Arson or accident: Elgin-area blazes still ignite debate

• Reprints

Assistant Chief Bill Sohn with the South Elgin Fire Department at Fire Station #1 in South Elgin Monday. | Dave Shields~For Suntimes Media.

Updated: February 23, 2012 8:12AM

A million-dollar blaze struck the former Dundee Lumber Co. yard in downtown East Dundee at 11 o’clock on the night of March 21, 2007. Flames quickly consumed the disused lumberyard, plus a historical warehouse next door. They also burned the roof of a nearby commercial building and melted siding on some homes.

From the beginning, people wondered what the cause was, but no one ever found out for sure.

Bill Sohn, assistant chief of the South Elgin & Countryside Fire Protection District and co-commander of the Kane County Fire Investigation Task Force, said the most infamous case he has had to deal with in South Elgin was a serial arsonist who struck repeatedly on South Elgin’s near-west side during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Driven by a pathological delight in making things burn, the young local man, in his late teens or early 20s, started with burning garbage cans and then graduated to bigger things”such as sheds. “There was a suspect,” he said, “but we took it to the state’s attorney, and they said there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him.”

Finally, a stroke of luck broke the case. The man set fire to a wooden swingset that, unbeknownst to him, was within a few yards of the house occupied by one of the cops working on the case. “Another neighbor saw the fire and called 911. The officer woke up because the (emergency) tone was going off and, because it was in his neighborhood, he looked out and there was this man in his backyard,” Sohn said. “An arrest followed.”

A psychopathic or simply irresponsible thrill-burner is often the hardest to catch, he said. The arsonist could be anyone and has no direct connection to the people being victimized. But far more common, according to former city of Elgin Fire Marshal Rich Dunne, is the property owner who burns his own building to collect on its insurance; and the grudge arsonist who torches someone’s property out of anger.

Sohn said another successful South Elgin case involved the late-night burning of a duplex home on Hobart Drive during the 1990s. Gasoline had been used to start the blaze. The ex-husband of the woman who lived there was seen watching the fire and became a suspect early on. When the woman pointed him out, police questioned him but could prove nothing.

Investigators finally found a gas station employee who remembered selling the suspect a can of gas that night. There “was a lot of work involved and a lot of luck in being able to prove everything,” Sohn said.

Sometimes what at first feels like an arson may turn out to have an innocent cause, Dunne notes. He remembers a 2004 fire that destroyed a doctor’s office along American Way in Elgin. “We needed to have a crane come in and lift away the wreckage to do a proper investigation, and that cost a lot, but the Federal Bureau of Alcoholism Tobacco and Firearms covered the cost,””said Dunne, who is still an Elgin Fire Department officer and a city councilman. A forensic engineer finally figured out a faulty heater on the doctor’s’fish tank had started it.

Besides eyeing criminal charges, Dunne notes, fire investigators play a major role in civil lawsuits, and intensively trained forensic engineers”often are hired by rival insurance companies. If the company that insured the office can prove the fire was caused by a defective coffee maker, for example, it may be able to force the coffee maker insurance company to foot that hefty bill.

Even an arson case may finally be settled mostly in civil court, Dunne notes. “If prosecutors want to send an alleged arsonist to prison, they must prove their allegations to the jury beyond a reasonable doubt.””But if the goal is only to get a civil-court jury to permit an insurance company to deny payment, the insurance company’s lawyers have to prove the arsonist’s guilt only by a preponderance of the evidence.