Defense expert at murder retrial: Deadly fire likely caused by smoldering cigarette

Jan. 30--A cigarette smoldering in a chair likely caused the 1995 fire that killed a Naperville woman, a fire expert testified Monday at the murder trial of the woman's former son-in-law.

The witness, called by the defense at the retrial of William Amor, said the source of the blaze that killed Marianne Miceli was probably not an open flame but more likely a carelessly discarded cigarette that caused the smoky conditions in which Miceli died at age 40.

"It's the most scientifically reliable conclusion you can come to," said Douglas Carpenter, vice president of a combustion engineering company in Maryland.

Amor, 62, is being retried for the arson murder of Miceli, who was killed in the fire in her condo on Sept. 10, 1995. A jury found Amor guilty in 1997, and he served 20 years in prison before his conviction was tossed out last year.

Carpenter testified for Amor in the hearings in 2017 that led DuPage County Judge Liam Brennan to overturn Amor's conviction. In his testimony Monday, Carpenter repeated his assertion that it's impossible to start a fire with a lit cigarette and vodka-soaked newspaper, as Amor had confessed in 1995.

Amor's lawyers from the Illinois Innocence Project contend police coerced his confession. DuPage County prosecutors deny Amor made his admission under duress and say he also had a financial motive -- his mother-in-law's insurance money -- to start the fire.

At the time, Amor was 39 and had been married for about five months to Miceli's daughter, Tina, then 18. The three lived together in the condo, and Tina, now divorced from Amor, testified last week that all three were smokers.

Carpenter testified Monday that he did not believe the fire was caused by an open flame because that type of incendiary fire did not comport with the evidence in case, mainly Marianne Miceli's 911 call.

According to testimony from Amor's ex-wife, the couple left the condo around 6:20 p.m. that day to go to a movie. Twenty minutes later, Marianne Miceli called 911 to say there was smoke coming into her bedroom from under the door and that her exit was blocked by the flaming chair. A minute later, she was overcome. Firefighters arrived quickly and found her body on the bedroom floor.

Carpenter said in his analysis that a chair set on fire by open flame would have produced the effects Miceli described in just a few minutes -- far more quickly than the 20-minute time frame between the couple leaving and Marianne Miceli's 911 call.

Prosecutors will cross-examine Carpenter on Tuesday when the bench trial before Brennan continues.

Clifford Ward is a freelance reporter.

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