Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Casual comment at fire scene turns DEADLY

Episode Date: October 26, 2020

As Scott Purk's home burns to the ground, he makes a comment to the police as if to say, "This is not the worst thing to happen to me." He reveals that three decades ago his wife, 8-months pregnant, committed suicide by hanging. That comment causes police to take a second look at everything that's going on, and the results are surprising.Joining Nancy Grace today: Ashley Willcott - Judge and trial attorney, Anchor on Court TV, www.ashleywillcott.com  Dr. Angela Arnold - Psychiatrist, Atlanta Ga www.angelaarnoldmd.com Richard Truntz, Private Investigator “Crispin Special Investigations” www.crispininvestigations.com   Joe Scott Morgan - Professor of Forensics Jacksonville State University, Author, "Blood Beneath My Feet" featured on "Poisonous Liaisons" on True Crime Network Levi Page - Investigative reporter Crime Online  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Over the years at the District Attorney's Office, I worked really hard to develop an expertise in arson prosecutions. They're very, very difficult to prove. Let me tell you why. First, when you see a fire, you've got to figure out, was it a crime? Then you get to the whodunit part. Man, this case cracks wide open in a way that nobody ever believed that it would.

Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. 911, where's your emergency? The Keeningdale Drive. There's a fire. The house or what? The house. The caller was a 16-year-old girl who told the 911 operator that she, her parents, and her younger brother had all escaped, but barely. I don't understand. The entire front of our house is just engulfed. Okay.

I'm glad everybody got out. That dad was Scott Perk. You'll be hearing a lot about him. Perk said his family had been sound asleep when he heard a loud boom. It was like we heard an explosion. That's what woke us up. A little cold at the moment. Perk said he'd scrambled to get everyone up and out. By the time the first fire units rolled up, the Perk home was a roaring bonfire. Now, what I'm hearing sounds like right at the get-go, you hear about an explosion that could have been in naturally internal fire not necessarily an arson when something explodes you think of

possibly did an oven explode is some type of machinery explode and set the house on fire but where the fire has burned the most intensely and done the most destruction, that's typically where the fire started. Let me introduce an all-star panel to break it down and put it back together again with me, judge and trial lawyer, Court TV anchor, Ashley Wilcott at ashleywilcott.com. We're now psychiatrists. Joining me out of the Atlanta jurisdiction, Dr. Angela Arnold at AngelaArnoldMD.com. Private investigator, Gumshoe Richard Truntz at CrispinSpecialInvestigations.com. Professor of Forensics, Jacksonville State University, author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon, now the star of a new hit series called Poisonous Liaisons on the True Crime Network.

Joseph Scott Morgan. But first, to CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter Levi Page. We were just hearing our friend Josh Mangwitz at Dateline. So we get the 911 call from the teen girl, and the dad takes the phone, explains what happens. But Levi, listen to this from Dateline. Firefighters smell a smell. Listen, Levi. Firefighters smelled gasoline as soon as they got out of their trucks. So a call immediately went out to Stowe Police Detective Ken Mifflin. When I got there, I saw the fire department still putting out the blaze.

Someone had taken probably a pipe wrench to disconnect the gas line, and it was blowing out natural gas. It sounded like it was a very large roaring sound. At that point, that gas hadn't ignited. No. It could have possibly blown up. The person who set the fire poured gasoline all the way to the gas meter and on top of the gas meter. The idea was fire starts at the gasoline, goes to the gas main, and possibly destroys the house and everybody in it. Absolutely. It sounds to me, Levi Page, as somebody wanted that whole family dead, but it didn't happen that way because, you know, even brilliant criminals can make mistakes.

And here it sounds like the gas main blew. It had been undone, had been sabotaged, but it hadn't quite made it to the gasoline that had been poured. Am I understanding it correctly, what they find at the scene, Levi Page? You're absolutely correct, Nancy. It's a home in Stowe, Ohio. This is a suburb of Akron. This house caught on fire. It's 3 a.m. in the morning.

And at the time, the four residents, Scott Kirk, his wife Tammy, their 16-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son all escaped, thank God, uninjured. So, you know, that would be the dad, the mom and two children in the home that were this close to dying in a fiery blaze. Now, let's talk about Stowe. It's not far from Akron, Ohio, and Stowe has a very low crime rate. Isn't that true, Levi Page? Yes, it's a suburb. It's considered a safe suburb. A lot of families live there, and it's outside of Akron, Ohio. Akron, Ohio. Take a listen to Dave Matt at Crime Online. Imagine waking up to this. Scott Perk is awakened to a loud explosion at 3 a.m. His house is on fire. Perk gets his wife of

17 years, Tammy, and their two children, a daughter 16 and a son 12, out of the home, has his daughter call 911. His daughter makes the call, but Scott gets on the line and explains that the family made it out of the home safely. The fire department arrives to find the home fully engulfed in flames and a very strong odor of gasoline. Suspicious, fire officials call detectives from the Stowe, Ohio Police Department to come to the scene. Sergeant Ken Mifflin arrives and is filled in by fire officials that when they arrived, the gas meter was unhooked from the gas line and gasoline appeared to have been poured all around the foundation of the house to the gas meter with gasoline poured on top of the gas meter as well. You know, I want to go to Joseph Scott Morgan, professor of forensics. I mean, I know you love blood spatter like me, but I also love an arson scene.

And the first arson I ever prosecuted was a woman who single-handedly burned down an apartment complex over a lover's quarrel okay um and then sat back with a beer on the hood of the car to watch the whole thing burn another arson case that i prosecuted involved an accelerant like what we're talking about here in this case is gas. In that case, it was toluene. And even after the burn, Joe Scott, it looks like somebody poured Coke, Coca-Cola or Pepsi or something on the floor and let it dry. Even after the fire, you can still see sometimes where accelerant was. And this may have gone unnoticed except for the heavy smell of gasoline. And when you are used to investigating arsons, you pick up on so many things.

What should the arson investigator do right now? Well, what they're going to be looking for, Nancy, upon, you know, after the fire is put out, okay, the arson investigator arrives afterwards, obviously. And what they're going to be looking for specifically, when you talk about things like accelerants, gasoline, this sort of thing, you're going to be looking for what are referred to in this case as poor patterns. And in some cases, in some cases where you have, say, a cup full of gasoline and someone throws it on a wall, that develops what's called a splash pattern. And that is, as you had mentioned earlier, can you slow down? I mean, it's like drinking from a fire hydrant too much, too fast. You said you can see a poor pattern, which is what I saw in the home. I described it was a mansion, by the way. Why do rich people just want more and more and more money?

Hey, that's for Dr. Bober, you know, forensic psychiatrist, or Dr. Angela Arnold. She's a psychiatrist as well. Hey, Dr. Angie, I want you to go back and get your degree in forensic psychiatry because we need it big time. So, Joe Scott, you said poor pattern, splash pattern. Okay, go ahead. Yeah, so, you know, the goal here, obviously, is to initiate a fire with this accelerant. But the fact, and this is fascinating, the fact that the firefighters, you know, were able to smell and sense this accelerant out there gives us an indication of what?

Well, it means it hadn't been consumed. It was there. So they kind of bungled this from the beginning. I find it fascinating. You know, this guy said that someone took a wrench and actually loosened the nut on this attachment for the natural gas to kind of leak out. And that goes to purpose. And when this thing initiates, it's blowing out. Remember, he said there was a loud roaring sound and that's what it sounds like. And it's terrifying to hear this, but it didn't get to the point where all of the gas was consumed. crime stories with nancy grace guys a family wakes up to a loud explosion in their home and they find out the gas main has been tampered with intentionally to blow up the whole family. Now, who in that home has an enemy that

would do that? I want to go out to Richard Truntz, private investigator, former cop, I believe in Fort Lauderdale, now at CrispinSpecialInvestigations.com. Richard, don't you just love it when you've got a perp who obviously is smart and they've thought everything out but then one little detail goes wrong when the gas main blew the gasoline that he and i'm saying yes i'm saying he i'm going out on a limb because this is typically statistically a male crime you get a woman jackie it's a little embarrassing to womankind. The most they do is to, like, get their cheating boyfriend or husband's clothes and go burn them in the front yard. Anyway, back to the topic.

Trunks, don't you just love it when one of their carefully planned schemes screws up? Like here, the timing, the gasoline didn't catch fire and the whole family lived. Well, you got to love it. And thank God, you know, these criminals, they make mistakes. And because they make mistakes, you know, they talk too much. And next thing you know, you're solving a crime. I don't know that this was really a mistake, Richard. I think this just had to do with, can I say, the perp's bad luck and my good luck and the family's good luck. They didn't go up in flames. I mean, you know, Ashley Wilcott, judge and trial lawyer, Court TV anchor, you see it every day in court and at Court TV,

where one little thing in a very carefully crafted crime goes wrong. The gasoline didn't catch fire when it was supposed to. That's right. And that's why criminals are caught nine times out of 10, because something does go wrong. They think they can plan for everything. They think they can make it happen exactly the way they want it to happen. But guess what? That's not what happens. And because of something not going the way they anticipated, then we have better evidence and a way to catch criminals. Now we can figure out, is this just an outright pyro? I don't think so. A pyromaniac that loves starting fires. I think it's something to do with this family, because if things had gone

to plan, they would all be dead. But let me go back to Dr. Angela Arnold, renowned psychiatrist joining me out of the Atlanta area. What's the deal with pyros? Because we hear about it like starting a huge fire that consumes thousands and thousands of acres and puts people out of their home. And it all started with them just wanting to start a fire. What is the deal with pyros? It's really kind of disgusting, Nancy, because pyros, it's often related to a sexual kind of deviance. You know, I don't know what it is with you, Dr. Angie, but you somehow connect everything back to sex. I would not think somebody starting a fire, it has to do with their sex life.

Are you sure it's not just you, Dr. Angie, projecting? Sure. No, no. i promise you it has to be how does starting a fire have anything to do with sex it's just it's that power is that can you imagine burning down a whole a whole i mean a whole like field or something it's just their way to get off is that a technical medical term that you just threw at me, their way to get off? Yeah, it's in the DSM, get off. Diagnostic something manual. Statistic manual.

Yes, I knew that stood for something. Okay, so guys, the whole home goes up and luckily the dad hears the blow and he gets his wife. I think, didn't he say, Levi Page of 17 years and two children out of the home? Nancy, they were all out of the home. They escaped. They all lived. All right, so the hunt is on for a pyro, possibly with a grudge against somebody in that house.

But then a twist in the case. Listen to Josh Mankiewicz. Amy Salvaggio remembers well the night her duplex apartment in Stowe, Ohio, caught fire. It was March 27th, 2010, a rare night off for the 24-year-old intensive care nurse. I was at my boyfriend's. I got a call in the middle of the night from a neighbor saying that the house was on fire. We were only about two minutes away, so drove over very fast. Amy says she jumped out and ran toward the firefighters who were working her half of the duplex, where the worst damage was. The first thing that they asked me was, who would want to kill you? Who would want to murder you?

And I just kind of looked at them like, what? What are you talking about? And then they asked me, don't you smell all the gasoline? And that's when I stopped, and I realized that that's all you could smell was this strong odor of gasoline. A seasoned arson investigator will pick up on things that civilians won't, such as the smell of gas. Now, when you go to a gas station, you smell it, and you expect to smell it. But notice here, she wasn't even aware the victim, the second family attacked. She wasn't even aware of the heavy smell of gasoline until the cops pointed it out to her and said, who wants to kill you?

Did you notice that? What about it, Joe Scott? Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know, why else in the world would there be an accelerant present at the scene? You know, this goes, I think, you know, to kind of get into your area relative to law is is intent. Why is it that you would have this the smell that's out there? You know, obviously they had picked up on this.

So this goes to this idea that somebody is framing this event to do great harm to this individual. Interesting, guys. Stowe is a city in Summit County, Ohio, population 34,837. It's a small town. So how is there a pyro and nobody knows who it is? Dr. Angie, Dr. Angela Arnold, when you're looking for an adult pirate, or it may not be an adult, what would the signs be of someone who's willing to wipe out a whole family in order to, as you say, Angie, your words, not mine, get off? You know, Nancy, I would look for

some, well, first of all, one of the most important things you want to look for is what kind of things are they buying at the store? What kind of things are being delivered to their home? What kind of things are they looking at on the Internet? Because these, I'm telling you, Nancy, these people are going to look like they're just your typical Joe, particularly in a small town like that. Typically, everybody loves them. They're probably coaching some team for their kids. There is nothing that could make this person stand out. They are doing a really hard and good job of fitting into the community. You know, Ashley Wilcox, I want to follow up on what Dr. Angela Arnold just said.

You know, with serial killers, we can almost always trace back that they tortured animals when they were younger. They had a mean streak, to put it in layperson's terms. And you see a callous disregard for life. And you can identify their behavior almost till the time that they were prepubescent. But for arsonists, it's not that easy, Ashley. It really isn't, Nancy. It's a whole different set of red flags, so to speak, that you can look back and say, well, this was a red flag.

They were killing animals at age seven. With arsonists, it is a unique set of characteristics or qualities that seem to lead into this. And so often I have read studies where there is an arsonist who is finally caught. And when you interview or speak to people that knew them growing up, there were not a lot of red flags to make these people say, oh, I'm not surprised. Very often you find ineffectuality, someone that feels powerless, someone that let's say, dropped out of school, dropped out of college, goes from job to job, is angry with their personal life. There are red flags, but as

Ashley and Dr. Ant, you're pointing out, very hard to find with an arsonist. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. What happened to the Perk family? And now, what happened to Amy and Silvagio? As a matter of fact, to Levi Page, the gas meter at Amy and Silvagio's duplex was also tampered with. It was disconnected and hanging and gas was escaping into the air. That's exactly what happened at Scott Perk's home and his family asleep. Yes, Nancy, you're correct. The second fire was a block away from that home. It happened almost a year later on the same day, and the MO was the same. There was gas poured around the foundation,

gas poured around the gas line and gas meter, gas line unhooked from the gas meter. And because it happened in the same neighborhood, investigators were connecting the dots and saying this could be linked. We could have an arsonist on our hand. Now you can't ignore the almost fingerprint nature of these two arsons where in both cases, people were nearly killed. You got the gas meter tampered with in both cases, gas escaping into the air in both cases. A disconnected gas line, gasoline poured around the foundation of the duplex and the home. Both of them are home dwellings. In other words, they're not apartment complexes.

They're not commercial complexes. You're not burning up a car. Both times you've got a structure, a residential structure with gas poured around the foundation. They're one block from each other. And it's almost exactly one year later from the PERC arson. And it's at the same time in the morning. Would you say, Richard Trunt, that that's a fingerprint crime? That's definitely a fingerprint crime. And what happened is because of the similarities involved here, the actual police lieutenant that handled the first fire, because he handled that, he was there for the second fire and he started to connect the dots.

To you, Justice Scott Morgan, Professor of Forensics, what would the arson investigator do now? Well, let me tell you what they're going to do. Nancy, the thing about it is, remember how we talked about earlier on with that first fire that there was a smell of gasoline there? Well, what this individual has done, they have left back, they have left in place a specific chemical signature. What that means is that if they're, this person's very used to this, this is, they're returning to the trough, if you will. They're going to try to connect chem at a chemical level, at least. And this is just one of the things they're going to try to connect. Is there a match between the accelerant used at the first case and the second case? And

again, that's going to go into this thread that's weaving all of this together you couple that with the behaviors for instance let me give you another piece here if that pipe was disconnected with the same tool for instance remember we're talking about them being familiar with this and being comfortable there might very well be little indentions along that nut that match up to the same tool. Maybe use the same thing. And again, we could call in a tool mark expert for something like that. You know, another factor is that these are only one block from each other. It's not like they're 10 miles. They're one block. And I love using the example of Robert Blake. the killer, i.e. Robert Blake, Beretta, movie star Robert Blake, his wife, Bonnie Lee Bakley, shot dead behind a restaurant while he and she had been inside

eating at the Italian restaurant, Vitelli's, that was the name of it. She goes to the car, he walks her, then he has to come back into the restaurant and while he's gone, she's shot dead. The point is the murder weapon is found a couple, a few yards away from the murder in a dumpster. So the killer is somebody that couldn't get too far away from the crime scene to dispose of the murder weapon. So that drastically narrows down your pool of suspects, i.e. Robert Blake. So in this case, you have someone committing two arsons within one block. Joe Scott, do you remember the guy in Florida that was shooting people off bus routes? They'd get off the bus and follow him and shoot him dead. He killed multiple people that way.

We knew it had to be somebody that took that bus or was familiar with the neighborhood because they were all so close together. So what does it tell you? These two arson scenes where they literally blow up the place with people in it or try to. What does that tell you about the perp? Well, it goes to comfort, Nancy. Again, this idea that they're familiar with this geographical area. There's a high likelihood that if they don't live there, they at least frequent that area on a daily or weekly basis. They know the streets. They know the comings and goings of the individuals. They have an opportunity also to target individuals in that location. Remember, these things revolve around individuals that are within your circle many times. Those things that

you can see, those things that you interact with all the time, and there is a comfort level. This is completely different, say, for instance, where we have a serial killer that's roaming the entire nation. Those are the exception as opposed to the norm. This serialized event right here goes to familiarity with that location. You're absolutely right. It's not just setting a field on fire like Dr. Angela Arnold was talking about earlier, the thrill that some people would get from that. these are targeted individuals in their homes. So let's look at the individuals. What's the common factor? Then police start thinking back, thinking back. Listen to our friend at Dateline. On the night of the fire, the detective told Lydell, Scott Perk had casually added a tantalizing detail to his life story.

Scott just out of the blue says to me, well, his first wife had committed suicide in 1985, and she was pregnant, nine months pregnant. As if like, you know, not only is my house in embers, but this isn't even the worst thing that happened to me. I was shocked. So as his home is burning and he saved his family, he casually mentions, this isn't the worst thing that ever happened to me. My wife committed suicide when she was nine months pregnant. Now, right there, stop everything.

The method and assessment of homicide and suicide is very clear statistically, and I talk about statistics a lot because they can't lie. Statistically, Richard Trunt's PI, former cop, Crispin Special Investigation, statistically, it is almost statistically impossible that a female, nine months pregnant, in that social strata is going to commit suicide. It's what just sticks out. I mean, out of the clear blue, this guy mentions he lost his wife to suicide. But the nine months, I think, is what really stuck out to the investigator, really jumped out at him when he mentioned that nine months. That is not common for anybody to commit suicide, especially when you're nine months pregnant. Not at all. Your overwhelming innate desire is to protect the child. So that suddenly comes back to one of the cops

and the cop starts thinking about it. Take a listen to Dave Mack, Crime Online. On the morning of March 18th, 1985, Meg Perk, 24 years old and nine months pregnant, woke up not feeling well. According to her husband, Scott, he called the doctor and he got her an appointment. Then he took a bath. While he was in the tub, he saw Meg walk by the bathroom down the hallway. About five minutes later, Scott gets out of the tub and calls out for his wife. Getting no reply, he walks down the hall and he sees Meg hanging from a banister with a rope tied around her neck. Grabbing a knife from a nearby table, Scott Perk cuts his wife down and calls EMS and begins performing CPR. When EMS crews arrive a few minutes later, Scott Perk meets them at the door.

Meg Perk is taken to the hospital where her baby is declared dead. Meg Perk hangs on for another 24 hours, but on March 19, 1985, Meg Perk dies. The assistant Summit County coroner, Dr. Robert Ruiz, rules her death suicide by hanging. There's so many things about that that Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Guys, we're talking about two arsons one block apart. But what does that have to do with a pregnant woman that commits suicide at nine months? To Joe Scott Morgan, death investigator, what's the difference between a medical examiner and a coroner? Well, the coroners are elected, Nancy, and they're all over the country. They don't have to be forensic pathologists. And this guy, this Ruiz guy that did

this initial assessment and this examination on this woman, Hey, listen, let me ask you something, Nancy. If you had to have heart surgery, would you go to a surgeon that had never been trained in heart surgery? Well, this guy did the autopsy. He had never had any training in forensic pathology at all. And when you're talking about somebody that has hung themselves, these cases are very delicate because you have to be able to have the tools at your command to assess the injuries around the neck. Boy, we heard a lot about that over the past couple of years. And so this is critical in this case, and this is what created the problem this case began with.

This guy had no training and should not have been doing this assessment. It's a very delicate procedure when you are talking about or examining injuries to the neck. Think of Epstein, Jeffrey Epstein, and the controversy even now that's going on. Did he commit suicide or was he murdered? Because when you hang, you expect a U-shaped ligature marking around the neck. And it is theorized and evidence shows Epstein's markings were straight across. So what do we find out? How difficult is it to get her body exhumed? Take a listen to our friends at Dateline. In September 2011, the remarkably well-preserved bodies of Meg and her baby son were exhumed. It was amazing to actually meet her.

It really was. Thinking that, you know, we are going to do her and her family justice. She was holding that baby in her arms, in the casket? Yes. Hard to see? It was very tough. It really, it brings everything home. A lot had changed since that day in 1985 when the Summit County Coroner had declared Meg's death a suicide.

First of all, instead of a coroner, the county now had a board-certified medical examiner. The staff was all new, better trained. Forensic technology was much improved. And thanks to an excellent embalming job, the marks on Meg's body were still there. To get a body exhumed is somehow, sometimes a very difficult thing. You've got to go through a lot of legal hurdles. The next of kin is the one that typically goes along or opposes it, but technically, once a body has been entombed, it then belongs oftentimes to the state. So it could be up to a judge solely as to whether exhumation is appropriate.

We're hearing when her body was exhumed, this is Perk's wife that committed suicide at nine months pregnant, they could still see the markings on her throat. What did they discover? To Levi Page, what did they learn about the markings on her throat? So, Nancy, the body of Margaret Perk, it was well preserved and it had actually shown the injuries to her throat. And it was consistent with strangulation because investigators looked at her neck and the bruising was going in a downward

direction instead of an upward direction as if she had hanged herself with a rope. It was going in the direction of someone holding her throat down, strangling the life out of her. Explain, Joe Scott Morgan. One of the theories is that this was more consistent with her as opposed to having a rope, having a belt around her neck, Nancy. And this is something that's commonly seen with a ligature strangulation, where we're talking about where the noose itself or the apparatus is pulled downward and you create a mark that is more parallel to the shoulders, whereas with a hanging, we have what's referred to as the tenting. And I mean like an old-fashioned tent pup tent, tenting feature where it comes to a

point above the head. So this is, that's absent. So they missed this in the initial autopsy. And the fact that this body was so well embalmed is really the saving grace in here, Nancy, that literally freezes the time. It freezes the time so that you can still see the hemorrhage from all these years back. And they were able to appreciate this because now they've got a board-certified forensic pathologist looking at this case. And what, if anything, can you tell me about a bruise that was discovered on Margaret Ann Perks' back, at the small, the bottom of her back. It was determined that somebody had their knee on her body and was holding her down

as they were strangling her with an object similar to a belt. So how do we, I'm thinking Joe Scott Morgan, she's got the bruising at the bottom of her back. Right. And she's got ligature markings that instead of going up like a U that she would have from hanging is going sideways or even a little bit down like someone's pulling her back. Now, the only way to prove that is to experiment and re-perform the autopsy. To Levi Page, what can you tell me the cops did regarding the

banister from which she hung herself? So this banister, all those years later, this happened,

the suicide, alleged suicide happened in 1985. All these years later, in around 2011, they actually tried to see if this banister would hold together if someone hung themselves, and it would not. Indentation marks at the very least on that banister, and they ended up finding another banister exactly like that one and doing the test on it.

And they learned there would have been at least indentations. And they're thinking back on what Perk said about how he was in the shower, I think, and he saw her walk by. So who breaks into the house and kills his wife in this manner while he is in the shower? Then they start thinking back about the night the Perk home went up in flames. Listen to Dave Mack. Sergeant Ken Mifflin gets Scott Perk to join him in his warm car while they watch crews try to put out the fire. As they talk, Perk tells the sergeant that he recently lost his job, the family's in serious debt, and the insurance company told him to videotape everything in the house in case of fire. Mifflin asks, how recently?

Perk says, recent. Mifflin notices the family van parked in the driveway appears loaded down with stuff, and Perk tells him that he was taking a trip to North Carolina with his son to visit relatives. As Mifflin looks at items in the van, he sees old family photos, family cookbooks that have been in the family for generations, not things one would normally take on a vacation. And to you, very quickly, Richard Trotz, I learned that day one in Arson Investigations, one guy I prosecuted had taken every one of his fancy suits to the cleaners, moved all his shoes, all of his personal family photos of his, not his wife's, and a lot of other things valuable to him,

and then whoops, the fire started. That's one of the first things investigators look for is has the perp removed personal belongings? Well, that just completely jumps out at you. You know, the guy's taking things out of his house that he wants to keep and then gives a story that, oh, you know, we put everything in the van because we're going on a trip. A trip with old family photos and cookbooks. Richard Trunst, you're right again. So guys, they take another careful listen to the 911 call. Listen to our friends at Dateline. It was a few days after the fire at Scott Perk's house that Stowe's chief

arson investigator, Jim Lydell, back from vacation, called Detective Ken Mifflin. And he says, you've got to hear this. And so he played me the 911 tape. Mifflin had heard something on that initial 911 call from Scott Perk's daughter, something he wanted Lydell to hear too. During a lull, Scott Perk can be heard calmly whispering to someone. He was talking about a pet ferret, and his tone seemed to be more rueful oversight than anguished alarm. That was a bit of a flag. A flag? Oh no, you forgot the ferret. You forgot the ferret. Obviously, they were trying to take belongings and pets out of the home. A throwaway comment snares a killer. Arson suspect makes detectives suspicious when he starts talking about his pregnant wife that commits suicide years and years before. Then a careful listen to that 911 tape blows the case wide open.

Levi Page, where is Scott Perk now? So, Nancy, Scott Perk pled guilty to arson, attempted murder, child endangerment. Remember, his kids were young teenagers, 116, 112, and he was sentenced to 28 years in prison for that arson. Not only the arson to his home, Nancy, but that arson that happened a block away. And you know how police knew that he was responsible for that arson? He had moved his family to an apartment complex. And the night of that arson, they went to the apartment complex and examined all the cars in that apartment complex. All of them had frost on them because it was so cold, except his vehicle.

It had no frost on it, which means that night he had driven somewhere. Amazing police work. So the night when the second fire happens, they go to his place, and his car is the only one in the parking lot without snow and frost on it. In fact, it's still warm. Inside, they find muddy boots and a gas can inside Perk's home. Levi, what about the charge of the murder of Margaret Ann Perk,

pregnant with his child? Yes, so he went to trial on that, Nancy, and he was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison for strangling her with a belt. Well, here's one that didn't get away. Nancy Gray's Crime Story signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.