Terri Hinson
At 3:35 am on Sunday, 20 Oct. 1996 a 911 call was received from Terri Hinson reporting a fire at her residence at 101 Wall St., Tabor City, North Carolina. Police arrived about 1 min. later to find Terri at her front door, but the smoke was too thick to proceed upstairs. Firefighters with airpacks then were able to go up and find Brittany (4 yrs) & Josh (17 mo.). Her 1-year-old son, Josh, was DOA. Her daughter survived and was put in a foster home. Hinson was charged with first degree murder, based on the belief by police that she had set the fire.
Forensic analyses:
Fire had burned a hole in the closet ceiling through which were visible in the attic a tangle of old, cloth-wrapped wires. A closet shelf, about a foot from the ceiling, was more badly burned on the underside. The right closet door suffered more damage than the left. On the floor lay burned clothes and linens, and on the wall above the pile, the fire had left behind a V.
The foundation of the case against Hinson rested on a Vshaped burn pattern in the closet of Josh’s secondfloor bedroom. Drawing from years of tradition, the government and insurance investigators determined that the V-shaped pattern marked the fire's point of origin -- the closet. The SBI reported that since there was nothing in the closet that could ignite the fire by itself, someone must have set it.