Investigator finds holes in Windham fire story

WINDHAM – A state investigator believes a Windham man set fire to an apartment building to collect on a $500,000 insurance policy, then concocted a scheme involving organized crime to help cover up the arson.

In an application for a search warrant to Cumberland County District Court, Chris Stanford, State Fire Marshal’s Office senior fire investigator, wrote that inconsistencies in the story offered by Donato Corsetti in the Dec. 7 arson of a three-unit building in Windham Center, as well as financial information surrounding the property, all point to Corsetti as the culprit. No charges have been filed as of Thursday.

“After thoroughly examining the information gathered to this point, it is my opinion that Donato Corsetti intentionally started the fire in the apartment in an effort to gain insurance money to pay off the significant amount of financial debt he was in before the coverage was canceled due to the foreclosure,” Stanford wrote. “Donato’s objective was to make the event so sensational by staging an attack that investigators would not suspect him as the perpetrator.”

The search warrant was granted Dec. 12. Stanford then searched Corsetti’s home, located behind the three-unit apartment building, as well as his office at Corsetti’s store, located next door to the burned building.

Stanford seized three Toshiba laptop computers, bank statements, a tax bill, property title statements, court documents referencing the case involving the lender that serviced the mortgage Corsetti had on the apartment building and a financial crisis to-do list.

Corsetti is a well-known figure in Windham from his namesake store in Windham Center and his years spent as founder and former owner and publisher of a local weekly newspaper, the Windham Independent.

In the nine-page affidavit, Stanford details his findings after numerous interviews. According to Stanford, when Windham fire and police responded at 12:54 p.m. Friday, Dec. 7, to the two-story, three-unit apartment building located at 447 Gray Road in Windham, they found Corsetti, the owner of the property, bound in lamp cord cinched around his neck with a slip knot. The remaining length of cord was wrapped around his wrists, which were behind his back. The cord was still attached to a floor lamp that was lying on the ground next to Corsetti, who was in a semi-conscious state outside of the building with the first floor of the middle apartment unit fully engulfed in flames.

A Corsetti’s store employee was standing next to Corsetti yelling for help. Windham police Officer Jason Andrews, who happened to be driving by the scene when flagged down by the employee, and a store customer who saw the scene unfolding, were first on scene.

As to why Corsetti was seen flailing around the apartment while the fire was in progress, suffering smoke inhalation as a result, Stanford wrote, “I believe that Donato did not remember that the door [to the apartment] opened inwards, and after setting the fire and wrapping his hands behind him, he realized when he got to the door that it opened in, which is why he was standing up in the window directly next to the door when [the employee] first saw him.”

According to the warrant application, Stanford, who was called to the scene soon after the blaze began, and Andrews examined the cord that had been on Corsetti. Andrews said the cord around Corsetti’s neck featured a slipknot but the cord around his hands unwrapped easily when the store customer who came to Corsetti’s aid pulled on it to free Corsetti. Andrews had cut the cord around Corsetti’s hands and “didn’t look to see if it was actually tied around his wrists,” Stanford wrote.

Andrews and the customer untied Corsetti and helped him regain consciousness. When able to talk, Corsetti told Andrews that he had been attacked by the same people who had attacked him back in October, Stanford wrote. Corsetti was then transported by ambulance to Maine Medical Center for smoke inhalation.

According to the warrant application, Stanford was joined on scene by fire investigator Daniel Young and other investigators while the fire was still burning. Young completed an ignitable liquid sniff of the scene with a K-9 unit and the dog smelled the liquid in several areas. Young concluded the fire originated in the first floor living room of the middle apartment and that “it was caused by an intentional human element with the use of an open flame device and an apparent ignitable liquid,” Stanford wrote. The windows on the second floor of the apartment were open. Corsetti later told investigators he left the upstairs windows open in the summer and had forgotten to close them.

Stanford interviewed the store employee in his car at 1:56 p.m., about an hour after the incident began. She told Stanford that she had gone out for a smoke break and was sitting on a rock on the side of the store facing the apartment building. She said she was there for about a minute when she heard a tapping sound on glass. She looked around and saw Corsetti inside the window of the first-floor middle apartment to the left of the door. The employee said she watched him break through the glass with a floor lamp and stuck his head out. She said she ran over, opened the door, grabbed Corsetti and pulled him to safety. She said she didn’t see any smoke until Corsetti broke the window, Stanford wrote.

The employee told investigators Corsetti told her to untie him and that he was passing out. She didn’t see any blood or signs of obvious trauma on him. She then ran to the rear apartment and banged on the door to get the inhabitants’ attention that a fire was in progress, Stanford wrote.

Another store employee had gone out for a smoke break about 15 minutes before and sat on the same rock facing the apartment and didn’t notice anything suspicious inside the middle apartment, Stanford wrote.

One of the employees also said Corsetti had been in and out of the store all day. About a half-hour before the fire started, Corsetti said he had to go to a meeting and would be back later. She said his behavior appeared normal, Stanford wrote.

The rear unit’s tenant who was in the apartment with her baby as well as her roommate, told Stanford during an interview at 4 p.m. that she didn’t hear anything from the middle apartment, despite being in a room that shares a wall with the middle apartment, a wall she described as “thin.” She told investigators that, in the past, she could hear through the upstairs wall well enough to hear cats playing on the first floor of the middle apartment.

The only thing “suspicious” the tenant noticed was a black Chevy Impala parked behind the store meeting with other vehicles after the store closed, an event she said happened at least twice a week, Stanford wrote.

While investigators were interviewing witnesses on the scene, Windham police detectives Matt Cyr and Paul Cox and fire marshal’s office senior investigator Mark Roberts interviewed Corsetti at Maine Medical Center after he received treatment for smoke inhalation and abrasions to the head.

They said Corsetti explained that he had gone to the middle apartment to meet a man who was interested in renting the apartment. Corsetti followed the man into the apartment. Another man then appeared behind Corsetti, swore at Corsetti and then hit him in the head. Corsetti lost consciousness and then woke up to the place on fire with his hands tied behind his back. The assailants were driving a dark-colored sedan, the officers quote Corsetti as saying.

Stanford wrote that Corsetti also told the Windham detectives and Roberts that he recognized one of the men from an encounter in October when he showed him the middle apartment and the man assaulted him. Corsetti described the two assailants as one being tall and skinny and the other as short and stocky.

Corsetti, Stanford wrote, had “significant abrasion injuries to his wrists and forehead” and that he was being sent in for a CT scan. Regarding the October incident, Stanford wrote that Corsetti had told Windham police about the assault but asked them not to file a report or investigate it further “because he was afraid of scaring his employees at the store,” Stanford wrote.

While Corsetti was in the hospital, his wife, Belinda Corsetti, called the insurance company and filed a claim, Stanford wrote. When the Corsetti family returned home from the hospital later that night, Cox and Stanford attempted to interview Corsetti once again. Corsetti gave the same statement that he did in the hospital except for a few changes, Stanford said. First, Corsetti said he had blacked out from fear, not being hit on the head as he had told detectives earlier. Second, Corsetti initially had reported that he thought the two men attacked him for not renting the apartment to one of the men in October. He changed that in the evening saying that he thought the assailants had him mistaken for his brother, Rocco Corsetti, who had been in trouble with the law in the past, Stanford wrote.

During that Friday evening interview, the same day as the fire, Cox and Stanford confronted Corsetti saying they did not believe his version of events. Corsetti then changed his story again, Stanford wrote.

“He answered by telling us that he had lied the first couple times and that it was actually a ‘set-up’ by an organized crime group from Rhode Island that he would not identify as the Mafia,” Stanford wrote.

Stanford wrote that Corsetti told them the group had come after him by mistake and that he would “make some calls down in Rhode Island and have the problem taken care of.”

Stanford then asked Corsetti why no trace of flammable liquid was found on him, something in Stanford’s experience as a fire investigator said is common when someone is trying to kill someone else with fire. Corsetti answered that the two men “just wanted to scare him because if they wanted to kill him he would have been dead,” Stanford wrote.

Corsetti then asked the investigators to stop investigating and that he would take care of the problem “internally,” Stanford wrote. Corsetti then refused to talk further about the events and that if the investigators “ever mentioned it to anyone that … he would deny that he said it,” Stanford wrote.

Stanford then offered Corsetti to take a polygraph exam in order to eliminate him as a suspect. Corsetti cooperated initially but as questioning began he asked the reason for taking it and then refused to participate, Stanford wrote.

“He stated that the test would show that he was lying anyway because even though he didn’t set the fire, he was involved because of the ‘set up,’” Stanford wrote. Corsetti also declined to continue with the polygraph saying he had a heart condition and would have to check with his doctor. He told Stanford to get back in touch with him Tuesday, Dec. 11.

During the Friday evening interview, investigators also asked about the foreclosure on the apartment building, which Corsetti had owned since 1987, according to Windham tax records. The apartment house, according to the warrant request, had been foreclosed on and purchased by Fannie Mae on Nov. 29. Corsetti said he was behind on payments for all of his properties except the store. Regarding the apartment building, Corsetti said he was in foreclosure proceedings but was waiting for a hearing date to get the matter settled, Stanford wrote.

When investigators confronted him with the fact that he no longer owned the building, and that foreclosure had been finalized and that the property was up for sale, Corsetti “answered by refusing to believe it and demanding I show him the paperwork,” Stanford wrote. “Donato kept saying that he was waiting for his court date to settle the matter however [he] would not tell me where he heard there was going to be a hearing and would not give me a date.”

Stanford also interviewed Richard Sirois of the South Portland-based Regency Realty Group on Monday, Dec. 10. Sirois said he had personally served Corsetti with an eviction notice on Tuesday, Dec. 4, while Corsetti was working at his store. Corsetti, Sirois told investigators, was “defiant and stated that he would have his day in court.”

Sirois also said Corsetti’s personal residence, located behind the apartment building, was included in the list of foreclosed properties, “which we did not know until this point,” Stanford wrote. No further information regarding Corsetti’s home, which he shares with his wife, was in the affidavit.

Stanford then interviewed attorney Leonard Morley, of Shapiro and Morley, later on Dec. 10. Morley had been the attorney overseeing the foreclosure representing the lender, Green Tree Servicing based in Illinois. He said the initial mortgage taken out in 2006 was for $395,000 and that it went into foreclosure proceedings in August 2011 due to non-payment by Corsetti. He said Corsetti did not show up to a trial held June 18, 2012, and that a judgment was made against Corsetti on July 16 after not hearing from Corsetti, Stanford wrote.

Morley informed Stanford that the total debt on the mortgage was $452,248, as of Nov. 29. Morley said the notice of the sale of the property was mailed to Corsetti and published in the regional newspaper Oct. 19, Oct. 26 and Nov. 2.

“Leonard [Morley] told me that there was no way that Donato did not know that the property had been sold and was no longer his,” Stanford wrote.

Stanford wrote that Corsetti also owed the state of Maine $12,396 in unpaid labor tax. Stanford also wrote that Corsetti’s property was insured by Vermont Mutual for $509,800.

Stanford also wrote that Corsetti admitted to playing low-stakes poker at the Portland Country Club with businessmen and lawyers every week. He said he had no outstanding gambling debt.

On Tuesday, Dec. 11, four days after the arson, Cox, the Windham detective, told Stanford that Corsetti had hired a lawyer and no longer wished to cooperate with the investigation.

In his closing statement, Stanford said Corsetti acted alone in starting the fire and feigning a mob hit.

“I believe that when the circumstances are put together, the fact that Donato Corsetti received notice of sale and eviction three days before the fire; the fact that two of his employees are outside smoking looking at the apartment building specifically the side that contains the entrance door talked about by Donato at different times in succession of each other and don’t see anything; the fact that the lamp cord was wrapped around his wrists and not tied like the end around his neck; the fact that there was no ignitable liquid available in the apartment and, according to Donato, the alleged assailants did not have anything in their hands; the fact that the lamp was out of sight inside of a closet and not readily available; and the fact that Donato did not have any trace of ignitable liquid on his clothing, which in my experience is not the case when a perpetrator is trying to kill someone with the use of such liquids and fire; along with the other circumstances aforementioned in my affidavit, they support my hypothesis,” Stanford wrote.

Corsetti has been a public figure in Windham since opening Corsetti’s store at the intersection of Windham Center Road and Route 202 in 1978.

Corsetti founded the Windham Independent newspaper in early 2004 along with co-publisher Corey Gilding. While Corsetti’s wife, Belinda, is part owner and president of the company Independent Publishing Group, which owns the paper, Corsetti’s involvement as an owner of the Independent ended in 2008, Gilding said last week. Corsetti’s involvement now only includes “small duties” such as taking photos and restocking newspapers, Gilding said.