For the week of March 26 - April 1, 2003

Body found at suspicious house fire

Possible arson investigated
at vandalized log home

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By PAT MURPHY
Express Staff Writer

An autopsy was being conducted Tuesday on a body found inside a two-story rural Blaine County log home that apparently had been vandalized before being destroyed by a blaze suspected of being arson.

Blood found in two smaller dwellings on the property--a guesthouse and the caretaker’s home--also was being investigated as evidence of a crime, according to Blaine County Sheriff Walt Femling.

Femling said that the property’s caretaker, Mary Hansen, is missing. He said the body found in the main house had not been identified by Tuesday. The blaze was so intense, Femling said it hadn’t been determined if it was male or female.

The dwellings, several miles west of lower Bellevue, are located at 40 Fox Hollow Gulch Road on a ranch of more than 50 acres, owned by Richard Barker, a Californian, who uses it as a second home. The sheriff said Barker told him by phone that he hasn’t visited the property since December, and could provide no information as to why the home would’ve been vandalized and possibly torched.

"He’s very distressed," Sheriff Femling said of Barker.

Units of Wood River Fire and Rescue rushed to the fire shortly after 9 Sunday morning, but were unable to control the blaze until about 10:45. Firefighters were hampered by the burning home’s remote rural location and lack of fire hydrants. Water tenders working in relays had to replenish firefighters at the scene.

The body was found by firemen on the first floor of the gutted 3,500-square-foot structure.

Sheriff Femling said personnel from the Idaho Fire Marshal’s office and the Boise Police Department were assisting his department in an investigation.

The two-story log home alone was valued at $658,018, according to the Blaine County Tax Assessor's Office.

 

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