A Survivor Needs Rescuing
(“Up in Smoke,” Forensic Files)
The story of the house fire that made Paul Camiolo into an adult orphan is a horrible tragedy, but it’s free of evil or scandalous behavior.
“Up in Smoke” doesn’t offer up a wife having an affair with a young janitor or a funeral director who took out five life insurance policies on the kid who washes the limousines. The closest thing to a bad guy is an anonymous flooring contractor who was probably just being a little bit cheap.
And the crucial forensics in the episode aren’t your typical gruesome Forensic Files evidence — no bone fragments or blood splatter. You can watch the show while you’re eating. It even has some fun facts.
For this week, I looked for an epilogue for Paul Camiolo, who Forensic Files portrays as a devoted son transformed into the No. 1 suspect for a double homicide that never happened.
Although I agree with the conclusion that he was innocent, online research yielded some information not mentioned in “Up in Smoke” that makes it easier to understand why the authorities believed in his guilt at first.
Multigenerational home. So let’s get started on the recap, along with additional facts drawn from the Web:
Software technician Paul Camiolo lived with his parents, Rosalie and Ed Camiolo, in a Colonial-style house in Upper Moreland, Pennsylvania.
Rosalie, 57, worked in the computer industry, and Ed, 81, was a retired government employee.
She had suffered a number of strokes along with other health woes, and he had one leg that was shorter than the other because of childhood bout with polio, according to a Philadelphia Inquirer account. He had also recently battled cancer.
The medical problems limited the couple’s mobility, so Paul, their only child, helped with tasks like shopping.
Horrific scene. In the wee hours of September 18, 1996, Paul called emergency services to report a fire in the living room.
Willow Grove volunteer firefighters arrived to find him getting dressed on the front lawn. He told them that his parents escaped through the backdoor.
They discovered Rosalie severely burned on the back porch and Edward in cardiac arrest inside the house.
He died that night. She succumbed to her injuries 10 weeks later.
Wavering story. Paul, who was around 30 years old at the time, explained that his mother was a chain-smoker and had probably set the couch on fire accidentally. He threw a pitcher of water on the flames, but instead of smothering them, it fed them, he said.
According to Forensic Files, Paul said that he told his parents to go out the back door, then phoned for help and left via the front door.
What the show didn’t mention was that Paul allegedly gave shifting accounts about whether he was asleep or awake when the fire broke out and changed his story about the logistics of his attempts to save his parents, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Worrisome labwork. Former Assistant District Attorney Timothy Woodward, who appeared on Forensic Files, pointed out that Paul was the beneficiary of his parents’ six-figure life insurance payouts. Woodward wondered whether Camiolo was tired of caring for his mom and dad.
Tests on the flooring near the couch showed traces of gasoline. The authorities built a case around their theory that Paul used the accelerant to start a fire while his parents were upstairs, then escaped and left them to die.
In January 1999, Paul was charged with first degree murder, arson, and insurance fraud and held without bail in the Montgomery County jail.
Excruciating aftermath. Thus Paul Camiolo traveled from a literal burning hell to a figurative one of public infamy. As the Philadelphia Inquirer reported on January 21, 1999:
“Paul Camiolo wanted money, Montgomery County authorities say, and he didn’t want to pay the health-care costs of his sick parents…Camiolo took care of both problems…[He] inherited more than $400,000 and moved to Bucks County.”
The article noted that he purchased a house for $77,000 in the town of Holland, Pennsylvania, after his parents died.
Fortunately for Paul, his extended family — including nephew Vince Camiolo, who appeared on Forensic Files — believed in his innocence. More than a dozen of his relatives showed up to support him at his preliminary hearing, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Loving kin. Vince Camiolo noted that his uncle Paul was “unusual,” but that didn’t make him guilty. Relatives attested to the fact that Paul was happy to transport his parents to family picnics and the annual Polenta Night at the Sons of Italy, according to a Philadelphia Inquirer story from March 30, 1999.
Bill Burns, who was Paul’s boss at Shopman Inc., a software business in Ivyland, called the charges against him “outrageous” and spoke of his patient, empathetic approach to helping customers. He said that Paul had never once complained about his parents.
Burns continued to pay Paul his salary while he was in jail and vowed to keep his job open for him until his release, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer piece.
Investing in quality. Paul had another supporter in Steve Avato, one of the volunteer firefighters who had responded to the blaze. Avato also worked as a special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms — and he doubted that the traces of gasoline found on the floor added up to arson.
During his Forensic Files appearance, Avato also noted he didn’t find it suspicious that Paul escaped via the front door — instead of the backdoor, with his parents — because people tend to flee fires through the door they normally use to exit.
Camiolo enlisted Thomas S. Cometa and William Ruzzo to defend him and paid $65,000 to hire “five respected fire experts,” according to a Times Leader report from 2000.
Heavy hitters weigh in. One of the experts, Richard Roby, PhD., built a replica of the house. After some testing, he determined that an intentionally set fire would have spread faster than the one in the Camiolo’s house that night in 1996.
Here’s where the interesting trivia comes in. John Lentini, another of the fire investigators hired by the defense, said that in the 1970s — when the house was built — some flooring contractors thinned out varnish with gasoline because it cost less than higher-quality agents.
That explained why the lab found traces of gasoline on the floor but not the rug.
Flare up. Also, tests had pegged the gasoline as leaded, a type of fuel not sold in Pennsylvania in more than a decade at the time of the fire. How could Paul have used leaded gasoline as an accelerant when there was no place to buy it?
And the most useful fact: Polyurethane, a material used in the Camiolo’s couch, burns more fiercely when it comes into contact with water. (One more reason to keep a fire extinguisher handy. Actually, I need to go to the hardware store.)
The episode contains a great quote from Lentini, who called arson investigation a “profession largely controlled and dominated by hacks. They make complicated decisions about chemistry and physics and they never took chemistry and physics.”
In other words, they weren’t bad guys — just wrong guys, whose overconfidence ended up saddling an innocent fire survivor’s life with an awful stigma.
180-degree turn. The defense theorized that Rosalie accidentally dropped a match on the polyurethane sofa. Like a grease fire, the flames on the polyurethane responded to water by getting bigger, lending credence to Paul Camiolo’s statement to investigators.
The prosecution did its own test with polyurethane and got similar results.
The Montgomery County attorney general’s office — which had announced in March 1999 that it was seeking the death penalty — reversed itself, dropped the charges against Paul Camiolo, and set him free in the fall of that year after 11 months of confinement.
He returned to his software job at Shopman Inc.
A new legal fight. In July 2000, Camiolo filed a lawsuit against the Upper Moreland police, fire investigators, and State Farm insurance for false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, bad faith, and even some RICO offenses. He asked for $150,000 in damages.
Three years later, a federal appeals court ruled that Camiolo couldn’t sue the authorities or the insurance company (which had settled with him for $240,000 in 1998). The decision, dated June 30, 2003, noted that there was no scheme “to defraud or to deprive Camiolo of something by trick or deceit.”
Although he didn’t win any money as a result of his legal ordeal, on January 14, 2007, Paul got the satisfaction of having the Philadelphia Inquirer — the same newspaper that ran numerous articles about him as a murder suspect — include him in a feature story about the havoc that shaky arson investigations can wreak.
“Where do you go to get your name back?” Paul told the paper. “The mere accusation is so disgusting.”
Conflict of interest? He also got to vent in a Tribune Review story that questioned the practice of insurance companies paying law enforcement to conduct arson investigations.
“It’s sad,” Paul told the Tribune Review, “that there are cases all throughout this country where insurance companies function as police in a district attorney’s case.”
He got additional support from John Lentini, who dedicated the reference book Scientific Protocols for Fire Investigation to Paul Camiolo and others “for whom a second look at their fire made all the difference.”
And the court of public appears to have migrated over to Paul’s corner, as numerous online comments indicate.
So where is Paul today?
According to an internet posting dated 2016, he has moved to Argentina.
It’s not clear why he relocated to South America, but his presence on social media affirms that he still has the support of the large extended family of Camiolos, who knew firsthand of his kindness to his parents and always believed in his innocence.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
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