Cameron Todd Willingham's Death By Fire

On December 23 1991, a fire destroyed the family home of Cameron Todd Willingham Corsicana, Texas. It was an early morning and Todd was taking care of his three daughters Amber, Karmen and Kameron Willingham while his wife was out shopping for Christmas gifts. Willingham woke up to his whole house in a blaze of flames and smoke hearing his daughter call out “Daddy! Daddy!” Willingham dropped on his hands and knees to try and find his daughters in the blaze of fire; he did not succeed and proceeded to get out of the house. A neighbor saw the fire and came running to try and help. According to the documentary “Death by Fire”, the neighbor Brandeis Barbee's mother was screaming “Go back in! Go-go try to get babies!” Todd was in such a state

The arson investigator who belived this was General Hurst and he stated that, “ Flashovers had left natural patterns on the floor that all post flashover fires tend to leave behind, and they had been misidentified as pour patterns. And thus the fire was labeled as arson.” Hurst was one of the only people who believed the fire was not arson. Hurst had the new knowledge of how arson worked and how to properly detect arson unlike the first investigators. Generally those who investigated arson were just firefighters with little to no training. Similarly when they investigate arson they look for the same sign over and over, pour patterns on the floor. However, since Hurst was a trained arson investigator,he had more experience dealing with arson and he knew that flashover had occurred. It might appear based on the evidence of the pour patterns on the floor that arson was committed, but the more advanced knowledge investigators have, the more they are able to prove that Todd did not commit

Some will argue that Todd showed no remorse right after his children's death at the bar, talking about how he won't be wasting so much money with them gone, that he had committed arson to kill his daughters.While this may be true, one must consider that he had just lost his children and could have been in shock by what just happened. Although Willingham may have been mean to his wife, he would have never hurt his children. His ex wife, Stacy states, “He was mean to me, but I always said, you know, he may beat me, he may kill me, but he would never do nothing to the kids. And I always knew that, you know? They were his kids. He never hurt the kids, you know?” Generally if one's wife, friend or family member knows them and knows they are innocent then it is believed that the person is innocent. Certainly, Stacy had no reason to lie to the jury about the way Todd acts,so why would she not tell the truth when it is about her children's deaths. Even if the jury did not believe he would hurt his kids, many friends and family knew he would never. Sherry Cooley,a neighbor heard Todd say, “... And you can sit and say every day, I would burn up before I let my kids die in a fire, he said, ‘it's not humanly possible.’” This emphasizes that he would rather die in a random fire than live another day without his kids. Even if some people do not believe him, he showed