Desperate Crime Leaves Embers of Guilt

Martha B. is an arsonist, one who got away with it, but the memory still haunts her.

With three sons and an infant daughter, she was abandoned by her husband and on the brink of desperation.

She could not keep up the mortgage payments on her home in the Northeast. As a woman without marketable skills, she couldn’t support her youngsters.

So she decided to burn the house, collect the insurance money and move to the Carolinas, where, she was told, houses were far less expensive.

She worried about getting caught and going to jail.

“I was like a detective, only planning backwards,” Martha said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

She used combustible household materials, ignited by a stove and helped along by a stack of newspapers from her son’s paper route.

Martha worried also about the psychological effect the fire would have on the children. She felt they were already victimized by the father’s abandonment and wondered whether this would further erode their self-esteem. She decided to take a big chance and make the two older boys co-conspirators.

She explained that Mommy would go to jail if they ever breathed a word about it. And she delivered the grim news that they would lose their clothes, their favorite toys, their prized possessions.

The eldest son balked. He was a good athlete and had Little League and other trophies, framed photographs of his teams. He didn’t want to lose them. Martha compromised. Each child, she decided, could choose and save one item.

“He is still resentful about losing those things,” she said. “I don’t think things have ever been the same between us.”

The night of the fire, Martha took the children to a fast-food restaurant where they were known, then took the boys bowling--providing a number of witnesses for their alibi.

The children were coached to cry and to act surprised when they returned home. They proved to be good little actors.

When they returned from bowling and pulled up to the crowded fire scene, a fireman told her it was the house next door, not hers.

“Oh, thank God!” she said with enough conviction.

The other factor in her favor was that her house was underinsured. Still, she felt she was a suspect for a few days.

“The next day I wasn’t allowed in, and I walked around the house and I broke into real tears, not fake tears,” she recalls. “I lost a lot, but I felt I had no choice. It was still hard, losing photographs of the children, wedding gifts and little things I treasured, but I knew I couldn’t take them out first.

Martha has remarried and has moved back to the Northeast, but her conscience has never been soothed.

“Every time something bad happens in my life, I feel it is my punishment for starting that fire. Still, I think if I were in that same situation today, I would do the same thing.”