STOCKTON, CALIFORNIA, WAS THE SCENE OF AN ARSON Monday evening that nearly caused a 57-yr.-old woman her life. 

The woman was inside her tent that she was apparently using as a domicile when a man came up and accused her of stealing the tent from him.  After physically assaulting her, he then set the tent on fire with her still inside and fled.

The unidentified woman was able escape the tent before it became fully involved.  Police have classed it as an attempted murder and are looking for the suspect.

The woman did not have any noted injuries and there was no report on whether the tent had a working smoke detector.

The Stockton Record has the STORY.

SHAUN DIPPER (his real name) HAS BEEN SENT TO JAIL for three years, thus giving his former neighbors a good night’s sleep again.  The Newcastle, England, man had set fire to his rented house last May and was convicted yesterday for arson.  But he will best be remembered as the man who spent much of the nights standing on his front porch and howling like a wolf for hours at a time. 

Shaun “Wolfman” Dipper

One former neighbor said, “He would play loud music, have lots of people round all the time and would weld cars at three in the morning. The night he was arrested was the best night’s sleep I have had in ages.”

The Sunderland Echo has the full STORY.

 A POSSIBLE BREAK IN THE ARSON INVESTIGATION of the Texas Governor’s Mansion in Austin came last week in St. Paul, Minnesota.

During the violent demonstrations held by domestic terrorist groups at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, police arrested, among others, two members of an avowed anarchist group that calls itself the Austin Affinity Group.

They charged with manufacturing and carrying Molotov cocktails with the intent on using them to disrupt the peace at the convention, Federal charges.  With that arrest warrant, the FBI has seized the group’s computer and are inspecting the files on it.

With the connection of the group’s home, Austin, along with their preferred choice of firebombs, they are now being considered as strong suspects in the firebombing of the mansion in June.

KVUE-TV has this video report along with an interview of a security expert who talks about the Austin Affinity Group:

A FIRE IN A 3-STORY APARTMENT HOUSE in Irvington, New Jersey, Monday morning is being treated as an arson/murder.

Fox5 photo

Four people were found inside, three of them dead and a fourth seriously wounded by a gunshot  who died later from a gunshot wound.  One of the dead victims was shot also, but the cause of the other two’s deaths has not yet been determined.  The Essex County prosecutor says that the fire looks like a cover-up.

The fire was extinguished in about an hour.  One man living in the 3rd-floor apartment was taken out through a window by fire dept. ladder.

Update:  The two gunshot victims were ages 13 and 18.  Another of the dead was a 14-month old child.

The New Jersey Star-Ledger has the latest REPORT.

THE 19-YR.-OLD COMPASS AIRLINES FLIGHT ATTENDANT who was charged back in May with setting a fire in an aircraft lavatory has skipped his scheduled preliminary hearing that was held yesterday (Friday).  Eder Rojas was being held in a half-way house in Chicago and supposedly walked out without permission around 3 am Friday morning and is unaccounted for.

Compass Airlines photo

Firegeezer reported on the story HERE and HERE about the misguided miscreant who was angry with his supervisors and, while the plane was 30,000 ft. in the air, went back to the bathroom and lit a roll of paper towels on fire.

While he had confessed to investigators that he had started the fire, he pleaded not guilty at his arraignment in Federal court in June.  During the arraignment, prosecuters disclosed that he was also onboard a flight five weeks previously to this incident where a similar fire was started in the lavatory, but Rojas has not been charged with that crime.

U.S. District Judge Rodney Webb ordered federal marshals to find Rojas and arrest him. The judge later postponed the trial, which was scheduled to begin Monday.

The Canadian Press has this recent report on the Plane Potty arsonist HERE.

BUENOS AIRES COMMUTERS REACHED THE LIMITS OF PATIENCE Thursday when a train filled with people on their way to work was delayed at a station for several hours causing them to miss a full day’s work.  A riot then ensued.

A group of the frustrated commuters began throwing rocks at the ticketing booths, painting the train cars and eventually setting the train on fire causing over $8 million in damages.

The beleaguered Transportation Minister blamed it all on leftist extremists saying that someone sabotaged the brakes and then people who came with incendiaries in their backpacks pulled them out and started the riot.

Police have over 20 arrests in the incident.

The Associated Press has this raw video of the incident:

CCTV FOOTAGE SHOWS FOSTER WIELDING GUN AND SETTING FIRES.  The West Mercia police in Shropshire had disclosed that the extensive video recordings made by Foster’s CCTV security system show him wandering amidst the grounds of the home, carrying a rifle.

Press Assoc. photo

The tapes also show him as the one driving the horse trailer into the entrance gate and then shooting the tires.

The police also disclosed that the body of the male adult found next to Mrs. Foster is indeed Christopher Foster, but the cause of his death is not yet known.  The third body has not been positively identified, but it was found in the 15-yr.-old girl’s bedroom and they are confident that it will be identified as Kirsten.

They are confident that Mr. Foster shot his wife and daughter, then went out to the stables where he shot the horses and then set fire to the stables and the garage filled with cars.  Then he went back inside the home where he set fires inside the house designed to completely destroy all the property before he went back to where his wife’s body lay and then killed himself.

Press Association

Currently they are discounting any criminal connection to the murders and arson, but they will nonetheless be conducting an intensive investigation into Foster’s complicated financial affairs.

Today’s Telegraph has a good report on the latest chapter in this STORY.

The Press Association has a clip of the police statement:

 Note:  If you haven’t been following this story, take time to catch up on the earlier reports HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE  and HERE.

THE ARSON AND TRIPLE-KILLING OF MILLIONAIRE Christopher Foster and his family is a story worthy of a BBC mystery series.  The working-class man that soared into riches and living the high-life, yet had a behind-the-scenes lifestyle that led to an even faster plummet to tragedy.

Foster had built his wealth on a fortune he made from developing a unique insulation technology for oil rigs.  As he started pulling in the money, he used it to buy properties and “rich boy’s toys” along with horses and artwork.  Along the way he dabbled in business interests associated with organized crime figures, but he was out of his league and made no friends there.

Four years ago he bought the Obaston House for £1.2 million and stocked it with antiques.  Outside he built a stables and a multi-car garage for his high-priced cars.  Then things started going wrong, perhaps by mis-managing his assets, or as a result of some shady business deals.  As his business was crumbling, he went deeply into debt and attempted to shift some of his assets to a dummy company to shield them from creditors.  A High Court judge who issued an injunction against him said Mr Foster “was not to be trusted”, adding that he was “bereft of the basic instincts of commercial morality”.

The original portion of the manor house
dated back to the 16th century.

Recently a former associate revealed that someone had offered him £50,000 to murder Foster, but he refused.  Foster then reported to the police that he had discovered a plot to kidnap his 15-yr.-old daughter and hold her for a high ransom.  It was then that he installed an extravagent security system including multiple surveillance cameras around the house.  Some people were speculating that he was targeted by the organized crime gangs because of bad debts and dealings that had gone wrong.

Last month the firm holding the mortgage on his house put a hold on it prohibiting him from selling it as they were about to seize the property to cover the mortgage debt.

The last time the Fosters were seen by anybody was on Monday night when they attended a large outdoor barbecue at a friend’s house.  By all accounts, the Fosters were in good spirits and enjoying themselves without any outward signs of worry or apprehension.  They left the party around 10 pm and returned home.  Daughter Kirstie then went online at her computer and was messaging with her friends until about 1 am when she suddenly stopped without warning.  That was the last contact anybody had with any of the family.

Early Tuesday morning neighbors reported a fire at Obaston House after hearing several loud explosive sounds coming from the building.  When the fire department arrived, their entrance was hindered by a horse trailer that had been pulled across the gate and then had the tires flattened.  The house was well involved in fire already and there was no chance of saving the home.  As the firefighters were early into their operations, a group of bailiffs arrived at the property with papers to seize the home and contents from Foster on that morning.

It was disclosed today that there were at least three areas in the house where separate fires had been started.

As well, the stables, garage and another outbuilding were also on fire.  After the fire was out, nobody could account for the whereabouts of the family.  The charred remains of the horses revealed that they had been shot in their stalls before the fire. 

In addition, dozens of spent and unspent cartidges were found all around the grounds next to the house.

Over the past two days, three badly-charred bodies have been found inside the rubble of the house.  One of them has been identified through dental records as that of Mrs. Foster and a post-mortem revealed that she had been shot in the head before the fire.  A second body, that of an adult male, was found next to hers along with a .22 rifle that was registered to Mr. Foster.

Monday morning a third body has been discovered and most of today was spent in trying to retrieve it from the very unstable building.  Neither of the other two humans has been identified yet nor has there been any disclosure if they have also been shot or not.

The police have said that all the doors into the house were barricaded from the inside.  For that reason, they are intially speculating that the most probable cause of all this was Foster suddenly flipping out and succumbing to the pressures that had been building on him over the past few months.  An autopsy on the male victim may answer whether it could have been a murder-suicide.

But there is still the possibility, and there will always be the speculation that Foster’s family was the target of an organized crime “hit.”  There will be more information to come out during the next few weeks as the police have 100 officers, investigators and forensic examiners going over every lead and checking up the murky financial deals that melted away.

We will be updating the story as new facts are found. 

The Telegraph filed this recent video report: