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Typical Arson Scenarios

A restaurant is no longer turning a profit and property values in the area are down. The owners decide to recoup their investment through the insurance company. The restaurant is entered during the early morning hours. The doors are pried open and the office is ransacked, a safe may be broken into or removed to indicate a burglary. A flammable liquid is poured on the floor and trailers may be used. Pots or other containers found in the restaurant are used to hold additional flammable liquid. This procedure is continued throughout the building and the arsonists leave some type of delayed fuse mechanism, perhaps a twenty-minute burning candle at the base of a cup filled with alcohol. Another possible time-delay mechanism is a coffeemaker filled with flammable liquids set for a particular time. These mechanisms allow the restaurant owners to exit and get some distance away before the discovery of the fire.

Two burglars realize that their elderly victims have awakened and observed them as they are trying to exit the house. Knowing the elderly couple can identify them as neighborhood kids, the burglars attack and eventually kill the couple. In an attempt to conceal the homicides, they put the couple back in bed and set fire to the bed using material on hand in an attempt to make it look like an accidental smoking-in-bed fire.

A local gang demands pay up money from a local merchant. The merchant refuses to comply with their demands, so the gang decides that it's time to teach him a lesson. Early one morning, a few of the gang members assemble with a homemade napalm-type bomb —bottles filled with gasoline and soap and a fuse made of cloth stuck into the neck of the bottle. They walk or drive by the front of the store, light the cloth fuses, and throw the bottles through the window causing a fair amount of damage.

Some Final Thoughts on Arson

One thing to remember is that the professional arsonist mainly uses items to start, spread, and sustain the fire that are readily found in the building itself. He does not want to draw undue attention to himself by carrying five-gallon gas cans around. The arsonist also has to assume that if the fire is detected early and suppressed, any evidence he left will make a second attempt more difficult. It may even lead to his arrest.

The amateur uses large amounts of flammable liquid to start the fire and combustible materials to spread the fire. He starts the fire without a delay mechanism, usually by open flame. In the process, he may even burn himself.

In dealing with arson, we rarely come across any type of explosive devices. Explosives are usually used just to get the fire going, but if the building is big enough, there may be a number of ignition devices found scattered throughout the property.

For those of you who may be uncertain about what types of flammable liquids are used, they mainly range from gasoline to lighter fluid and alcohol. The storage area of a bar will be used to fuel the fire's growth by starting a fire underneath or near the liquor supply.

Trailer material can be the flammable liquid itself poured in a line on the ground. It could also be cloth or paper soaked in a flammable liquid or a series of small fires or anything else that would cause the fire to spread throughout the building.

When we discuss art these days, we're talking about a business of far-reaching proportions. Art prices have skyrocketed because art is now viewed as a more stable and profitable investment than stocks, bonds or mutual funds. Owning artwork has a uniqueness that other types of investments may lack. For some, an art collection, whether Grandma's silver spoons or a van Gogh, is a more intimate part of a person's life and lifestyle than actual money can ever be. Art therefore has a dual grip on a person: its value as an investment and its aesthetic impact. When these types of objects are stolen, they are often deemed irreplaceable.

There are three main reasons art and jewelry thefts occur: to get the money from fencing stolen art; a collector personally safekeeps art as it increases in value; or, for political, or possibly sociopolitical reasons —sometimes considered terrorism. Just before the 1994 Winter Olympics in

Ail, Antique mid Jewel Thieves/ 19

Keep In Mind ...

It seems no matter how hard the police work, thefts of art, jewelry and antiques continue. Before the 1950s, art, jewelry and precious antiques did not appreciate in value as rapidly as they have within the last thirty-five to forty years. Keep this in mind if your art and jewelry theft story is set in a historical period. Although mankind has continually produced works of art for over 40,000 years, art did not become generally perceived as a commodity, or as a means of economic exchange, until 150 to 200 years ago. A novel that is set in historical times will, of course, have its period antiques and artwork that are valuable. However, the appreciation value will not be as great as it has been in the last thirty-five to forty years.

Norway, Edvard Munch's The Scream was stolen by abortion protesters in an attempt to negotiate political policy through terrorism.

One of the most famous politically motivated art thefts of the twentieth century occurred at the Louvre in 1911 when an Italian house painter stole the Mona Lisa from the wall where it hung. The Mona Lisa disappeared for approximately two years. When the thief finally gave himself up, he claimed that he had only stolen it for political reasons, and that he had intended to take the painting back to Florence, Italy, where da Vinci had painted it, and where he felt it rightfully belonged.

Types of Art Theft

The past thirty-five to forty years have seen an unprecedented boom in organized art robbery running parallel to an equally unprecedented boom in the