Transcript
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For decades, some cold cases have been reduced to files in a cabinet. But not anymore. I'm Ashley Flowers and me and my team on the Deck have been traveling across the country to report on these forgotten cases. And in some instances, it's resulted in these cases being solved after decades. Join me every Wednesday as we revive these stories one card at a time. Listen to the Deck next now, wherever you get your podcasts. Hi crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.
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And I'm Britt.
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In 2023, a fire tore through a Chicago family home and killed everyone inside, a mother and her three kids. It seemed like an especially cruel way for them to go, considering that the woman's husband, the kid's father, was a Chicago firefighter who was on duty that night fulfilling his oath while to protect and serve the city. That same community rallied around the surviving family who had been torn apart by what seemed to be a terrible accident. But not everyone believed it was an accident. Within weeks of the fire, someone emailed me and told me to watch this case closely as it unfolded because everything might not be what it seems. Three years and one back and forth legal fight with the Chicago Police Department. Later, what I'm going to share with you might make you agree that something isn't right here, but I'll let you be the judge. This is the never before told story of the day. Stewart Family House fire. It's shortly after 9pm on March 7, 2023, when a call for a multiple alarm fire comes through the radio at the Chicago firehouse. Firefighter Walter Shawn Stewart, who everyone calls Shawn, is on duty that night and he recognizes the address coming through over the speaker. 2554 N. Rutherford Ave. That's his house. Now his station is hearing the message over dispatch, even though their unit isn't the one designated to respond. But I mean, if you think he's not going, you're out of your mind. He rushes to the battalion chief, tells him that he has to leave and asks if he'll go with him. And within minutes the two are in the chief's SUV speeding across Chicago's Montclair neighborhood, the chief behind the wheel and Shawn staring at just this smoke rising in the distance. The 20 minute drive probably took less if they had their emergency light on, but it must have still felt like an eternity. It didn't take responding engines long, though. Two minutes after the neighbor had called 911, firefighters were on the scene breaking through the front and back doors and from the back door. One team went into the home's enclosed back porch. And that's where they found the family dog, Mabel, in a crate. And the smoke had already gotten to her, which meant that they were running out of time to get to the family that the neighbor said lived there. The back porch leads directly into the kitchen where the firefighters who entered through the front door were already there fighting flames. And to the left of the kitchen was a room with a single mattress on the floor. And they almost missed 7 year old Ezra because he wasn't on the mattress trying to run from the flames that had already lapped up his body and given him second degree burns. He had collapsed and was unconscious on the floor near the foot of the staircase that led from that room that he was in to the second floor. As one firefighter scooped him up to take him outside, others ascended the staircase and fanned out to check the rooms upstairs. In the first room on the right, they found a two year old boy, Emery, unconscious in his crib. In the next bedroom, painted pink and full of soot covered stuffed animals, they found nine year old Autumn unconscious on the floor near the window. By now, Shawn and his chief had arrived at the chaotic scene. And he watched as fellow firefighters came out of the house one by one, carrying all of his children and laying them on the lawn to be tended to by paramedics. But his wife wasn't there. Where was 36 year old summer? Firefighters hadn't seen her in the house, but between the flames and the smoke, visibility was like next to nothing. And she could still be there. I mean, if the kids were there, she had to be there. So they were sent back in to do a second sweep. And that is when they found Summer in her first floor bedroom, unresponsive on the floor near the side of her bed. Now, when she's finally carried out of the house and placed on the lawn with the children, Sean runs to her and begins performing CPR. Until the EMTs are able to load her and the kids up in ambulances and take them off. But they will never be coming back home one by one like the way they came out of that house. Over the next few days, they succumb to their injuries and pass away without ever waking up, without ever being able to say what happened that night or what caused the fire that ravaged their home. That was a mystery left for the Chicago Fire Department, investigators and Chicago police. And anyone who is familiar with fire investigation will know that they are notoriously difficult because the entire scene is one giant ball of contamination. I mean, everything on the first floor is covered in water and soot and debris. There is no drywall even left to speak of. And even the support beams of the house in this fire, the ones that are exposed, those are all charred. But despite everything that is ruined by the fire, there is some evidence that the fire itself provides, like, where it started and what could have caused it. Pretty quickly, everyone hones in on the kitchen. Actually, one particular area on the east half where the fire patterns indicate that it originated. And a couple of key clues right around there are interesting to them. The stove and this outlet. On the stove, there was a pot on the rear left burner and a pan kind of sitting, like, on the right side. And even though the plastic knobs on the stove had melted away, investigators could see that the leftover metal stem was clearly turned to hot. You know, how, if you, like, take them off. And near the stove that had clearly been turned on, they also saw a melted water cooler plugged into a charred extension cord that ran all the way to the wall. So they know the what and where the fire started in this general area of the kitchen. What they don't know is how and why. Like, was there a spark from this outlet? Did something bubble over on the stove? When who put it there?