Episode 289

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Speaker 4 Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence and is not intended for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker 6 She was literally burnt alive. There was not much left of her body.

Speaker 8 If you support independent media such as podcasts like this one, head on over to swordandscale.com and consider joining Plus and help keep us alive.

Speaker 11 this is season 12 episode 289 of sword and scale a show that reveals that the worst monsters are real

Speaker 15 when you join plus starting at just 10 bucks a month you get commercial free early access to a whole ton of extra stuff.

Speaker 12 Just go check it out swordandscale.com or download our app on Android or iOS.

Speaker 19 This show was written and produced by Mish Barbara.

Speaker 20 So, when I started this podcast, I didn't realize I was actually starting a small business.

Speaker 22 Yikes.

Speaker 21 There's nothing small about a small business.

Speaker 16 You're working all of the time.

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Speaker 7 You may have heard of them.

Speaker 26 Their name is Shopify.

Speaker 29 Shopify's point-of-sale system is a unified command center for your retail business.

Speaker 31 It brings together in-store and online operations across up to a thousand locations.

Speaker 28 Imagine being able to guarantee that shopping is always convenient.

Speaker 35 Endless aisle, ship to customer, buy online, pick up in-store.

Speaker 32 All these things are made simpler to customers so they can shop how they want, and staff have all the tools to close the sale every time.

Speaker 36 And let's face it, acquiring new customers is expensive.

Speaker 39 With Shopify POS, you can keep shoppers coming back with personalized experiences and first-party data that give marketing teams a competitive edge.

Speaker 37 In fact, it's proven.

Speaker 27 Based on a report from EY, businesses on Shopify POS see real results, like 22% better total cost of ownership and benefits equivalent to an 8.9% uplift in sales on average relative to the market set surveyed.

Speaker 33 So, if you have a retail or online business, then I'll tell you what, Shopify is a fantastic partner to have on your side.

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Speaker 46 Just go to shopify.com slash sword and scale and sign up.

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Speaker 47 It's a cold January morning in Buffalo, New York.

Speaker 49 The sky is black and clear.

Speaker 50 The kind of of stillness that feels a little unnatural.

Speaker 11 A little unsettling.

Speaker 53 Like the city itself is holding its breath.

Speaker 18 Moonlight casts long shadows across the snowy streets.

Speaker 56 Not even the wind stirs.

Speaker 7 Nothing moves in this cold snap except a faint curl of smoke rising in the distance.

Speaker 57 A warning...

Speaker 18 No one has noticed yet.

Speaker 59 At the local fire station, Fire Marshal Paul Simonian cradles another mug of coffee, hunched over his desk, passing the time with paperwork.

Speaker 60 Then the call comes in.

Speaker 61 A fire on the east side.

Speaker 63 Within seconds, his team is pulling on their gear, boots slamming against the concrete.

Speaker 17 The fire engine roars to life as they tear through the frozen streets towards the house on fire.

Speaker 13 So they get there, pitch black, the room's full of smoke, you see a little glow on the floor, and they say we have no fire on the first floor. We're in the second floor.

Speaker 13 We see some rubbish, maybe a pile of clothes burning in the center of the room.

Speaker 53 Paul listens to the radio.

Speaker 62 It seems like your typical house fire.

Speaker 56 His men are on it.

Speaker 50 He turns back to his work, keeping an ear on dispatch.

Speaker 13 Shortly after, the lieutenant called back, said, no, it's not rubbish. We have a victim up here.
We have a fatality.

Speaker 62 Paul suits up, gets in his vehicle, and speeds towards the fire.

Speaker 13 En route, I get to the fire scene. I go up to the incident command, ask him what's going on.
He says there's some occupants that are across the street at a neighbor's house, some brothers and a mom.

Speaker 13 I go, okay.

Speaker 10 The victim's family made it out.

Speaker 70 Now they huddle inside a neighbor's house away from the biting cold.

Speaker 61 But inside, 28-year-old Elizabeth Bell

Speaker 72 is dead.

Speaker 66 Thick smoke curls from the top windows of the little house, twisting into the night like something alive.

Speaker 61 Red and blue lights slash across the neighbors' windows, shaking the street awake.

Speaker 68 Neighbors step cautiously onto their porches, drawn by the unmistakable pull of disaster.

Speaker 59 Only minutes before, firefighters were barking orders, hauling hoses, and attacking the inferno on the second floor.

Speaker 24 But now the fire is out, and the smoke has settled.

Speaker 58 So when Paul arrives, he takes a breath, steadying himself.

Speaker 50 Then he steps inside.

Speaker 13 Go in the front door. There's no visible fire at all down on the first floor.
I go to the back of the house where the stairs are.

Speaker 13 I just start seeing some smoke smudge down the stairs and some fire debris. I meet the lieutenant up there.
He takes me and shows me where Elizabeth is. She's in the back room of the house.

Speaker 13 There's some big aquariums on the side with some reptiles in it.

Speaker 13 There's fire damage in there like ceiling heat damage and things like that and our fire crews did their overhauling which ripped down the ceilings and the walls and looking in

Speaker 13 the channels to make sure there's no more fire. Then we proceed to the front of the house and there's a small little room on the left.

Speaker 13 There was a little girl's bed in there, like a Hello Kitty bed or something like that.

Speaker 53 But the little girl's room wasn't the place where the fire originated.

Speaker 74 So Paul moved over to Elizabeth's bedroom.

Speaker 13 And then I went in Elizabeth's bedroom and you can see the mattress was burned pretty good on a third of it. Maybe it was a big mattress, maybe a king-size mattress.

Speaker 13 Burned into the box spring a little bit. There was some fire damage in there, more heat damage.

Speaker 53 The fire started on Elizabeth's bed.

Speaker 62 The mattress was burned into the box spring, black and charred.

Speaker 75 Coiled springs flinging upwards like a broken jack-in-the-box.

Speaker 76 The fire on her mattress was still petering out.

Speaker 13 The ceiling was down, some of the walls were torn down, and I happened to just look-you know, I was just looking across the room, seeing what's going on. I look for candles, I'm looking for smoking,

Speaker 13 overloaded extension cords, anything like that.

Speaker 13 And I see a piece of drywall that's broken down and something's dripping on it, but it's leaving a sheen, like a rainbow rainbow sheen.

Speaker 64 The oily rainbow sheen made Paul do a double take.

Speaker 17 He stepped closer.

Speaker 66 He knew what that was.

Speaker 48 He just couldn't believe it.

Speaker 13 And there's a little juice bottle that's tipped over and it's dripping and I take a smell of that and I notice it's gasoline. It smells like gasoline like an accelerant.
My flag goes up.

Speaker 13 I go, well, we probably have a crime scene here. I go back out with the lieutenant.
I said, stop the overhauling. Don't rip anything else down anywhere.
Don't touch Elizabeth.

Speaker 64 Paul knew that spray of gasoline on Elizabeth's wall was the beginning of their story.

Speaker 47 Now he had to find out what the rest of it was.

Speaker 47 This looked like the aftermath of a terrible accident or a desperate attempt to end it all.

Speaker 12 The Buffalo Police Department was called onto the scene.

Speaker 50 Paul racked his brain to figure out what had happened to Elizabeth. It was also strange and unsettling because Elizabeth lay splayed on the floor where she died, wearing only a bra.

Speaker 64 The fabric fused to what was left of her.

Speaker 56 She had clearly been sleeping when the fire started, and it didn't start around her, it started on her.

Speaker 82 Her stomach had been the source, and it was charred beyond anything human.

Speaker 18 From her knees to her belly, you know,

Speaker 13 all in there, her groin, her thighs, all that area. Not her face or her upper body.
So it was all right there.

Speaker 83 It was a grisly sight.

Speaker 61 Something you should probably never see in your lifetime.

Speaker 22 Elizabeth had hollowed out in the middle.

Speaker 80 Her stomach was like the pit of a campfire.

Speaker 13 It's very disturbing because some of the area is red.

Speaker 13 Some is black. It's just burned,

Speaker 13 burned like you burn food. But Elizabeth was burned in some areas to the bone.

Speaker 13 I could see her thigh.

Speaker 53 Paul and the investigators went across the street to talk to Elizabeth's family.

Speaker 12 The house was rented by Elizabeth's mother, who lived there, along with Elizabeth, her young daughter, and Elizabeth's brother.

Speaker 7 When Paul and the investigators spoke with Elizabeth's brother, He told them how everything started that night.

Speaker 13 Then it kind of started really taking a twist that her boyfriend came over,

Speaker 13 some yelling going on back and forth.

Speaker 50 Elizabeth's newly estranged boyfriend, Frank Brett Jr., had showed up at the house in the middle of the night.

Speaker 61 Elizabeth's brother said he came in and walked straight up to her bedroom.

Speaker 60 Her brother heard some yelling and then an earth-shattering boom.

Speaker 13 And the one brother said

Speaker 13 he heard Frank come down the backstairs very fast and he opened up his bedroom door or went into the kitchen and he saw Frank on fire and they were trying to put him out and he told the brother go upstairs help your sister and he ran out the back door frank fled the house on fire leaving Elizabeth burning in her bedroom and the horrid smell of smoke billowing behind him This is former Buffalo District Attorney John Flynn.

Speaker 6 He took off out of the house, went to the backyard, jumped a fence, and then ran down the backyards to another street. And

Speaker 6 he broke into a house on Leroy Street and hid in a closet.

Speaker 52 The flames were still clinging to Frank as he ran like a madman, peeling off his burning clothes and throwing them behind him in the snow.

Speaker 58 He made it down to the street before breaking into the first unlocked house he could find.

Speaker 6 He's now hiding in the closet of this house that he broke into.

Speaker 6 A little girl who lived in that house wakes up mommy and daddy in their bedroom and says, Mommy and Daddy, someone's in the house.

Speaker 55 Now,

Speaker 6 put yourself in that situation, okay? I got five kids, all right? If one of my kids did that, I'd be like, yo, honey, you're dreaming. You had a bad dream, go back to bed.

Speaker 6 And that's exactly what dad did here.

Speaker 6 Well, mom now,

Speaker 6 who's lying in bed, says, hmm, I think I smell something. You know, mom and dad, you know, are kind of up in the bed now, and they're kind of sniffing now.
And mom's like, yeah, I smell something.

Speaker 6 And so dad gets up. What he's smelling is burnt flesh.

Speaker 7 Unbelievable.

Speaker 24 The unmistakable smell wafting from the closet had given Frank away.

Speaker 6 Dad follows the smell of burnt flesh into this closet and opens the closet door.

Speaker 6 He now grabs this guy, takes him out of the closet, takes him out of the house, and throws him outside on the front lawn.

Speaker 66 But at the same time, police officers from the scene at Elizabeth's house had noticed Frank's trail in the snow.

Speaker 56 and started following it.

Speaker 13 Blood on fence posts and climbing over the fence. We see clothing.
They find a burned jacket behind a bush.

Speaker 13 They're tracking this person in the snow, the blood trail in the snow, the clothing, climbing fences, broken picket fences.

Speaker 13 And then they get a call, the police get a call of somebody in a man's house around the corner.

Speaker 85 Frank lay in the snow on the front lawn.

Speaker 80 His raw red flesh exposed to the elements.

Speaker 56 It was a mess of soot and blood.

Speaker 10 But unlike Elizabeth, he was alive.

Speaker 6 Three different people in the neighborhood now have called 911

Speaker 6 and police, fire, first responders, everyone's coming in the neighborhood. And as you can imagine, there is a blood trail of

Speaker 6 him running

Speaker 6 from these backyards. all the way down to where this house was.

Speaker 7 Again, unbelievable.

Speaker 37 It

Speaker 7 unbelievable.

Speaker 64 What had started as a routine house fire had spiraled into chaos on the east side of Buffalo.

Speaker 59 Flames, smoke, an injured child, and then something far worse.

Speaker 58 A dead woman who looked like she'd been burned alive.

Speaker 56 Frank was burned badly, too. Unrecognizable, actually.

Speaker 22 But he was breathing.

Speaker 74 And for investigators, that meant one thing.

Speaker 50 If he survived, he might be the only one who could explain what really happened inside that house.

Speaker 73 But by the time that he could speak, a story would already be taking shape.

Speaker 61 One where investigators wondered if the fire started in Elizabeth's hands or his.

Speaker 21 So when I started this podcast, I didn't realize I was actually starting a small business.

Speaker 22 Yikes.

Speaker 21 There's nothing small about a small business.

Speaker 16 You're working all of the time.

Speaker 23 Thankfully, though, I have a partner with all the tools that I need to be successful.

Speaker 7 You may have heard of them.

Speaker 26 Their name is Shopify.

Speaker 29 Shopify's point-of-sale system is a unified command center for your retail business.

Speaker 31 It brings together in-store and online operations across up to a thousand locations.

Speaker 28 Imagine being able to guarantee that shopping is always convenient.

Speaker 35 Endless aisle, ship to customer, buy online, pick up in store.

Speaker 34 All these things are made simpler to customers so they can shop how they want.

Speaker 9 And staff have all the tools to close the sale every time.

Speaker 36 And let's face it, acquiring new customers is expensive.

Speaker 16 With Shopify POS, you can keep shoppers coming back with personalized experiences and first-party data that give marketing teams a competitive edge.

Speaker 37 In fact, it's proven.

Speaker 27 Based on a report from EY, businesses on Shopify POS see real results, like 22% better total cost of ownership and benefits equivalent to an 8.9% uplift in sales on average relative to the market set surveyed.

Speaker 33 So if you have a retail or online business, then I'll tell you what, Shopify is a fantastic partner to have on your side.

Speaker 23 Get all the big stuff for your small business right with Shopify.

Speaker 14 Sign up for your $1 a month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash sword and scale.

Speaker 7 All one word.

Speaker 46 Just go to shopify.com slash sword and scale and sign up.

Speaker 43 You'll thank me later.

Speaker 7 You will.

Speaker 11 Shopify.com slash sword and scale.

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Speaker 84 27-year-old Elizabeth Bell had been burned alive in her Eastside home in Buffalo, New York.

Speaker 15 What started as a routine house fire quickly turned into a potential homicide investigation when firefighters discovered that Elizabeth was the source of the Inferno.

Speaker 10 Even more shocking, her former boyfriend Frank Brett Jr.

Speaker 59 had also gone up in flames.

Speaker 61 He fled the scene burning alive only to be caught after breaking into a stranger's home, his scorched flesh giving him away. Elizabeth was pronounced dead at the scene.

Speaker 50 Fire Marshal Paul Simonian hypothesized that gasoline had been thrown on her torso and ignited.

Speaker 48 Elizabeth had stumbled and crawled away from her bed into the hallway, where she passed out and perished.

Speaker 73 During the chaos, Elizabeth's child had run too, burning only the bottoms of her feet as she escaped downstairs, out the front door with the other members of the house.

Speaker 53 No one else had been hurt in the fire except Elizabeth and Frank.

Speaker 61 And the police were zeroing in on Frank.

Speaker 72 After all, innocent people don't run and hide.

Speaker 7 But Frank had been taken to the hospital, not the holding cell.

Speaker 6 He was, like I said before, severely burned, like almost dead burned. I suspect that you and your listeners have heard in the past degrees of burns, first degree, second degree, third degree.

Speaker 6 They don't really use degrees anymore. I mean, some people do, but what they use now is the terms superficial, partial thickness, and full thickness.

Speaker 83 A superficial burn is painful, but tolerable.

Speaker 12 You've probably suffered quite a few in your lifetime.

Speaker 59 Think of a really bad sunburn or that fleshy little lump you get when you touch a hot pan.

Speaker 70 Partial thickness burns are more severe and injure deeper layers of skin called the dermis.

Speaker 53 This burn will take weeks to heal and is the most painful because no damage has been done to the nerves.

Speaker 73 This kind of burn is pretty agonizing.

Speaker 53 But a full thickness burn destroys most of the dermis, getting right down to the muscle and bone.

Speaker 15 The burned part of the body is left with a waxy white appearance.

Speaker 59 It's completely terrifying.

Speaker 50 A full thickness burn destroys most of the nerves.

Speaker 72 There's no blister because the burn has gone so deep it's plowed through all that flesh, blood, and muscle.

Speaker 48 He had

Speaker 6 full thickness of burns throughout his body. He had to have a cadaver skin graph done of his face.
He lost all of his fingers. They actually had to put him in an

Speaker 6 induced coma to actually

Speaker 6 do the skin graph of his face, and they had to graft on new eyelids on his eyes. To say he was jacked up is an understatement of the century.

Speaker 50 Frank was a mummified version of the man he once was.

Speaker 63 Just a day before, he had been a handsome, healthy, 33-year-old man.

Speaker 42 Now, he was a monster, burned on 90% of his body, with stubs for hands and ears that melted into the side of his head.

Speaker 50 His lips looked like two banana slugs resting on an old leather mask.

Speaker 73 He would never be the same again.

Speaker 50 Karma's got a funny way of working.

Speaker 79 It really does.

Speaker 7 It can be quite efficient, too.

Speaker 6 There was no way he was leaving the hospital. He was not a flight risk.
So there was no, there was no rush to arrest him, to keep him in jail.

Speaker 24 He wasn't going anywhere.

Speaker 6 So in this case, we made the decision to not arrest him right away and to just work up our case, do the investigation, and then put it in the grand jury.

Speaker 87 Paul Simonian, the head fire marshal at the time, was already piecing together what had happened based on the evidence.

Speaker 13 You learn not to just rush to a snap judgment because so many things could happen. You know, you don't know the players.

Speaker 13 You don't know what actually transpired in that bedroom, who did what, who said what. I said, you got gasoline up here.
That doesn't belong up here. So something's wrong there.

Speaker 13 You have a boyfriend that ran out. They were both on fire.
He didn't stay to or try to help her. He ran out.
How badly is he burned? This is way before we have any information about Frank,

Speaker 13 any threats he's made in the past or history with Elizabeth.

Speaker 57 Frank may have been incapacitated, but Elizabeth's family was unharmed, and they knew far too much about the couple.

Speaker 88 That

Speaker 10 hundred square foot yellow house in Buffalo wasn't just a home.

Speaker 53 It was a tight-knit world where no secret stayed hidden, especially between Elizabeth and Frank.

Speaker 65 Elizabeth Bell was unconventional and eccentric.

Speaker 45 She was bold, passionate, and impossible to ignore.

Speaker 59 She had a deep love for animals, working at a veterinary clinic and filling her home with strays in need of care.

Speaker 84 Her aquarium teemed with reptiles, and a cage of ferrets rattled with energy.

Speaker 68 Each one adored.

Speaker 10 Her bedroom was like a zoo.

Speaker 83 In her early twenties, she had a daughter from a previous marriage and was raising her with the help of her mother.

Speaker 33 She was the kind of woman who dyed her hair every color of the rainbow.

Speaker 48 You know the type.

Speaker 47 You probably are the type, judging by our demographics data.

Speaker 50 Anyway, she thrived in Buffalo's alternative scene where music, misfits, and mayhem collided.

Speaker 59 That's where she met Frank, a fixture in their tight-knit friend group.

Speaker 62 They'd known each other for years, but in 2017, their friendship turned into something more.

Speaker 6 He had actually

Speaker 6 moved in with her into her mom's house and was living there in the fall of 2017.

Speaker 50 Frank was working in construction, doing odd jobs when he could.

Speaker 7 He was just as wild to look at as Elizabeth with his long-dyed red beard and alternative clothing.

Speaker 59 Think punk rock meets medieval tavern vibes with a dash of white guy with dreadlocks.

Speaker 41 That's the phenotype we're working with here.

Speaker 34 But he was charismatic and kind.

Speaker 85 Even Elizabeth's mother remembered how fond she had always been of Frank.

Speaker 51 He was the type of guy who really locked eyes with whoever he was talking to and made them feel like they were the center of the universe.

Speaker 64 He had a way about him that was inviting.

Speaker 7 When he wanted it to be, that is.

Speaker 7 Elizabeth and Frank were both intense type people.

Speaker 22 She wielded words like weapons, and he never backed down either.

Speaker 50 What had started as a blissful relationship full of fun and excitement quickly turned into toxicity.

Speaker 88 When Frank moved in, things slowly got worse.

Speaker 64 It was like he'd lost all his charismatic power being in their home.

Speaker 80 The personality he had put forth to impress people was washed away by tight living quarters.

Speaker 17 The real Frank started to show.

Speaker 66 That fall, Elizabeth's family all had to listen to the couple's fights getting worse.

Speaker 64 They would be screaming at each other well into the night.

Speaker 71 Two hard-headed, passionate people, both unwilling to give in.

Speaker 61 By December, it was all over.

Speaker 71 Their relationship hadn't even lasted a year before Elizabeth told Frank to get out.

Speaker 48 He didn't go quietly either.

Speaker 80 On his way out, he put his fist through a window.

Speaker 6 And he moved out. And again, now, this homicide occurred on January 11th.
So he moves out now in December, approximately a month before the homicide. And the breakup was not smooth.

Speaker 6 It was a very contentious breakup.

Speaker 53 Frank packed up his things and left in a huff to stay with his mom, who wasn't too far away.

Speaker 12 Though they had separated, Elizabeth and Frank continued their fighting.

Speaker 6 That month from December to January was extremely contentious.

Speaker 6 Contentious, you know,

Speaker 6 text messages going back and forth between the two of them.

Speaker 71 Through the safety of their cell phones, they argued about bills one party didn't pay and stuff they needed back from each other, you know, that kind of stuff.

Speaker 91 They hurled insults at one another like petty children via text.

Speaker 6 What really

Speaker 6 took it over the top was

Speaker 6 a bike that he had. that he left there.

Speaker 59 Frank's main way of getting around town was on his beloved bike.

Speaker 88 But this wasn't just any old mountain bike.

Speaker 47 He'd rigged it up to what he really fancied, a real

Speaker 55 special machine.

Speaker 6 And he put some kind of a fancy engine on the bike. So he turned the bike into kind of like, you know, a motorbike, all right?

Speaker 6 And so he had this like souped up bike that he left there. Elizabeth apparently put the bike to the curb, to the trash, and either someone picked the bike up or the garbage men did and threw it away.

Speaker 50 In an irritated rage one afternoon, Elizabeth threw Frank's bike on the curb along with his tools, the tools that his father had given him.

Speaker 59 She took a photograph of the pile and texted it to Frank.

Speaker 6 The bottom line is that he lost his bike. and he believed that she threw it away

Speaker 6 and he was livid. At that point, there were text messages going back and forth where he basically threatened to kill her.

Speaker 6 He threatened to burn her, like literally said, I'm going to burn you and your whole fat effing family.

Speaker 29 After the threat, Elizabeth wrote to Frank, Someone already thought your bike was trash. I'll bring everything else inside.

Speaker 70 Please don't burn our fat selves down.

Speaker 29 Good thing I paid for that bike.

Speaker 48 No love lost.

Speaker 21 He responded, not a joke.

Speaker 6 He also made threatening remarks to his boss.

Speaker 23 So

Speaker 6 Frank was kind of a handyman, laborer, construction kind of guy. He worked for this one guy who became a witness at trial.

Speaker 6 He basically told his boss that, hey, I'm going to pay her back for what she did or I'm going to get her. Words to that effect.

Speaker 17 Frank had lost his mind.

Speaker 91 That bike had pushed him to the point of no return.

Speaker 41 Elizabeth and Frank were so innately intense

Speaker 53 that when it was good, it was euphoric.

Speaker 18 But when it was bad, it was World War III.

Speaker 91 And when she finally kicked him out, Frank had nowhere to put the wreckage of his emotions.

Speaker 67 He didn't process it.

Speaker 30 He didn't grieve.

Speaker 51 He just flipped the switch.

Speaker 10 The love and passion he once felt for her all curdled into pure, undiluted hate.

Speaker 6 The early morning hours of

Speaker 6 January 11th of 2018,

Speaker 6 he got on a bike.

Speaker 6 Kind of ironic that he used a bike to go to the murder scene.

Speaker 51 You can say that again.

Speaker 6 He did not break in. The door was open, apparently, at three o'clock in the morning.
The adult brother who lived there was still up, and he saw him come in. And

Speaker 6 he didn't think anything of it because, you know, he had lived there up until a month ago. He was kind of coming in and coming out, you know, and he was still around, apparently.

Speaker 91 Elizabeth's brother wasn't privy to all the intense drama between her and Frank.

Speaker 17 That was going on between the two of them via texts and social media.

Speaker 12 So he watched Frank walk upstairs and said nothing.

Speaker 6 He had with him a satchel, and in the satchel, he had like charcoal briquettes, you know, like charcoal used on a grill. And

Speaker 6 he had

Speaker 6 lighter fluid.

Speaker 7 He had a lighter.

Speaker 6 And he also had

Speaker 6 a Hawaiian punch container filled with gasoline.

Speaker 81 Frank went quietly into the room that he used to share.

Speaker 74 He found Elizabeth asleep in her bed, and he undid his satchel.

Speaker 6 She was asleep or perhaps passed out in the bed. Now, I say passed out because when the autopsy was done, there was a

Speaker 6 significant amount of alcohol in her system.

Speaker 51 Alcohol knocks knocks you into a heavy sleep.

Speaker 64 It's like a sleep so deep you wouldn't notice being moved, let alone someone dripping liquid onto your skin.

Speaker 6 He took his Hawaiian punch bottle that he had with gasoline and he dumped it on her.

Speaker 13 In the room, all over the bed, on the floor, and some might have got on him, but there's fumes now in that room. That whole room is like a little bomb.

Speaker 53 Frank stood over a sleeping Elizabeth.

Speaker 78 His anger simmered as he emptied the juice bottle, gasoline soaking into the sheets.

Speaker 58 But like Paul said, the real danger wasn't just the liquid, it was the fumes seeping into every inch of that tiny bedroom, turning the air itself into a weapon.

Speaker 6 When he took his lighter out to light her on fire,

Speaker 6 the whole room blew up.

Speaker 13 When that ignition happens and you're surrounded in fire, it's immediate. It's like a flashover.

Speaker 13 Whatever he's wearing is on fire now too.

Speaker 56 It happened in an instant.

Speaker 58 Flames roared to life, engulfing Elizabeth as her screams shattered the air.

Speaker 53 Fire and smoke swallowed the room. Then Frank felt the searing pain.

Speaker 11 His own skin was burning.

Speaker 13 He didn't realize that that was going to flash on him.

Speaker 13 Gasoline Gasoline is so volatile and the fumes, it's the fumes that burn and flash and then the gasoline just keeps fueling the fire and the fumes. That's what's burning is the fumes, not the liquid.

Speaker 91 Because the gasoline had been poured on Elizabeth, she was on fire.

Speaker 50 She stumbled out of her room, grasping at anything to help put her out.

Speaker 83 But it was useless.

Speaker 53 The second floor was filled with black smoke and she couldn't breathe or see.

Speaker 7 She couldn't stop the fire that was taking her life away.

Speaker 13 Elizabeth has gasoline on her so that liquid gasoline was still producing fumes so it's like a source. It just kept burning.

Speaker 7 But Frank was on fire too and that was not his plan.

Speaker 10 He left Elizabeth to burn alive and ran.

Speaker 13 10, 12 feet, he made it down the stairs, saw the brother with the commotion, said, go help your sister, and he ran out.

Speaker 53 Elizabeth's brother tried to smother the flames on Frank, but it was useless.

Speaker 58 That's when Frank bolted out and broke into the house down the street.

Speaker 64 Elizabeth's mother tried to get up the stairs to reach her daughter, but the smoke in the hallway choked her, the heat driving her back.

Speaker 51 The fire was too fast, so she had no choice.

Speaker 64 Leaving her daughter behind was

Speaker 7 agony.

Speaker 78 But no one could get up those stairs.

Speaker 22 Elizabeth was left alone to burn.

Speaker 6 She was burnt so bad.

Speaker 7 Just awful.

Speaker 6 Awful. Awful way to die.

Speaker 7 Burned alive.

Speaker 48 Alive.

Speaker 56 When the police found Frank on the neighbor's lawn, he muttered the words, motive and opportunity.

Speaker 93 Multiple first responders heard it.

Speaker 84 As police, prosecutors, and fire investigators placed the case together, they uncovered the how, but the why remained a haunting mystery.

Speaker 79 Fire wasn't just a weapon here, it was a statement, a slow, agonizing way to make someone suffer.

Speaker 10 If Frank truly meant to burn the whole fucking fat family down like he had threatened, why not torch the house?

Speaker 59 Why make sure Elizabeth was the source?

Speaker 10 The brutality of all of this set his crime apart.

Speaker 96 It's actually really, really unusual for someone to use fire

Speaker 96 to actually kill another human being. It's really unusual.
I can think of probably two or three examples in my whole career, and I started working in fire setting

Speaker 96 over 15 years ago now.

Speaker 30 This is Professor Teresa Gannon.

Speaker 53 She's a forensic psychologist at the University of Kent.

Speaker 92 who specializes in fire setting.

Speaker 64 She became interested in arson when she was tasked with analyzing a case involving fire as a weapon.

Speaker 96 Everyone presumes that people set deliberate fires or try and harm people with deliberate fires or warn people off or you know send a message about their own distress because they're inappropriately interested in fire.

Speaker 96 And quickly, I became interested in the fact that some of the people I was coming across in clinical assessment and treatment, they didn't have an inappropriate interest in fire, but they were still using it.

Speaker 64 Teresa started looking into deliberate fire setting.

Speaker 93 It turned out that the field was vastly ignored by the rest of forensic psychology.

Speaker 96 The field is probably about 20 years behind other fields of criminal behaviour, such as our understanding of sexual offending or violence.

Speaker 96 There are well over 200 risk assessment tools for people who've committed violence, and there are no

Speaker 96 properly developed risk assessment tools for people who set deliberate fires. In fact, that's something I'm currently working on.

Speaker 53 Because Teresa is the go-to specialist when it comes to fire setting.

Speaker 17 Years ago, she and three other researchers pioneered the multi-trajectory of adult fire setting theory, or as it's known in the field, the MTAF.

Speaker 96 It talks about this theory, the idea of fire setting scripts.

Speaker 96 Now, all of us, you and me, have a script about fire and what that means is it's a cognitive rule that we learn, usually as children, about how and when fire should be used.

Speaker 96 With people who set deliberate fires, what we propose is that they have learnt an inappropriate fire script.

Speaker 58 For example, Teresa once worked with a man who had grown up on a farm.

Speaker 85 The common practice on the farm was to set fire to any pest or rodent that was destroying the crops.

Speaker 78 Later in adulthood, when his wife became a pest to him, he decided to get rid of her, much in the same way.

Speaker 96 But I would argue that some individuals may learn that fire is the best way to instill fear or to punish another person

Speaker 13 for

Speaker 96 a supposed wrongdoing.

Speaker 68 We don't know what Frank had learned as a child when it came to fire.

Speaker 91 He was never really given a full psychological evaluation due to his year-long hospital stay.

Speaker 81 He also never claimed insanity.

Speaker 53 When Frank lived at Elizabeth's house, he had an attitude of taking the law into his own hands.

Speaker 93 There was that one time when he heard Elizabeth's mom talking about him on a private phone call.

Speaker 93 So he tore down the fence he'd built for her garden.

Speaker 47 What a petty and childish way to handle hearing someone talk behind your back.

Speaker 18 Teresa says that the biggest misconception about criminals who use fire as a weapon is that they're obsessed with it, that they love fire.

Speaker 24 But that's not really true.

Speaker 52 At least, that's usually not true.

Speaker 85 Most people who set fires to cause harm fear it just as much as anyone else.

Speaker 96 If you show fire to any animal, it will kind of back away. You know what I mean? It's very powerful and evolutionary-wise.
We're kind of programmed to be scared of it.

Speaker 45 The MTAF theory breaks down fire setters into five distinct distinct personality types.

Speaker 79 Frank would fall under the worst one, the multifaceted fire setter.

Speaker 96 And these are individuals characterized by two kind of prominent factors. They've got offense-supportive attitudes that support criminal behavior and also inappropriate fire interest.

Speaker 96 So they're really interested in fires and they're really pro- criminal behaviour.

Speaker 47 Frank didn't have a criminal record that we know of, but his responses to things not going his way were unhinged.

Speaker 91 Like when he broke Elizabeth's mom's garden fence or when he shattered the window after being told to move out.

Speaker 79 He had no control over himself.

Speaker 52 He was just running on raw, unchecked emotion.

Speaker 80 His life wasn't made up of planned actions, but only a chain of knee-jerk reactions to the world around him.

Speaker 24 He was like a toddler.

Speaker 96 And I would argue that the case that you've you've been talking about sits somewhere between the multifaceted, the last one I've just mentioned, and the grievance subtype, but maybe doesn't fit them exactly.

Speaker 96 It shows you the breadth of motivators lying behind fire setting.

Speaker 62 Beyond Frank's emotional immaturity, he lacked stability in his personal life.

Speaker 63 Frank was in his 30s and He had no family, no career, and no home of his own.

Speaker 78 He was in arrested development, living one day at a time and avoiding adult responsibilities like so many do these days.

Speaker 10 Not only was Frank vengeful, but he was also stupid.

Speaker 53 He packed his satchel full of lighters, gasoline, and charcoal briquettes with a loose game plan to murder Elizabeth by setting her on fire.

Speaker 41 He didn't know anything about the way fumes worked and ended up blowing himself up, too.

Speaker 53 There's a poetic justice to his disfigurement.

Speaker 59 Somehow, there's art here in all the pain and horror.

Speaker 50 By the time he was well enough to be discharged from the hospital, District Attorney John Flynn and his team had already received a warrant for his arrest and an indictment from the grand jury.

Speaker 6 We then went to the hospital, took a judge with us to the hospital, and we arraigned him in his room in the hospital. And that's when the legal proceedings started.

Speaker 93 Frank was facing first-degree murder charges for the intentional death of Elizabeth Bell.

Speaker 50 When prosecutors visited his hospital room, they gave him a choice, plead guilty or go to trial.

Speaker 47 So, He lawyered up, ready to go to court, waste everybody's time.

Speaker 52 And money, I might add.

Speaker 59 But, according to Frank, everyone had it wrong.

Speaker 74 Only he knew what had happened in Elizabeth's bedroom that night.

Speaker 50 And when he finally spoke, his words would leave everyone

Speaker 24 stunned.

Speaker 64 Elizabeth had started the fire.

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Speaker 84 Elizabeth Bell had burned alive in her East Buffalo home.

Speaker 59 For a month, she'd been fighting with her ex-boyfriend, Frank Brett Jr., over their breakup.

Speaker 87 One afternoon, she took his beloved electric bike and left it on the curb for someone else to take.

Speaker 62 She texted Frank a photo of his bike and he lost his mind.

Speaker 52 He threatened to burn her whole fucking fat family, quote, and even told his boss how angry he was that his bike was gone.

Speaker 43 Frank had packed a satchel of charcoal briquettes, lighter fluid, and gasoline.

Speaker 63 Then he went over to Elizabeth's house at 3.30 in the morning.

Speaker 64 Within minutes, her bedroom exploded.

Speaker 50 Elizabeth was burned alive, and Frank escaped death by the skin of his teeth.

Speaker 64 Speaking of which, there wasn't much left.

Speaker 70 After a nearly year-long hospital stay with burns on 90% of his body, Frank was ready for court.

Speaker 17 He was a disfigured monster with clubs for hands, melted ears, and a big bald star on his head where his hair used to grow.

Speaker 62 But Frank said that he didn't start the fire.

Speaker 26 Elizabeth did.

Speaker 68 He claimed that he only went there to talk about the bike.

Speaker 18 She woke up, their fight escalated, and then

Speaker 10 she was the one who threw the gasoline on him.

Speaker 7 She was the one who struck the lighter. It seemed a little, I don't know,

Speaker 24 bullshitty?

Speaker 86 But then Elizabeth's brother said something something that cast a dark shadow of doubt on the whole trial.

Speaker 6 When the police interviewed the brother, at the end of the brother's statement, the brother made a comment along the lines of,

Speaker 6 you know,

Speaker 6 I didn't go upstairs. I didn't see what happened.
I didn't see her do it. You know, I don't know what happened.
Maybe she lit him on fire.

Speaker 59 It was such an odd thing to hear.

Speaker 24 The possibility of it being true lingered in the air.

Speaker 10 The police may have been focused on the wrong person the entire time,

Speaker 53 trying to convict an innocent victim, instead of a cold-hearted killer.

Speaker 50 Frank might have been the real victim in all of this.

Speaker 49 After all, it was Elizabeth's mother who admitted that her daughter had a sharp tongue, and she could say things that would cut you to the bone.

Speaker 80 There were only two people in the bedroom that night, and one of them was dead.

Speaker 53 The other one was facing life in prison.

Speaker 6 Why the brother would say that, I have no idea. Not to be disparaging of the brother, because he lost his sister.
It was traumatic. So I'm not trying to beat the brother up here, but let's be honest.

Speaker 6 He sees this guy walking the house at three o'clock in the morning.

Speaker 7 He moved out a month earlier.

Speaker 6 If I was a brother, I'd be like, what the hell are you doing in my house at three in the morning, all right? But he didn't think anything of it and let him walk upstairs.

Speaker 6 You know, so again, I'm not blaming him. Don't get me wrong.
But again, he did make the comment to the police in his interview.

Speaker 74 And that comment was what the defense hung their hat on.

Speaker 53 Frank's trial didn't start until 2023. almost five years after the murder.

Speaker 77 And he had acquired very good defense lawyers.

Speaker 22 They fought hard to create reasonable doubt for the jury.

Speaker 47 Frank sat motionless in the courtroom.

Speaker 55 The jurors tried to focus on the case, but their eyes kept drifting towards his grotesque mutilations and scars.

Speaker 6 The defense lawyers made the argument that she was drunk. She had a lot of alcohol in her system.

Speaker 6 The defense lawyers said that at trial that she also had drugs in her system, but but there was no proof of that at all. There was proof of alcohol in her system, though, to be fair.

Speaker 6 And so they made the argument that she got up in a drunken stupor. They got into an argument.
She dumped the gasoline on him. She lit him on fire.

Speaker 48 And that's what happened.

Speaker 64 Frank's defense not only grossly disparaged Elizabeth by claiming she was on drugs, but it crumbled against the physical evidence.

Speaker 6 His DNA was on the Hawaiian punch bottle and the lighter. And he left the Hawaiian punch bottle in the apartment and the lighter.
The lighter was found on the stairs.

Speaker 60 There was another detail, too, besides the threats Frank made telling Elizabeth that he would burn her and her family.

Speaker 74 He also texted his mother right before he got to Elizabeth's house that night.

Speaker 7 He wrote, I love you, Mama, always.

Speaker 50 It was ominous, to say the least.

Speaker 6 He left a trail

Speaker 66 of blood.

Speaker 6 He left a trail of burnt flesh. And he left a trail of witnesses.

Speaker 68 And all those witnesses took the stand in court.

Speaker 91 The first responders who all heard Frank say motive and opportunity.

Speaker 53 The neighbor who pulled Frank out of his closet.

Speaker 7 Elizabeth's brother, Frank's boss, and all the the medical experts who examined her body.

Speaker 90 Oh, yeah, and of course, they had Paul Simonian, the fire marshal, who helped crack the case.

Speaker 13 I remember when I finished testifying, I walked out. As I walked out, Elizabeth's mother was in the back pew, and she reached over and grabbed my hand and just said, Thank you.

Speaker 6 In this case, he admitted he was there.

Speaker 6 He admitted Elizabeth died. He admitted that he sent these text messages.
Okay.

Speaker 6 He just didn't admit to how it went down in the bedroom, which again, that's very, very unusual. But it obviously, thank God, didn't work out for him.

Speaker 50 Maybe if Frank had pleaded guilty to the obvious, he might have gained some leniency from the judge.

Speaker 53 But he stuck to his lie. Forensic psychologist and fire expert Teresa Gannon had some theories as to why.

Speaker 96 If If you don't want to admit to yourself that you set the fire or committed the crime or whatever, also

Speaker 96 you can lose a significant amount of social support if you do admit that you did do it. So by remaining in denial, you know, you still get visitors or people still believe you might not have done it.

Speaker 96 Whereas as soon as you admit it, of course, you might lose the last remnants of social support that you have.

Speaker 61 Maybe he was afraid of losing what little love and support he had left in the world.

Speaker 83 And that is why Frank refused to accept responsibility.

Speaker 50 Maybe he was just lying to himself for comfort, telling himself something that he knew deep down wasn't true.

Speaker 59 If he never admits to this heinous thing,

Speaker 64 then maybe it wasn't his fault that he's a disfigured monster in prison.

Speaker 86 But by denying his own accountability, Frank lost the little shred of dignity he had left.

Speaker 7 Now,

Speaker 24 he's just a pathetic killer, a sick liar.

Speaker 6 To be honest with you, this really wasn't rocket science. You know, it wasn't really a tough case to prove.
99 out of 100 homicide trials take a week, maybe two weeks at the most.

Speaker 6 Okay, so this was a typical homicide trial. took about a week and the jury was

Speaker 6 out like three or four hours and came back with a guilty verdict on the intentional murder. And the judge gave him the max, which was 25 to life.

Speaker 6 He drew a tough judge.

Speaker 6 Quite frankly, he drew the best judge in the building from my perspective

Speaker 6 because this judge is the hardest judge on criminals.

Speaker 50 Frank was sent to Green Haven Correctional Facility in Stormville, New York.

Speaker 53 His earliest possible release date is April of 2043.

Speaker 83 But for now, he sits in that prison in his wheelchair wearing a Star of David and Kippah, or Yamaka, claiming he's found religion.

Speaker 59 We contemplated reaching out to Frank, but

Speaker 56 then we decided not to after speaking with John Flynn.

Speaker 80 Frank is so obviously guilty that we didn't want to entertain his lies.

Speaker 24 But another network did.

Speaker 71 And we'll just tell you what he claims happened on that very day. Frank says that on the night it all happened, he and Elizabeth had a brutal fight.

Speaker 85 She had confided in him about being abused by a friend at the age of eight, and in a moment of cruelty, he told her the abuse was her fault.

Speaker 52 He wanted to wound her.

Speaker 44 just as she had wounded him with her words time and time again.

Speaker 85 He claimed he turned to leave, then something hit him over the head.

Speaker 10 The next memory he had was waking up on the floor surrounded by smoke and flames.

Speaker 61 He says he immediately became concerned about Elizabeth's daughter and pushed his way into her little bedroom, heroically grabbing her from her bed and rushing downstairs to safety.

Speaker 47 Then he fled.

Speaker 25 But that's

Speaker 73 all completely untrue, in case you haven't figured it out.

Speaker 52 Elizabeth's mom, her daughter, and her brother all confirmed that things happened the way the prosecution argued it did.

Speaker 12 Despite the cold, hard evidence, Frank continues to deny what he did.

Speaker 64 He continues to believe his own lie.

Speaker 7 But we do not.

Speaker 83 We know what he did.

Speaker 24 We have brains.

Speaker 68 He poured gasoline on a 28-year-old mother and burned her alive because she got rid of his bike.

Speaker 10 It's nothing but pure evil.

Speaker 82 Demonic, if you really think about it.

Speaker 13 No, I didn't feel any satisfaction that he was guilty because

Speaker 13 it's not a win-win anywhere. Elizabeth lost her life.
Frank is physically, mentally damaged.

Speaker 13 His freedom's taken away from him.

Speaker 13 There was no satisfaction that he was found. I mean, he just had to be held accountable for what he did.

Speaker 6 You get to the point where you do something like that and you're not thinking clearly, obviously.

Speaker 6 You're an enraged psychopathic killer.

Speaker 6 And I use that word psychopath, you know, not in a medical sense, but in just a

Speaker 6 human sense that you are a sick killer. There are very few...

Speaker 6 smart criminals out there. There are some, but you know, he wasn't one of them, obviously.

Speaker 64 Fire is a force beyond human control.

Speaker 59 It's ancient, primal, and merciless.

Speaker 15 Once unleashed, it obeys

Speaker 7 no one.

Speaker 61 Not even the man who strikes the match.

Speaker 90 Frank thought he was in charge of that fire, but like everything else in his life, he was wrong.

Speaker 52 Frank's actions that night were like a game where he moved blindly, reacting instead of thinking, never seeing more than one step ahead.

Speaker 68 Even the contents of his satchel define his stupidity.

Speaker 64 Charcoal briquettes?

Speaker 82 I mean, what's your plan? Are you starting a barbecue?

Speaker 90 You ever liked charcoal briquettes?

Speaker 43 You know how long it takes to light charcoal briquettes?

Speaker 10 What kind of a fucking idiot brings that to a murder scene?

Speaker 77 To lay them on Elizabeth and start a campfire on her?

Speaker 62 I don't know if there's a word in the English language to define how stupid that is.

Speaker 52 Maybe he thought he'd he'd use them to start a small fire downstairs to, in fact, burn the whole fucking fat family down like he wanted to, but changed his mind when he saw her brother was still awake.

Speaker 19 The lighter fluid, the gasoline, that makes sense, I guess.

Speaker 53 But I'll never understand why those briquettes were in his bag.

Speaker 43 Never.

Speaker 12 The guy must have never started a barbecue in his entire adult life.

Speaker 42 Interesting.

Speaker 88 There's another question that lingers, too.

Speaker 90 He saw that her brother was awake and yet Frank went forth with his plan to set Elizabeth on fire.

Speaker 7 Just really let that ruminate for a minute.

Speaker 80 Frank was not afraid of getting caught.

Speaker 77 Because if he was, he would have turned around at the first sight of a witness.

Speaker 43 Instead, he just plowed ahead.

Speaker 85 And like every other insane choice he's ever made leading up to that fire, his final move was just as short-sighted.

Speaker 54 He was a man ruled by unregulated emotion.

Speaker 64 A creature of impulse rather than intellect.

Speaker 24 Rage

Speaker 80 rather than reason.

Speaker 24 You know anybody like that?

Speaker 59 Because there's a lot of people like that around in my day-to-day.

Speaker 83 Kind of makes you think, doesn't it?

Speaker 70 Frank, however, didn't think.

Speaker 61 He didn't understand that fire wouldn't stay contained, that it wouldn't follow his orders, that the fumes would turn that little bedroom into a bomb.

Speaker 18 He believed he was orchestrating some grand act of revenge over his bike, when in reality,

Speaker 61 he was just an idiot igniting the fuse to his own destruction.

Speaker 10 John Flynn was right. Frank wasn't just a murderer.

Speaker 80 He was a fool.

Speaker 53 A man too wrapped up in his own bitterness and failures to see the inevitable consequences of his own actions.

Speaker 68 A man who, for all his hatred, ended up punishing himself more than anyone else ever could.

Speaker 34 How Shakespearean is that?

Speaker 59 Elizabeth Bell died in agony.

Speaker 68 Her final moments spent in a nightmare no human should ever endure.

Speaker 68 But at least her pain ended.

Speaker 22 At least she's free from it.

Speaker 86 Frank, on the other hand, has to live with the aftermath. He has to wake up every day

Speaker 62 with the scars and the missing hands,

Speaker 53 with the mangled face,

Speaker 68 living in a reminder of his own stupidity.

Speaker 23 The man who thought he was in control, but ended up losing everything.

Speaker 24 In his final failure, he created a hell on earth just for him,

Speaker 80 and it will haunt him for the rest of his life.

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