found outwho he was, i'd been in his restaurant, inthat fast food restaurant, in northeastwashington many times. i was there on the openingday of baseball in washington. he probably servedme or was there. but i didn't know it. narrator: sweatt was nevercharged in the military fires

because there was insufficientevidence against him. james trusty: there was notreally enough information, at this point of theinvestigation of mr. sweatt, to get a search warrant,to get court permission, to get his dna. narrator: so thearson task force put sweatt under24-hour surveillance. in doing so, they discoveredsweatt lived near the food store that used theblack shopping bags.

phillip proctor: it's kindof like christmas morning. you're like, oh my goodness,i can't believe this. we might be finished with this. narrator: when sweatt wasbrought in for questioning, he denied anyinvolvement and willingly provided a dnasample for testing. james trusty: frankly,if he had not consented, that might have been a red flagwhere we would have focused even more heavily on mr. sweatt.

but he did consent. and that gave us the opportunityto do a fairly speedy analysis to see if he was,in fact, excluded or included as theserial arsonist. narrator: his dna matchedthe hair, the military pants, and the most incriminatingof all, the skin cells on the burnt wick. scott fulkerson: mr. sweattdidn't realize that dna could be recovered from a firethat he had previously set.

-you got to remember,he's operating for a very long periodof time, on the run, offending, eludingthis massive manhunt. he may have been worn out. and that may have contributed. narrator: when he learned ofthe dna evidence against him, thomas sweatt confessed tonot only the recent fires, but some dating back 25 years. scott fulkerson: it wasa very emotional time.

it was a veryemotional interview. during that time, mr.sweatt has provided us with over 350 fires inwhich he is responsible. the fact that mr. sweathad been undetected, had been untouched fora period of 25 years, he is a prolificserial arsonist. james trusty: thiscould potentially be the largest serialarsonist in the history of the united states.

narrator: two people diedin those fires and dozens more were injured. james trusty: it wasa pretty astounding moment for all of us. you always hope that thecase is going to be solved. but when it actuallyhappens, there is a kind of momentof stunned silence. narrator: investigators thinksweatt had second thoughts about setting some of thesefires, which explains why

the young men saw himsitting on the porch. we'll never know what'ssweatt told investigators about the motive for the fires. he asked for, and received,a promise of confidentiality in exchange for his guilty plea. about the only thingthat came out in court was that sweatt said,he heard voices, and that he set firesto relieve stress. darlene lloyd: if thedemons in your head

told you to set a fire, if youwere so stressed out that you had to set a fire,why didn't you set your own mother'shouse on fire? so see that's where you can'tsay this man was insane. he had very good sense. he had sense enoughnot to get caught. narrator: thomassweatt was sentenced to two consecutive life termswithout parole plus another 135 years in prison, all because ofthat rarest of forensic clues,

dna, that survivedthe heat of a fire. phillip proctor: just becauseof the nature of an arson scene, the nature of the fire, tofind basically any evidence, is remarkable. to find some dna evidence,that is usable dna evidence and being able to havethat evidence analyzed and go towards the case and tohelp solve that case, is great. narrator: the forensic evidenceis proof that even in a fire, a criminal leavessome kind of trail.

the trick is to find it. scott hoglander: therearen't many cases that are, in history,of this magnitude and investigativetechniques that were used, the task force concept,how well it worked, i mean, it really is a modelthat you're not going to see in any other area. ronal tunkel: in many respects,he was a guerrilla fighter. but he was up againsta superior army.

and there was noway he could win. so sooner or later,he would be caught.