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Show Arson Is Harder Crime to Solve Than Killings Ohio Fire Marshal Asserts Lack of Clues Hinders Suspect Search COLUMBUS, OHIO. Do you think murder is the toughest detective problem? If you do, you're wrong. The crime of arson the act Webster Web-ster calls "the malicious burning of a dwelling or other structure" is even harder to solve. Take the word of Ray G11L fire marshal of Ohio and head of the oldest state fire prevention, inspection inspec-tion and detection department in the nation. Gill has been chasing firebugs for 20 years. "In the first place, with murder you have a corpse," he says. "With a fire, all you have is a fire. It's up to you to prove it's arson. Maybe May-be It Isn't Most arson fires look on the surface just like one of those accidental things. "After you've figured out for sure that it's arson, then you begin looking look-ing around for the person who did it." There were something like 900,- 000 fires in the United States last year. About 40.000 proved to be hand fired. 1 Mass Murder Gale Owens, assistant Ohio fire marshal, wondered: "What would some of those fiction detectives do if they got a case which had 320 murders in a bunch? That's what we ran up against 18 years ago." He referred to April 21, 1930, when flames shot through gray old Ohio penitentiary, killing 320 convicts and injuring 133. It was one of the big fires in history. It was an arson fire. One by one, possible causes were ! ruled out. The prison was heated by steam; it couldn't be an overheated over-heated stove. Weeks of expert work ruled out defective wiring. Then came a bit of a break. Gill received a scrawled note from an upstate city. A woman wrote that her son worked in a factory near a girl. The girl said her uncle had just been released from Ohio penitentiary. peni-tentiary. She said that when he , left, before the big blaze, convicts were hiding gasoline. They planned to bum down the prison, then escape. es-cape. Inspectors Query Convicts The investigation went into high. Inspectors pulled convicts from their cells in the middle of the night and shot questions at them. One of the more promising suspects was returned re-turned to solitary confinement after one of those 2 a. m. grillings. He hanged himself with his clothing. Inspectors put his buddy in solitary, soli-tary, then watched. Suddenly the convict fashioned a noose, attached it to the bars and jumped off to what he thought would be peace from those unending questions. The inspectors cut the man down and reopened the questioning. The man broke. "Little Jeff did it," he gasped wearily. A convict called Little Jeff had actually set the fire. He died in it. Three other convicts were in the scheme. No legal action ever was taken against them. ( |