Just before I retired, I went to a run at a woman’s house. She had been a model or actress or something. Every picture in the house was of her when she was younger, and they were all over; in the hall, on all the dressers, places like that. She was a hypochondriac, and we had seen her quite a few times before. 

This time was different though. We got this call that there was a woman inside of a house that was burning. So we rolled down there and when we arrived her husband was out in front screaming that she was in there. We entered the living room. There was no fire there. There was smoke, but it wasn’t too bad. We found her laying on her back with her arms and legs up in the air. She was dead, and her body was all black from the smoke. She looked like a giant tarantula. When her husband came home, he had pulled her out of the bedroom and down the stairs, and left her there. The room had burned for so long that she froze in that position and then cooked. 

We went upstairs where the fire was, and it was super hot. The smoke detector on the ceiling was knocked off and just hanging there. I couldn’t figure out what was burning that caused all of the smoke and heat. I thought it was some kind of crime scene because I couldn’t see what had actually burned.

I called the investigation team and they came in and searched around. They discovered that she had been drinking and smoking. She had thrown a cigarette into a trash can, which started burning. So she took that into the shower, and turned the shower on to put some water in it. The smoke detector was also going off, so she took a broom and knocked the detector off the ceiling. Then she went back and laid down in her bed. Well, the fire continued to burn in the bathroom and it eventually killed her. She had killed herself by smoking and drinking while not paying attention, because it was actually a small fire when she handled it.