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[THEME MUSIC]

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There was a blue flame
coming from his stomach.

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About four inch
slit in his stomach.

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And it was making noise
like a blowhorn-- bzzz.

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NARRATOR: Did this
fireman witness

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a case of spontaneous
human combustion?

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For more than 40 years,
this American physician

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has been trying to discover the
truth about his mother's death.

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How was Mary Reeser
reduced to ashes?

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This log cabin remained unsinged
while inside, a retired fireman

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was consumed by flames.

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Was George Mott also a case of
spontaneous human combustion?

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Mysteries from the files
of Arthur C. Clarke,

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author of 2001 and inventor of
the communication satellite.

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Now in retreat in Sri Lanka,
he ponders the riddles

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of this and other worlds.

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[THEME MUSIC]

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[FIRE ALARM]

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ARTHUR C. CLARKE:
There's one mystery

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I'm asked about more
than any other--

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spontaneous human combustion.

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Fires, of course,
are all too common

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but occasionally
brigades, like this one

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near my home in Colombo, are
called out to deal with cases

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which baffle even the experts.

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Apparently, for no
reason, people have

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suddenly burst into flames.

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Their bodies are almost totally
consumed, yet amazingly,

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their surroundings
are barely singed.

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When I first investigated
spontaneous human combustion,

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the explanations seemed even
more fantastic than the facts.

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However, new evidence
has now emerged

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so I'm returning, rather
reluctantly, to this most

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gruesome of mysteries.

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ROBERT POLK: And it
still is a mystery.

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We talk about the case
today, just like we did 20

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years ago when I first started.

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And even in 1951, when
the incident occurred.

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A great deal of speculation,
a great deal of conjecture.

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Everybody has an angle,
but nobody has the answer.

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NARRATOR: The bizarre
death of this man's mother

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has kept Florida
talking for 40 years.

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In the bedroom of
her wooden bungalow,

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on that fateful
summer night in 1951,

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Mary Reeser kissed her
son Richard goodbye.

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To the young physician,
everything seemed normal.

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RICHARD REESER: At 8 o'clock,
I remember the landlady

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who called me and
said that there

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had been a terrible accident.

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She didn't go into details, and
that I was to come right down.

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And across the way,
when we came down,

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there where painters painting
the house across the street.

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And they were totally
unaware that anything

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that happened in the apartment.

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I was prevented from going
in the room by, I believe,

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the fire chief, who said that
I shouldn't see what is inside.

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So I didn't go in.

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Of course, I later
saw what it was,

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what the picture was from
photographs and descriptions.

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My recollection is that
I entered the apartment

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at the fire scene with
a hand-pump, which

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is a small tank of water
that is maneuverable by hand

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for interior extinguishment.

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And noticing a pile of debris
in the center of the room,

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I started to squirt
it and was stopped

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immediately by other people who
had preceded me into the room.

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It turns out that
it was not just

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debris, but part of a corpse,
of the lady who had been burned

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to death, unbeknownst to me.

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It was just her foot and
a shoe, was all that I

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recall seeing ever there.

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It was an incredible,
unexplainable thing to me then

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and is still now.

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RICHARD REESER: She was
consumed almost completely.

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Just what remained was
a heel of her left foot,

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and just a piece of the skull.

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Plus a little ash
remains of her body.

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Everything had been consumed.

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The room was covered with
a, sort of a smoky, oily ash

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up to the level of
about four feet.

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Completely around,
but that was it.

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The bed that had
been turned down

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was undisturbed and ready, as
if it were ready to be slept in.

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And the clock that was
nearby had stopped running

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at about 4:20 in the morning.

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I believe Ms. Reeser
was known to be a smoker,

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so there was some
speculation that possibly she

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dozed off or dropped a
cigarette on her clothing, which

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initially started
the fire, but that

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still doesn't speak to how this
total consumption occurred.

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We have had many, many
cases where people have

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fallen asleep smoking,
burn their clothes,

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in fact burned themselves.

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And unfortunately
succumbed to the fire,

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but never anything like this.

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I believe there
probably was some type

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of external ignition source.

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Now what that was, I
couldn't begin to speculate.

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But I think, in my
mind, what happened,

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Ms. Reeser's body began to burn,
much like when we cook food,

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and you can essentially
cook food down to nothing

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by applying the
proper amounts of heat

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over the proper period of time.

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Unusual as that
may seem, I think

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the human body in this case
actually became a fuel for fire

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as opposed to just the recipient
of heat related injury.

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The possibility of it
being spontaneous combustion

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arose, and was written.

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Even all kinds of
theories were brought

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out, such as even lightening
that came to an open window.

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But there was nothing concrete.

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And the fire people here
had no explanation for it.

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No one had any explanation.

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And in looking back, I
just think that no one ever

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knows how a person of
her size and weight,

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I'm judging she weighed
about 170 pounds,

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could be totally consumed
by a fire that only

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involved a portion of her room.

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The chair, which was, of
course, completely burned.

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All that was left were some
springs that were found

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near the ashes of her body.

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NARRATOR: Like Richard
Reeser, this man, Jack Stacey,

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is still gripped by
a fire from the past.

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On this spot in
Lambeth, South London

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stood Auckland street, the
scene of the strangest sight

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of his 30 years as a fireman.

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The memory has brought him
back to search the records

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at the fire brigades museum.

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JACK STACEY: We got the call at
about 20 past 5 in the morning,

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and when we arrived two or three
minutes down the embankment,

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there were about
half a dozen office

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cleaners outside this building.

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And they were pointing to
the first floor and said,

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we think there's
a fire in there.

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And sure enough there was a
flickering blue flame coming

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from the upstairs window.

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When we got up the ladder to
the, onto the first floor,

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there was a body, a man's
body, laying on the stairs.

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And there was a blue flame
coming from his stomach,

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about a four inch
slit in his stomach,

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and it was making noise
like a blowhorn-- bzzz.

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And it was about
eight inches long.

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That was the first thing we saw.

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A man came up the
ladder with a hose reel,

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and we actually put the hose
reel inside the man's body,

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he was burning from
the inside out.

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It was the most bizarre thing
I've ever seen at a fire.

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I think this is why I
remember it so vividly.

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I'd seen bodies in fires
before, but you always, we've

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always been able to say this
happened or that happened,

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or we know how this started.

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But this one, I'm
afraid we didn't know,

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and we still don't know.

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And the cause of the
fire is still unknown.

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The official cause of
death by the coroner

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was in relation of
fire fumes, suffocation

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due to inhalation of fire fumes.

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I have my doubts about that.

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I have my doubts about that.

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I think it is one of these
human spontaneous combustion

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mysteries which we'll
never solve at the moment.

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The moment the fire started,
the evidence was destroyed.

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Fireman are used to things
igniting spontaneously.

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For example, haystacks
can generate enough heat

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by fermentation to catch fire.

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And I've even heard of a case
in Britain of a laundry, which

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was razed to the ground when
a pile of very dirty washing

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apparently went up in
smoke on its own accord.

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But people
spontaneously combusting

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is quite another matter.

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In earlier centuries, that
old scapegoat, alcohol,

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was blamed by investigators
and popular novelists.

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NARRATOR: The idea of
spontaneous human combustion

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fascinated the Victorians.

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In Bleak House, Charles
Dickens chose it to dispose

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of a troublesome character.

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Popular belief
linked the phenomenon

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with excessive drinking;
and improving texts

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warn drunks that they run the
risk of spontaneous combustion.

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Serious research was scarce.

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One sober report from Dr.
Mackenzie Booth in Aberdeen,

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Scotland, couldn't explain how
a soldier was found burned up

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in a hay loft, yet
straw inches away

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was untouched by the flames.

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Despite increasingly
lurid reports,

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science stood back
until the 1960s.

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NARRATOR: Professor David
Gee, then a young pathologist,

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was called in to investigate
the mysterious death

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of an old person.

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She had fallen in
the grate and been

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reduced to a pile of ashes.

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She had burned
almost completely;

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only a fragment of
flesh and bone remained.

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Professor Gee wanted to discover
how this could have happened.

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He published an account of
his audacious experiment.

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I thought if I made a
model that, in one sense,

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reproduced a body, by using
a glass test tube which would

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provide a sort of
central firmness

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and then wrapping it
around with some human fat,

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and then putting round that
a number of layers of cloth,

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perhaps five or six
layers to reproduce

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several different
layers of clothing.

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And ignited one end of it
with a gas Bunsen burner.

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It then burnt with a
rather smoky flame,

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and it took about 3/4
of an hour to burn

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down about six inches of model.

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And what was left
was a very blackened,

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charred remains that looked
very similar to the body

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that I'd been examining.

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But it was like a
candle, only instead

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of having, as candles do, a wick
down the middle with the wax

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on the outside, this
was really a candle

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of the wick on the outside
and the combustible

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material on the inside.

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NARRATOR: Today,
Dr. Sivaloganathan

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leaves his local butchers
with a bag full of pork.

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It's the material he needs
to carry on experimenting

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00:13:21,520 --> 00:13:23,310
where Professor Gee left off.

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The question Dr.
Siva wants to solve

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is why do the
victim's surroundings

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not burn as they do?

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00:13:37,140 --> 00:13:41,870
I've taken some pork, with
a little muscle and some fat.

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I've rolled it in,
into a cylinder,

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and then covered with a cloth.

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Now the idea being that
the rolled up piece of meat

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would represent a human body
and the cloth would then

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represent the clothing on it.

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When the fat melts, it would
then soak into the cloth,

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and then that would continue
to burn exactly like a candle,

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00:14:06,770 --> 00:14:10,520
excepting in this case, the wick
is on the outside of the fat as

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00:14:10,520 --> 00:14:12,610
opposed to being in the middle.

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00:14:12,610 --> 00:14:18,200
The bodies are found
burned and almost ashed,

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00:14:18,200 --> 00:14:22,280
with very little burning
in the surroundings.

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And perhaps a little
bit of the leg

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is left behind, with
almost a fairly well

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00:14:27,380 --> 00:14:31,300
marked line of demarcation.

250
00:14:31,300 --> 00:14:33,680
We want to know why the
rest of the surroundings

251
00:14:33,680 --> 00:14:35,310
didn't go up in flames.

252
00:14:35,310 --> 00:14:40,350
We want to know why this
progressive burning occurred.

253
00:14:40,350 --> 00:14:43,880
And this gives you, as a
fairly good working model,

254
00:14:43,880 --> 00:14:46,300
as to how this whole
process occurs.

255
00:14:46,300 --> 00:14:52,560
The slowness of the process, the
lack of violence of the flames,

256
00:14:52,560 --> 00:14:56,040
proves to us that this is
quite a feasible explanation

257
00:14:56,040 --> 00:14:58,430
for this phenomenon.

258
00:14:58,430 --> 00:15:01,610
I think essentially we will
find that when the bodies burn

259
00:15:01,610 --> 00:15:04,000
in this sort of
situation, it is only

260
00:15:04,000 --> 00:15:06,070
the melted fat that's burning.

261
00:15:06,070 --> 00:15:10,630
And therefore the
melted fat most likely

262
00:15:10,630 --> 00:15:14,150
will continue to burn just
about the same sort of level.

263
00:15:14,150 --> 00:15:17,900
So the flames are not splurting
out all over the place.

264
00:15:17,900 --> 00:15:23,480
It is fairly well localized to
a few inches around the body.

265
00:15:23,480 --> 00:15:25,500
That's what's happened.

266
00:15:25,500 --> 00:15:27,200
That's the skewer
that I'm keeping

267
00:15:27,200 --> 00:15:29,540
in order to keep it stiff.

268
00:15:29,540 --> 00:15:32,380


269
00:15:32,380 --> 00:15:35,230
I don't think there's anything
miraculous about it at all.

270
00:15:35,230 --> 00:15:39,470
I think it's perfectly
logically explainable.

271
00:15:39,470 --> 00:15:42,340
So this experiment just
shows that it is possible.

272
00:15:42,340 --> 00:15:44,570
I haven't really
done a complete body,

273
00:15:44,570 --> 00:15:46,370
but this is the
principle by which

274
00:15:46,370 --> 00:15:47,410
this whole phenomenon occurs.

275
00:15:47,410 --> 00:15:51,870


276
00:15:51,870 --> 00:15:53,480
NARRATOR: From the
British Medical Journal

277
00:15:53,480 --> 00:15:56,890
comes a further clue in a
report on a stomach operation

278
00:15:56,890 --> 00:15:58,610
by Jonathan Earnshaw.

279
00:15:58,610 --> 00:16:01,777
He was using electrical
cutting equipment.

280
00:16:01,777 --> 00:16:03,510
DR. JONATHAN EARNSHAW: And
when I opened the stomach

281
00:16:03,510 --> 00:16:06,500
with the electrocautery
device, there was an explosion,

282
00:16:06,500 --> 00:16:09,110
and the gaseous
contents of his stomach

283
00:16:09,110 --> 00:16:12,540
ignited and splattered stomach
contents all over the ceiling

284
00:16:12,540 --> 00:16:14,870
light and on those
who were surrounding

285
00:16:14,870 --> 00:16:15,970
the operating tables.

286
00:16:15,970 --> 00:16:17,850
It was all rather
frightening at the time.

287
00:16:17,850 --> 00:16:20,640
And there was a blue
flame, and a sort of thump.

288
00:16:20,640 --> 00:16:23,380
And in fact, the flame
lasted for a second or two,

289
00:16:23,380 --> 00:16:25,290
and then stopped.

290
00:16:25,290 --> 00:16:26,960
As you can imagine, it's
a pretty frightening sort

291
00:16:26,960 --> 00:16:28,690
of thing to happen
to you when a patient

292
00:16:28,690 --> 00:16:30,640
expires on the operating table.

293
00:16:30,640 --> 00:16:33,660
And there was a stunned
silence initially.

294
00:16:33,660 --> 00:16:35,560
And we then checked,
we checked the patient,

295
00:16:35,560 --> 00:16:37,420
we checked all his vital
signs, and we checked

296
00:16:37,420 --> 00:16:39,300
the inside of the stomach.

297
00:16:39,300 --> 00:16:41,660
And in fact, because the
gases had been coming out

298
00:16:41,660 --> 00:16:43,860
of the stomach under
pressure when they'd ignited,

299
00:16:43,860 --> 00:16:46,260
fortunately there was no
damage to the patient,

300
00:16:46,260 --> 00:16:47,780
and we carried on
with the operation

301
00:16:47,780 --> 00:16:50,440
and the patient did
very well afterwards.

302
00:16:50,440 --> 00:16:53,090
But when we published the paper
in the British Medical Journal,

303
00:16:53,090 --> 00:16:55,500
I then got a whole
sheaf of letters

304
00:16:55,500 --> 00:16:58,930
from other doctors,
particularly elderly doctors,

305
00:16:58,930 --> 00:17:01,630
who'd seen this occurrence on
several occasions in the past.

306
00:17:01,630 --> 00:17:03,190
And there are some
lovely letters here

307
00:17:03,190 --> 00:17:06,900
from surgeons and
GPs, from a soldier

308
00:17:06,900 --> 00:17:10,040
who was under my care in 1941
who was rude enough to belch

309
00:17:10,040 --> 00:17:12,220
whilst lighting a
cigarette and the resulting

310
00:17:12,220 --> 00:17:15,400
flashing explosion seriously
disturbed his comrades.

311
00:17:15,400 --> 00:17:18,190
So obviously it's like a
lot of things in medicine,

312
00:17:18,190 --> 00:17:20,210
we were only
rediscovering what people

313
00:17:20,210 --> 00:17:22,000
have known about in the past.

314
00:17:22,000 --> 00:17:24,880
Organisms can proliferate
and produce methane,

315
00:17:24,880 --> 00:17:26,740
which is obviously flammable.

316
00:17:26,740 --> 00:17:29,430
If you then ignite it
with a spark like I did,

317
00:17:29,430 --> 00:17:31,660
then that's not
spontaneous combustion,

318
00:17:31,660 --> 00:17:32,590
that's ordinary combustion.

319
00:17:32,590 --> 00:17:37,660


320
00:17:37,660 --> 00:17:39,680
NARRATOR: John Heymer
developed his own theory

321
00:17:39,680 --> 00:17:42,000
about spontaneous
human combustion,

322
00:17:42,000 --> 00:17:43,820
while he was scenes
of crime officer

323
00:17:43,820 --> 00:17:46,050
with Gwent police in Wales.

324
00:17:46,050 --> 00:17:51,960
Two deaths, only three weeks and
15 miles apart, inspired him.

325
00:17:51,960 --> 00:17:53,760
JOHN HEYMER: It was the
coincidence of the two cases

326
00:17:53,760 --> 00:17:55,120
that got me really going.

327
00:17:55,120 --> 00:17:57,730
You have the same pile of
ashes, the burning was the same

328
00:17:57,730 --> 00:17:59,590
and the burn line went
straight across from one

329
00:17:59,590 --> 00:18:00,350
leg to the other.

330
00:18:00,350 --> 00:18:03,260
That's what got me interested
and started me on actually

331
00:18:03,260 --> 00:18:04,410
investigating the other cases.

332
00:18:04,410 --> 00:18:07,130


333
00:18:07,130 --> 00:18:11,090
NARRATOR: In the first case
in January 1980 at Ebbw Vale,

334
00:18:11,090 --> 00:18:13,200
Sergeant Terry
Russell was called

335
00:18:13,200 --> 00:18:19,650
to a house where a 73-year-old
man had died in a fire.

336
00:18:19,650 --> 00:18:21,560
TERRY RUSSELL: My
immediate thought

337
00:18:21,560 --> 00:18:28,080
on seeing the deceased was that
this was not an ordinary death.

338
00:18:28,080 --> 00:18:32,900
There was no external damage,
there were no windows broken.

339
00:18:32,900 --> 00:18:36,080
We entered the living
room of the premises.

340
00:18:36,080 --> 00:18:40,930
It was a sight that will
never, ever really leave me.

341
00:18:40,930 --> 00:18:44,780
I found it totally fascinating,
although to the relatives

342
00:18:44,780 --> 00:18:49,395
it must have been really
devastating and gruesome.

343
00:18:49,395 --> 00:18:53,940
Well, see here is a sketch
I made just after the event

344
00:18:53,940 --> 00:18:58,095
actually, which shows
the lack of damage

345
00:18:58,095 --> 00:19:01,780
to other materials in the room.

346
00:19:01,780 --> 00:19:04,230
This was the remains
of a 73-year-old man

347
00:19:04,230 --> 00:19:10,030
who'd been reduced to ash on
the floor of his living room.

348
00:19:10,030 --> 00:19:14,390
The pair of glasses were lying
on the edge of the grate,

349
00:19:14,390 --> 00:19:17,700
totally undamaged
and perfectly clean.

350
00:19:17,700 --> 00:19:21,850
The fire was out in the
grate, the dead coals tidy.

351
00:19:21,850 --> 00:19:25,430
I had heard the term
spontaneous human combustion,

352
00:19:25,430 --> 00:19:28,020
but never really
given it much thought.

353
00:19:28,020 --> 00:19:31,490
Having seen the sight
that I saw on that day,

354
00:19:31,490 --> 00:19:35,660
I now believe that this kind
of thing is a possibility,

355
00:19:35,660 --> 00:19:37,980
and there's certainly
some questions which

356
00:19:37,980 --> 00:19:40,850
haven't been answered to
my satisfaction in relation

357
00:19:40,850 --> 00:19:42,041
to that death.

358
00:19:42,041 --> 00:19:45,810


359
00:19:45,810 --> 00:19:48,770
NARRATOR: The next case,
only 27 days later,

360
00:19:48,770 --> 00:19:53,200
came at Newport,
the county town.

361
00:19:53,200 --> 00:19:56,160
This time, an old
woman had died.

362
00:19:56,160 --> 00:19:59,770
Inspector Colin
Durham investigated.

363
00:19:59,770 --> 00:20:02,330
COLIN DURHAM: There was
a report of a fatality

364
00:20:02,330 --> 00:20:06,790
as a result of a fire at a
house here in Corporation Road.

365
00:20:06,790 --> 00:20:10,650
And this poor old
lady, she was reduced

366
00:20:10,650 --> 00:20:17,760
to ashes, except for two
lower parts of both legs.

367
00:20:17,760 --> 00:20:21,680
And, well this
was amazing to me,

368
00:20:21,680 --> 00:20:25,910
to see a body in
such a condition.

369
00:20:25,910 --> 00:20:28,420
The most abnormal thing
about it was, that there was

370
00:20:28,420 --> 00:20:30,320
nothing in the room damaged.

371
00:20:30,320 --> 00:20:32,520
There's no doubt
that it was a case

372
00:20:32,520 --> 00:20:36,720
of a human body catching
fire, and it was called

373
00:20:36,720 --> 00:20:38,580
spontaneous human combustion.

374
00:20:38,580 --> 00:20:40,450
I have no doubt at all.

375
00:20:40,450 --> 00:20:43,840
But I eventually started
thinking about it,

376
00:20:43,840 --> 00:20:48,450
and the difficulty was that
your body's laden with water,

377
00:20:48,450 --> 00:20:52,620
the average 10 stone body
contains 10 gallons of water,

378
00:20:52,620 --> 00:20:55,330
being reduced to
ashes in circumstances

379
00:20:55,330 --> 00:20:58,250
where normal combustible
material ceased to burn,

380
00:20:58,250 --> 00:21:00,890
now that is an impossibility.

381
00:21:00,890 --> 00:21:02,230
But it happened.

382
00:21:02,230 --> 00:21:08,310
I realized that the water must
be the source of the fuel.

383
00:21:08,310 --> 00:21:11,530
NARRATOR: John Heymer believes
that by some as yet unknown

384
00:21:11,530 --> 00:21:13,710
alchemy, water in
the body can be

385
00:21:13,710 --> 00:21:16,870
split into oxygen and
hydrogen to concoct

386
00:21:16,870 --> 00:21:19,480
a highly flammable mixture.

387
00:21:19,480 --> 00:21:24,730
Now, hydrogen burning in oxygen
burns with a fierce blue flame

388
00:21:24,730 --> 00:21:26,420
and will cut through steel.

389
00:21:26,420 --> 00:21:29,230
And steel melts at 1,500
degrees Centigrade.

390
00:21:29,230 --> 00:21:34,050
Now that sort of flame could
indeed reduce a corpse to ashes

391
00:21:34,050 --> 00:21:36,750
without releasing
enough oxygen to sustain

392
00:21:36,750 --> 00:21:38,470
burning elsewhere in a room.

393
00:21:38,470 --> 00:21:40,730
And will also explain
the lack of water.

394
00:21:40,730 --> 00:21:44,870
Now, I have no belief in
spontaneous human combustion

395
00:21:44,870 --> 00:21:48,050
as a paranormal or
supernatural event.

396
00:21:48,050 --> 00:21:51,570
It is an entirely natural
event, the mechanism of which

397
00:21:51,570 --> 00:21:54,220
we do not yet understand.

398
00:21:54,220 --> 00:21:57,530
The scientists' rather
stomach churning experiments

399
00:21:57,530 --> 00:22:01,820
show that most of these cases
do have a rational explanation.

400
00:22:01,820 --> 00:22:03,780
There's usually some
source of ignition

401
00:22:03,780 --> 00:22:06,390
near the victim,
perhaps a cigarette or

402
00:22:06,390 --> 00:22:08,800
a faulty electrical appliance.

403
00:22:08,800 --> 00:22:11,000
Yet some cases
still seem to defy

404
00:22:11,000 --> 00:22:15,380
explanation and leave me with
a creepy and very unscientific

405
00:22:15,380 --> 00:22:16,660
feeling.

406
00:22:16,660 --> 00:22:21,000
If there's anything more to SHC,
I simply don't want to know.

407
00:22:21,000 --> 00:22:24,360


408
00:22:24,360 --> 00:22:26,600
NARRATOR: In
Ticonderoga in New York,

409
00:22:26,600 --> 00:22:28,664
the men of the
volunteer fire brigade

410
00:22:28,664 --> 00:22:31,040
are still baffled by
the untimely death

411
00:22:31,040 --> 00:22:31,970
of one of their number.

412
00:22:31,970 --> 00:22:36,240


413
00:22:36,240 --> 00:22:41,040
George Mott was a non-smoker,
famously cautious about fire.

414
00:22:41,040 --> 00:22:48,560
Yet he burned to nothing in his
log cabin in the woods in 1986.

415
00:22:48,560 --> 00:22:52,210
Kendall Mott used to get a
call from his father every day.

416
00:22:52,210 --> 00:22:56,400
When the phone didn't ring,
Kendall went to check on him.

417
00:22:56,400 --> 00:22:58,425
The door handle was warm when
I grabbed the door handle.

418
00:22:58,425 --> 00:23:02,340
It was unlocked, so I
knew right then I could,

419
00:23:02,340 --> 00:23:04,880
I opened the door, I
could tell it wasn't-- all

420
00:23:04,880 --> 00:23:06,630
inside the house was black.

421
00:23:06,630 --> 00:23:09,320
Of course there's no lights
because electricity was out,

422
00:23:09,320 --> 00:23:11,080
it was burnt out.

423
00:23:11,080 --> 00:23:13,870
So, I left, I knew something,
you know, had happened

424
00:23:13,870 --> 00:23:15,167
but you couldn't see anything.

425
00:23:15,167 --> 00:23:16,500
So I went and called
the state troopers,

426
00:23:16,500 --> 00:23:19,437
and Dick La Vallee came down.

427
00:23:19,437 --> 00:23:21,070
DICK LA VALLE: The first
room that we walked into

428
00:23:21,070 --> 00:23:24,880
was nothing too much out
of the ordinary, other

429
00:23:24,880 --> 00:23:30,180
than I couldn't help but
notice as I looked around

430
00:23:30,180 --> 00:23:36,120
that the walls were
slightly brownish colored,

431
00:23:36,120 --> 00:23:41,360
it appeared that the place had
been subjected to intense heat.

432
00:23:41,360 --> 00:23:44,050
KENDALL MOTT: The TV was melted,
you know, the guns on the wall

433
00:23:44,050 --> 00:23:46,750
were all charred, the
refrigerator was all black.

434
00:23:46,750 --> 00:23:50,575
Everything was black, it was
just like it'd really been hot,

435
00:23:50,575 --> 00:23:52,190
but hadn't quite burnt.

436
00:23:52,190 --> 00:23:59,670
In the bedroom itself, there
was a single bed with a dresser

437
00:23:59,670 --> 00:24:03,520
adjacent to it, as I remember.

438
00:24:03,520 --> 00:24:08,960
And a mattress had
been burned through,

439
00:24:08,960 --> 00:24:15,750
and the floor, which was wooden
structure, below the bed,

440
00:24:15,750 --> 00:24:17,950
was burned through.

441
00:24:17,950 --> 00:24:22,860
And there were some fragments
of bones and possibly a skull

442
00:24:22,860 --> 00:24:26,075
as I remember, lying on
the floor beneath the bed.

443
00:24:26,075 --> 00:24:28,000
He hadn't smoked
for quite awhile,

444
00:24:28,000 --> 00:24:29,510
and there was a sign
on the door that

445
00:24:29,510 --> 00:24:31,760
said "no smoking in the house".

446
00:24:31,760 --> 00:24:35,680
Because he lost the use of one
of his lungs a long time ago.

447
00:24:35,680 --> 00:24:37,920
All the signs
indicated that there

448
00:24:37,920 --> 00:24:40,580
had been an extreme
amount of heat,

449
00:24:40,580 --> 00:24:44,150
but nothing caused
anything to ignite.

450
00:24:44,150 --> 00:24:48,670
And the only thing that had
burned was George Mott's body.

451
00:24:48,670 --> 00:24:53,760
There was the theory of
spontaneous combustion theory

452
00:24:53,760 --> 00:24:59,390
that possibly the body
may have ignited itself

453
00:24:59,390 --> 00:25:02,540
for whatever
reason, and consumed

454
00:25:02,540 --> 00:25:06,590
itself through extreme heat.

455
00:25:06,590 --> 00:25:09,050
Other than that,
putting that aside,

456
00:25:09,050 --> 00:25:11,950
I don't think that
there's too many

457
00:25:11,950 --> 00:25:15,430
other plausible explanations
for it, that I can think of.

458
00:25:15,430 --> 00:25:16,900
Well he was a fireman
for quite a while;

459
00:25:16,900 --> 00:25:20,895
he was pretty picky as
to leaving things around.

460
00:25:20,895 --> 00:25:24,744


461
00:25:24,744 --> 00:25:26,995
I don't know, I don't
think it was a fire,

462
00:25:26,995 --> 00:25:29,390
I just think it was like they
said, spontaneous combustion,

463
00:25:29,390 --> 00:25:31,130
I don't see any
other answer for it.

464
00:25:31,130 --> 00:25:32,680
[THEME MUSIC]

465
00:25:32,680 --> 00:26:03,800