There was never any doubt that the young man in question was the perpetrator, but he destroyed all of the evidence in a fire that was so hot it melted bone. Can you imagine that?
Crematoriums don't even melt bone. They leave little chips and bone ash. The larger chips are ground down and added to the ash. In that way mourners can take mom or dad or Uncle George's ashes home and put them on a bookshelf as conversation piece and also as protective spirits who will watch over them.
But his fire was so hot that not even bone dust remained or if it did it went up into the atmosphere in smoke. On top of that, while the greater Peoria police department was in fact certain that the young man had murdered his mother, they were unable to pin the arson on him. He had been in another state when the fire was set. He had a rock solid alibi.
This either meant that he had an accomplice or that he had rigged up a remote control device that triggered the magnesium fire that reached almost 3000° C. The police couldn't match the murderer with the magnesium, and they didn't have a body so there was no way to pin the murder on the young man in question. Try as they might they simply couldn't produce any forensic evidence, and there were no witnesses.
The only ameliorating factor in the whole thing was that the young murderer couldn't put his mom's ashes in a fancy urn that could sit on his bookshelf. The young man had no conversation piece or spirit to watch over him and that gave the police officers a modicum of satisfaction.
Crematoriums don't even melt bone. They leave little chips and bone ash. The larger chips are ground down and added to the ash. In that way mourners can take mom or dad or Uncle George's ashes home and put them on a bookshelf as conversation piece and also as protective spirits who will watch over them.
But his fire was so hot that not even bone dust remained or if it did it went up into the atmosphere in smoke. On top of that, while the greater Peoria police department was in fact certain that the young man had murdered his mother, they were unable to pin the arson on him. He had been in another state when the fire was set. He had a rock solid alibi.
This either meant that he had an accomplice or that he had rigged up a remote control device that triggered the magnesium fire that reached almost 3000° C. The police couldn't match the murderer with the magnesium, and they didn't have a body so there was no way to pin the murder on the young man in question. Try as they might they simply couldn't produce any forensic evidence, and there were no witnesses.
The only ameliorating factor in the whole thing was that the young murderer couldn't put his mom's ashes in a fancy urn that could sit on his bookshelf. The young man had no conversation piece or spirit to watch over him and that gave the police officers a modicum of satisfaction.
