A second man has died and police have yet to make an arrest one month after an arson fire ripped through a Biddeford apartment building.

James Ford, 21, died Tuesday night at a hospice in Scarborough. He was remembered by friends as smiling and nonjudgmental, someone “you couldn’t have a problem with if you tried.”

Ford had been in intensive care at Maine Medical Center in Portland after the Sept. 18 fire, his condition improving at first but then deteriorating. According to a Facebook page that posted updates from his sister, he was unable to digest nutrients because of cyanide in his stomach, which can result from inhaling the smoke from certain combustible materials.

Ford was unable to fight the infections his body developed and could not recover from the injuries he sustained in the fire that also killed Michael Moore, his roommate and best friend. Moore, 23, died of smoke inhalation the day after the blaze.

The Chief Medical Examiner’s Office was scheduled to conduct an autopsy on Ford on Wednesday. Messages left with the office were not returned by the end of the day.

Investigators with the State Fire Marshal’s Office have determined that the fire in the 17-unit building was intentionally set in a stairwell connecting the first and second floors of 35 Main St., and that Moore and Ford were in their bedroom on the third floor. Fire officials say there was no emergency exit from the third-floor bedroom.

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The case is being investigated by the Maine State Police major crimes unit and the State Fire Marshal’s Office.

“Where it’s now a double homicide, state police continue to handle the death investigation part of it. We’re handling the fire part of it,” said State Fire Marshal Joe Thomas.

Ford’s death will not change the nature of the investigation, which remains active and ongoing, authorities said. The case requires police to interview a large number of people, including all the tenants, visitors and anyone who lived in the building recently.

“We don’t know what the motive is of the person who did it,” said Sgt. Joel Davis of the State Fire Marshal’s Office.

On Wednesday, friends remembered Ford as someone with a warm and uplifting personality.

“James had a smile that lit up the room and made everyone around him happy,” said Kalina Wormwood. He “was the only one who everyday went out of his way to ask about my son. He had the biggest heart in the world. Everyone around him loved him and we all still do.”

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Kevin Wood, of Saco, said he would see Ford daily when he stopped by Dunkin’ Donuts in Shaw’s to get his blueberry iced coffee with extra cream and sugar.

“He knew my coffee by heart. I’m very strict about how my coffee is made and he nailed it every time,” Wood said.

They struck up a friendship, and Wood often would spend an hour or more chatting with Ford at the counter. “He was just one of those really good people – always nice, always happy, genuinely good guys,” Wood said.

When Wood decided to leave, he would invariably tell Ford not to work too hard.

“He would come back with ‘Don’t relax too hard.’ He was a witty guy like that,” Wood said. “It became our sign-off every day.”

Moore, who worked in the produce section at the Saco Shaw’s, was born in Danbury, Connecticut. He is survived by a sister and his father, his grandmother and two aunts. His mother died this year.

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Thomas would not comment on specifics of the Biddeford investigation, but said motive is often a key to determining who set a fire.

“The first thing is really to figure out that motivation: Why did it burn? Was the fire intended at the property or was the fire intended at a victim? Was the fire intended for some other type of sinister device, like covering up a crime?” Thomas said.

In the case of an apartment building or rental unit, it could be directed at the building’s management because the person was evicted and the perpetrator has no malice toward others in the building, he said. In other cases, fires have been set by jilted ex-boyfriends, for insurance money or by people who have a pathological attraction to fire.

When a fire was actually set can be an important clue, Thomas said.

“The time of day can be an indication of who might have had accessibility to the area of origin,” he said. “It can lead you to circumstances where we might go out and even look at security cameras in the area, just to see whether or not we see any foot traffic, anybody suspicious out at that particular time.”

Thomas said building a case can be challenging because often much of the evidence has been consumed by the fire.

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“We may have to speculate on what we believe happened and go to computerized fire modeling to see whether that theory has any credence to it,” he said.

That technique was used in a fire in a University of Southern Maine dormitory in 2012, enabling officers to determine the fire was set by a resident assistant. He was charged four months after the fire.

Thomas said there is no such thing as a typical arson.

In 2011, police arrested a boarder the day after he set fire to a home in Readfield, killing the owner.

In 2009, a large group of people broke into a vacant building and videotaped themselves setting fires inside it. Nobody died, but the videos led police to make nine arrests.

In 1993, a 10-year-old girl was charged the week after she set a fire that killed a toddler.

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In 2012, in one of the most devastating arson fires in the state’s history, Casey Fury set fire to a nuclear submarine, doing $400 million in damage and leading the sub to be scrapped. Fury was arrested by federal NCIS investigators three weeks after the sub fire and only after he set another, smaller fire and was seen.

 

David Hench can be contacted at 791-6327 or at:

dhench@mainetoday.com

Twitter: @Mainehenchman


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