Mystery Fires Terrify N.H. Residents : Trust Goes Up in Smoke as Town Hunts Arsonist

Only four months ago, this was the kind of place where no one thought twice about leaving a door or window unlocked. Jefferson had a small-town trust, rare nowadays, that comes from feeling you really know your neighbors.

But lately, the slightest noise after nightfall--the crack of a twig or the crunch of tires against gravel--has townspeople jumping from their beds in terror. Families have taken to sleeping in shifts, their most valued possessions packed in suitcases by the front door. Some have canceled vacations, becoming virtual prisoners in the homes they are afraid to leave unguarded.

Everyone is watching and waiting to see who will be the next victim of an arsonist who is believed to have set as many as 19 mysterious fires since early May in this tiny, 200-year-old town in New Hampshire’s beautiful White Mountains.

New rumors shoot quickly through Jefferson, sometimes wounding friendships built over generations.

“Neighbors whisper about neighbors, parents question children, wives worry about husbands,” wrote one columnist in the local weekly, the Coos County Democrat. Even the town’s 32-member volunteer Fire Department has submitted to lie-detector tests.

“Everybody accuses everybody else,” said Vern Matson, whose Skywood Manor and Motel was damaged in a May 24 fire. “It does cause bad feelings, no doubt about it.”

At the same time, however, the arsonist has forged a new kind of unity among Jefferson’s 850 residents, with neighbors pitching in to help rebuild the homes that have been destroyed and protect the ones spared thus far.

“We lost everything in our house, between the smoke damage and the fire,” said Pat Perkins, one of more than a dozen Jefferson residents now homeless. “Thank God for people in town, or I wouldn’t have clothes to wear.”

Helping Hands

Perkins and her family, who had no insurance when their home burned shortly after midnight on May 27, are living at Skywood Manor. The Matsons feel they are returning a favor, for it was Bill Perkins who helped put out their motel fire only three nights before his own house was destroyed.

Except for an occasional freak collision between a stray moose and an automobile, not much that passed for news had happened around Jefferson in recent years. Now, many in town have been interviewed by the major television networks, their pictures have been in People magazine and stories about the crimes have appeared in newspapers as far away as Europe.

Some wonder whether Jefferson can ever be the same. One relatively new arrival said he moved here because “living up here is like living 25 years ago. . . . The value system--you could take a person’s word. How much is it going to change? Who knows?”

The man asked not to be identified for fear that his home or business might be a target. He stands guard every night until 2 a.m., when his teen-age daughter takes over.

First Fires

The arsonist (referred to by almost everyone here as “he,” though the blazes could be the work of a “she” or a “they”) began with a series of relatively minor grass fires that were initially dismissed as a nuisance.

But in what authorities describe as a “typical escalation pattern,” the attacks grew more serious, with some homes being ignited while their occupants slept inside. Many fear that it is only a matter of time and chance before someone is killed.

Although the most recent fire was two weeks ago, everyone seems to believe the arsonist is still around somewhere, lying low as he did for 32 days in July and August before returning to burn four more homes.

At first, armed citizen patrols roamed the town and its surrounding woods at night, and there were even rumors that some had booby-trapped their property by attaching guns or bows and arrows to tripwires.

Vigilantism Dies Down

“Ninety-nine percent of the people in town would like to get a shot at him,” Matson said.

This sort of vigilante sentiment appears to have died down, however, after officials warned that such efforts could hamper the 30 investigators now assigned to the case.

Other than noting the increasing seriousness of the fires, townspeople and authorities seem to be at a loss to find a pattern.

The arsonist appears to have no preference in choosing his victims. Among them have been an electrician and his family, the 74-year-old woman who had been Jefferson’s unofficial historian, several volunteer firefighters and the publisher of the Coos County Democrat.

Some of the buildings were unoccupied when the fires started, but other incidents could easily have cost lives. Bruce and Donna Hartford and their two teen-age children had only seconds to spare as they escaped in their nightclothes through the second-story windows of their blazing home.

Fires in Daytime

At first, he worked under cover of night, but in recent weeks, the emboldened arsonist has set fires during the afternoon.

“Now he’s starting to strike during the day, and your nightmares turn to day-mares. I just hope to God it ends pretty soon,” Perkins said.

Speculation burns as hotly as the fires. Some tell of a “man in black” seen running into the blackness of the thick woods. Others say the fires are part of a real-estate developer’s plot to scare them out and buy up their land. A self-styled clairvoyant insists that two people are responsible--a mastermind “in a psychotic frenzy” and his accomplice, who is “really dumb, a follower.”

The more exotic theories may reflect Jefferson’s unwillingness to face what more are coming to believe is the painful truth: that in a town where the population is smaller than many high school graduating classes, the arsonist is likely to be someone that everyone sees each day, and probably even talks to. Someone who blends in. Someone who is one of them.

“It’s not really easy to deal with the possibility that it’s somebody’s grandfather or uncle or son,” said newspaper publisher and editor John Harrigan, whose Civil War-era home was charred in a fire Aug. 8.

Police refuse to comment on suspects, but they appear to have focused their investigation in recent weeks on Lance Lalumiere, a 22-year-old dishwasher at a local restaurant who lives alone in a trailer near town. It was Lalumiere who discovered and reported the most recent fire, a blaze at his brother’s log cabin.

Man Questioned

Lalumiere said he has been questioned extensively and given at least two lie detector tests. His home and car have been searched, and he said state troopers are following all his moves.

Lalumiere vigorously denies involvement in the fires, and most Jefferson residents appear willing to believe the young man, whom they describe as friendly and gentle-mannered. After all, many here watched him grow up. And during at least three of the blazes, they note, he was visiting the Matson family at Skywood Manor. Witnesses also can account for his whereabouts during several of the other fires.

What is most frightening to the townspeople is the arsonist’s uncanny knowledge of their habits. More than a few are convinced that he methodically watches his victims before choosing when and where to strike.

Arsonist May Be Watching

Harrigan recalled, for example, that the arsonist sneaked into his home on “one of the very few Friday evenings that I decided to go out to supper. . . . I’m convinced he scoped my house out.”

Aug. 7 was the first night in months that Helen Merrill had dropped her guard. She had been sleeping on her porch or couch, but with her son and his family visiting, Merrill felt safe enough to retreat to her own bed. Shortly after midnight, her daughter-in-law smelled smoke, and the family escaped just ahead of the flames that destroyed the century-old house.

Lost were the keepsakes and records of town history that Merrill had painstakingly kept for half a century.

Inevitably, people here say, the arsonist will slip up. And when he does, they add, Jefferson is ready.

“He’s going to make one mistake,” Perkins said. “And God bless him if one of the townspeople finds him first.”