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TheMorningStar

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A 58-year-old man confessed to getting drunk, then dousing his wheelchair-bound wife in gasoline and setting her on fire, a homicide detective testified Monday.

Delano Grangruth told police the couple had been fighting about money for three days, which led him to drink for the first time in four years, Detective Bill Cogswell said. Then, in a fury and drunk on Bacardi rum, he poured the gasoline that he normally used for the lawnmower, set her on fire, panicked and fled.

After looking at photos of 61-year-old Kathleen White-Grangruth’s charred body, Judge Lauri Hogge ruled there was enough evidence against Grangruth, who’s charged with second-degree murder and setting an arson fire, to send his case to a grand jury and toward a trial.

“They were very difficult to look at,” Hogge said during the hearing in Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court.

Grangruth told detectives he set his wife on fire around 3 p.m. the previous day, about 19 hours before someone found her.

Around 10:30 a.m. on April 17, firefighters went to the couple’s house in the 6200 block of Wailes Ave. after White-Grangruth’s caregiver knocked on the door, got no answer, smelled something burning and then called 911, Detective Matthew Nordan said in an affidavit seeking permission to search Grangruth’s clothes.

When firefighters forced their way in, they found what they thought was an elderly woman, Nordan said. A death investigator noted White-Grangruth was lying in a chair that was fully reclined, with a fist-sized candle/potpourri warmer under the chair. White-Grangruth suffered third- and fourth-degree burns on over 90 percent of her body, medical examiner Michael Hays said in his autopsy report.

The high oxidation levels visible on the metal of the chair as well as the amount of carpet that burned suggested an accelerant had been used, Nordan said.

White-Grangruth was confined to a wheelchair and was unable to move freely on her own, he added.

When firefighters first got to the house, it was locked, so they had to force their way in.

White-Grangruth died from “acute thermal injuries” in a homicide, medical examiner Michael Hays said in his autopsy report. A dentist had to use dental records to identify her body.

While searching the Grangruths’ back yard, Detective Cogswell found a red gas can near a locked shed. A state forensic scientist analyzed it but didn’t find enough DNA on the can’s handle to compare it to Grangruth’s.

Officers who patrolled the area knew Grangruth traveled by bike and eventually found him outside the McDonald’s at Military Circle, Nordan said.

At first, Grangruth denied knowing about the fire in his house, Cogswell said while being questioned by defense attorney Brett Lucas. But after three hours, he admitted to setting it.
https://pilotonline.com/news/local/crime/article_cfdeed88-c012-11e8-b7f1-fbfcf623c32f.html
 
Have we not already had one wheelchair set on fire with the person sitting in it this week? But that person lived?
 
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