After having dinner with her husband then going home to put her children to bed, she went back to the town her husband works in and caught him with another woman. She told him he would see "recklessness" in her that evening.

She said the fire was coming from the dishwasher and up the wall in the kitchen. Her husband said they had been having marital difficulties and he had planned to move out the day of the fire. They had previously talked about burning down the house, and in the previous months his wife had mentioned it several times but they hadn't made any concrete plans. They had discussed igniting rags on the furnace or lighting the insulation in the walls in the basement.

A neighbor had heard a phone conversation between the couple where they were discussing burning down the house to get out of debt and saying that they would have to do it when the children weren't there so it didn't look suspicious. The tenant of the room in the basement said the homeowner opened mail with insurance documents and said that the house was insured, she could burn it down for the money and move someplace else.