is sure exactly when Liz crept into the dark house and set the fatal fires, but it was probably very late at night on Friday, August 16, 2013, or very early the next morning. Omaha Fire Department’s Station 61 was alerted at 8:14 A.M. that Saturday to a possible house fire, two miles south of their facility. The crew rushed to their big ladder rig, donned safety gear, climbed aboard, buckled their seat-belts, and radioed dispatch that they were en route to the fire. It was 8:15 when they pulled out of the station—well within their one-minute turnout time goal.
Truck Captain Mark Sidener, with the Omaha Fire Department since 1998, worked twenty-four-hour stints, along with the rest of the crew. They started each shift at 7 A.M. and finished the next day at the same time and were only an hour and a quarter into their day when the alarm sounded. “On a possible house fire, we have a standard protocol for how many rigs we send to a fire call,” he explains. “Three pumps, a truck company, two battalion chiefs and a med unit.”
The Station 61 crew arrived at the scene in five minutes and six seconds—twenty-one seconds after first responders from Station 60. Slightly closer to the emergency destination, Station 60 had had a head start. In the firefighter’s world, speed, of course, is crucial. A few seconds can make the difference between life and death. Neither team had wasted a moment, but this morning, it made no difference. The fire was already out, the victims long dead.
When Sidener’s rig pulled up to the house just south of Omaha’s West Center Road, “I hopped out of the truck with my firefighters. There was a female standing in the front yard area, and I made contact with her and asked if anybody was still in the house.” Shanna Golyar told Sidener that while no humans were inside, four pets were in the home—two dogs, a cat, and a snake. When firefighters entered the house, it was no longer burning. The atmosphere was hazy with smoke, and much of the interior was charred and blackened with soot. They searched the building from top to bottom for possible victims. The only victims they found were the poor pets, discovered in the rooms where Liz had said they would be. All had perished from smoke inhalation.
Garret Sloan would not learn of the deaths of the animals until years after the fire, and when he did, he was heartsick and angry. “I helped her get the dogs,” he remembers bitterly, explaining that he had “loaned” her the adoption fee. He had met the dogs just once, a pair of small breed canines. According to Garret, the snake had belonged to Peter’s father, Dirk. Garret didn’t know the pets’ names or anything else about them. As an animal lover, it was painful enough to learn of their deaths, and he preferred to not know the details.
Whatever heat the fire had generated had dissipated by the time firefighters arrived. Sidener verified that fact with his thermal imaging camera, a device that reads the temperatures of materials, and the rescuers determined that nothing was burning. They measured the temperature of the walls, too, to be sure nothing continued to smolder within them. Readings showed that all surfaces had cooled. No flames, no burning embers remained.
“After we did the primary search of the residence, we went downstairs and checked that too and found nothing down there. And we came back upstairs and started opening windows to assist with ventilation to remove some of the smoke out of the building.” Positive pressure fans were placed in the exterior doorways to push fresh air into the house, forcing the smoky air out the open windows.
If a fire is deemed suspicious, investigators are called upon to determine the cause. Two fishy things had immediately jumped out at the first responders—a gas can on the floor of the living room, and evidence that the fire had originated in multiple spots. Sidener noted two couches with fire damage in the basement. Clothing and other material, now somewhat charred, had been piled in front of the furniture. The couches were not close together, and it was obvious that the fire had not spread from one to the other. The area surrounding the sofas was untouched. Sidener points out, “A fire doesn’t start in different areas unless it’s made to start in different areas. It starts in one spot and travels across material.”
Even a