Police believe that a teenager from Falmouth set fire to his family’s home last month after he was kicked out for erratic behavior, according to court documents.
Logan Valle, 18, was arrested Nov. 15 after he allegedly broke into two other houses in Falmouth while naked. Health care workers said later that night that he was suffering from a substance abuse overdose – possibly the synthetic stimulant known as “bath salts” – and had frostbite on his feet.
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Minutes before Valle’s arrest at 10:45 p.m., police were called to 12 Inverness Road for a massive fire at the Valle family home.
One of the officers at the fire scene heard Valle’s mother, Lisa Valle, saying: “I can’t believe it. … Logan did this. … My son did this.”
A police investigator suggested in a court affidavit that Valle, an athlete, may have run the 1.59 miles from the area near the fire to the homes that were broken into, and that was the cause of his frostbite.
Valle remains in the Cumberland County Jail in Portland on $10,000 bail, charged with burglary, theft and attempted theft. He has not been charged in connection with the fire that destroyed his family’s house, or an attempt to set fire to a Chevrolet Tahoe that he had been sleeping in. The vehicle was found with a partially burned rag sticking out of the gas tank.
However, police say they have probable cause to believe that Valle set fire to the house, and a judge agreed that their belief is reasonable enough to justify the issuance of a search warrant. The warrant gives police the right to seize Valle’s iPhone phone records, any pictures or video and the phone itself, including location data.
Valle’s attorney, Robert LeBrasseur, said he had no comment on the information in the affidavit, and said he had not received a copy of it.
The police affidavit of probable cause was written the week after the fire by Falmouth police officer Jeffrey Pardue based on interviews with Valle’s family and friends, several of whom were with him that night. Information from the State Fire Marshal’s Office also was contained in the affidavit.
Valle, a Falmouth High School graduate, has a history of substance abuse problems and last spring returned from a residential rehabilitation program, the court papers said. He began using drugs and alcohol again and one friend said that in the week before the fire, he was “short tempered and snappy.”
The Thursday before the fire, Valle had argued with his father, Kevin, about obtaining a medical marijuana prescription. Later, Valle’s father went out of town on business. After a confrontation Friday, his mother ordered him out of the house until his father returned because of his “erratic and hostile” behavior. At first he refused and Falmouth police responded to keep the peace.
Eventually he did leave in the Chevrolet Tahoe his parents let him use.
On Saturday, Nov. 15, Valle asked to come home but his mother said he could not until his father returned, the court papers said. According to one of Valle’s four siblings, he was very angry with his mother.
Valle spent Friday night at a friend’s house, where he woke everyone up at 3 a.m. with loud music while he worked out on a punching bag, the court papers said.
When he called a friend for a ride Saturday, he had been sleeping in his sport utility vehicle, according to friends interviewed by police. Valle and a group of friends went at 8 p.m. to his house, where he retrieved a television from the basement. Valle went back inside and this time came back empty-handed but was acting “nervous and unusual,” friends told police.
The group was headed to Cumberland – the affidavit doesn’t say why – when the friend’s car ran out of gas. Valle said he had to get out, and climbed out the rear passenger window, the affidavit said.
The group called another friend, Nick Spencer, whose parents’ house was one of the two burglarized later that night.
Valle told Spencer and another friend that he hadn’t slept in several days and they should “go back to my house and do whatever you want to it,” the other friend quoting Valle as saying, according to the affidavit.
Spencer texted one of the group that night that Valle had set fire to his parents’ home, according to Pardue’s affidavit. Spencer told friends that he had driven to his parents’ lake house in Moultonborough, New Hampshire, after dropping Valle off near the Falmouth Country Club, the affidavit said.
Police said Spencer was the last of Valle’s friends to see him that night. Spencer invoked his right to an attorney and declined to speak to investigators, the affidavit said.
Police seized Valle’s phone on Thursday.
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