Trial underway in 2017 Salem arson [The Salem News, Beverly, Mass.]

Jun. 17—SALEM — On the night of Sept. 6, 2017, the end of the line was right in front of Robert Cole.

He was nearly $30,000 in arrears on the rent for 9-11 Franklin St. — a small commercial building across from the North River in Salem — where he ran Ideal Transmission, an auto repair shop, prosecutor Anne Marie Gochis told a Lawrence Superior Court jury Thursday.

Goldberg Properties had obtained a court order to evict Cole, but had given him until Sept. 7 to find a new space for the large amount of automotive equipment he'd amassed there. But he hadn't. Meanwhile, his business insurer was demanding payment by Sept. 9 to avoid a lapse in coverage. He hadn't made that payment.

But was all of that motive for Cole, now 54, of Salisbury, to set fire to the business his father Barry had started back in 1959?

That's what Gochis is hoping to convince jurors who will decide whether Cole is guilty of burning a building and burning a building to commit insurance fraud.

Cole's lawyer, Scott Gleason, painted a different picture of Cole's situation in his opening statement to jurors, stressing the fact that due to the extent of damage from the fire, no one — not Salem fire investigators, the state police, the Fire Marshal, or the Salem police — was able to determine the cause.

"Not only do experts not know what the cause of the fire was, they do not know if it was intentional or unintentional," Gleason told the jury. "They just don't know."

Gochis suggested, however, that even if there was too much damage from the fire — which officials at the time estimated at around $500,000 — to find a cause, they were able to rule out many of the most common sources of ignition.

But she also said Cole's shifting narrative of the hours before the fire cast suspicion on him early on.

Cole had arrived at the scene that night and agreed to speak to police.

He told the detectives he'd left the business at 6 and went to Lynn to meet a man who was interested in buying an automotive lift. They couldn't reach an agreement on the price — Cole thought it was worth more than what the buyer was offering.

Two weeks later, insurance company investigators interviewed him, Gochis told the jury. But this time, he said he'd only wanted $1,000 for the lift because it was old.

He also mentioned that he'd stopped at McDonald's for coffee. But a receipt showed $18 worth of items.

When police questioned him again after that, Gochis said Cole accused the insurance investigators of getting it backward — that he doesn't drink coffee.

"The thing about the truth is it never changes," Gochis told the jury.

"Can we cut the guy a little slack?" Gleason responded in his opening. He called those inconsistencies "minor" and suggested that Cole's actions — going to the scene and identifying himself and agreeing to speak to the detectives — were not those of a guilty man.

"He receives a call when he's home, 'your business is on fire'," Gleason said. "What did he do? What somebody does — he went right directly to the fire and when he got to the fire, he introduced himself, 'I'm the owner of the business, my name is Robert Cole.'"

If he was inconsistent, Gleason suggested, "please put yourself in his shoes. There's where he's worked his entire life, his family business is in flames. Everything he and his father worked for is in flames."

The fire was discovered around 9:30 p.m. by Salem police Officer Kristina Monk as she patrolled North Salem.

As she approached the intersection of North and Franklin streets, she testified, she smelled "an extremely strong odor of smoke," then saw thick, heavy smoke. She told a dispatcher she was going to look for the source.

Moments later she found it.

The fire took hours to bring under control, officials said at the time, and multiple other local fire departments arrived to help Salem firefighters throughout the evening.

Cole was indicted in 2018 after an investigation.

Courts reporter Julie Manganis can be reached at 978-338-2521, by email at jmanganis@salemnews.com or on Twitter at @SNJulieManganis

Courts reporter Julie Manganis can be reached at 978-338-2521, by email at jmanganis@salemnews.com or on Twitter at @SNJulieManganis

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