Would A Serial Adult Pyromaniac Take The Last Chance Regardless Of Risk? (Bradford)

I started this thread www.abovetopsecret.com...

After digesting the response a thought struck me. Because the stand was about to be demolished it was the last chance to see the flames and blame the fire on someone else. An unidentified and hypothetical spectator was successfully held to be the probable cause of the fire.

At this link you will find two photographs of the club chairman. www.yorkshirepost.co.uk...

In the first photograph he shows the Prime Minister the burnt ruin. In the second photograph he wanders past the burnt out stadium, hand in pocket, no VIP in tow. The alternative would have been watching a demolition squad at work.

He may have had an irrational love of fire. He may have thought there would be no casualties, just a spectacle to be shared by all.

What do the medical experts think?

If no one had died would it have been his last chance, would he have used fire again.
This is a very emotive subject still red raw in some victims relatives minds and if there is no actual evidence of the man doing this it can only rub salt into their already open wounds.
My heart truely goes out to the people suffering and hope they find peace before their end.

a reply to: crayzeed

Last chance for that particular structure I meant. It must have tempted many over the years with it's timber, canvas, and bitumen construction.

Yes, if he was obsessed with big fires he most likely would have done it again if this hadn't worked out so badly.

I often find common sense spoken in the Irish press. www.irishtimes.com...

Bradford fire: Families of Valley Parade victims deserve respect of new inquiry

At the very least it was catastrophically unfortunate that having survived for 77 years and the smoking of thousands of fags, the Valley Parade stand couldn’t withstand another 45 minutes of football. And if the stand was deemed unworthy of insurance cover, was it not a disgrace that supporters were permitted to use it?

....monetary gain of the fire: he estimates that as well as the £988,000 received from “insurance proceeds and associated grants”, the local authority gave £1.46 million to the club.

a reply to: Kester

I've actually known a genuine pyromaniac and don't see Heginbotham as being a compulsive arsonist. Through the individual I know, I've communicated with certain authorities and know a little about the psychology of pyromaniacs. They tend to have a history that can go as far back as infancy and becomes noticeable during adolescence.

He appears to have been an extreme problem-solver who used fires to side-step his debts and responsibilities. Maybe he had too much respect in the community to become a suspect?

It's amazing to see the blatant theme of arson surrounding that guy and nobody ever noticed. If guilty, I wonder if he ever felt remorse for what would amount to 54 murder victims who died in pain?? A true pyromaniac can find pleasure in lives (animal or human) being lost to fire. It's hard to imagine isn't it?

a reply to: Kandinsky

Thank you. This is the sort of answer I've been looking for.

Remorse. His son says the stress of the fire is what killed him years later. It's a harsh question but I want to ask, where is the foundation he set up to aid the survivors? There probably is one and I'm being truly tasteless to ask.

I've known those who committed a wrong act then devoted their lives to helping others. I would expect to hear about a fire awareness charity or some such positive action that he could certainly have created with his organisational abilities.

a reply to: Kester

I just stumbled on this:

Having decided to collect the money and donate it as a lump sum to the fire disaster fund, Marsden was shocked to discover that the appeal had been closed, and the organisers had told him that they didn’t want the money. In the end, the money was donated instead to the burns research unit in Bradford.

Link

I'd just started high-school when that single came out. Don't remember it. The cast of singers is cringeworthy! Some awful 80s acts and Rolf Harris and Dave Lee Travis in there too.

That looks like an appeal was set up in the aftermath and closed right away. The single was released just three weeks after the fire and it'd be interesting to see how long the appeal charity remained open.

If Hegginbotham chaired/launched the charity, the swift closure makes me think of a PR exercise. *If* that's how it went down, it frames him as someone with next to no remorse...in my opinion.

ETA - you might find the 'results' section of this paper relates to your question. The alcoholism may well be a feature of comorbidity, but it doesn't have to be present in all pyromaniacs. If there's a 'typical' pyromaniac, they will have a constellation of traits such as low/moderate cognitive functioning, atypical moral reasoning, low self-esteem etc. There's a statistic out there that most fires are started on a Friday/Saturday night. Chances are, Hegginbotham held these traits, but, statistically, pyromaniacs tend to be chronic under-achievers and he flew pretty high. Psychotic maybe?

a reply to: Kandinsky

Very interesting.

Here's his son.

a reply to: Kandinsky

....there is also the story about the memorial service at Valley Parade, two months after the fire, when a 12-year-old Martin and his relatives pulled up at traffic lights and heard a sound they had not heard all day – laughter. “We turned to the car alongside us and saw its occupants, including Stafford Heginbotham, all laughing away,”

www.theguardian.com...

He even lied to the Prime Minister and the media in spite of the evidence, or lack of it, being right there on the spot.

Other parts of the book bring in far more serious issues than the chairman’s public behaviour and it was certainly notable, visiting Hollinger in Bradford a few days ago, that he, like Fletcher, remembers Heginbotham telling Margaret Thatcher and the world’s media that the stand was due to be demolished the following day and that the steel girders were already being stored on the car park. “It was all a lie,” Fletcher writes in 56 – The Story of the Bradford Fire, quoting hard evidence from the official inquiry and identifying an aerial photograph of the cordoned-off site showing there was nothing of the kind. Hollinger, previously a groundsman at Valley Parade, brought up the exact same point. “I went up there, others went up there, and I asked people at the club, too. There wasn’t even a nail.”

a reply to: Kandinsky

The fact is that no-one — no one person — was concerned with the general safety of the premises. Mr Heginbotham told me so.

bradfordcityfire.co.uk...

Slight evasion of responsibility there.

Mr Heginbotham said that any child would know that such litter was a fire hazard.

Not every child has this experience. It seems like an odd thing to say.

a reply to: Kandinsky

Then this.

Following the sale of his shares in Bradford City A.F.C. Heginbotham converted his then home in Tong called Pastures into a hotel in late 1987. Two years later the Tong Village Hotel opened, in 1990 he sold the hotel in a shares transaction deal to Whitbread, receiving a million shares, he then moved to Jersey as a tax exile.

en.wikipedia.org...

Jersey, what's Jersey infamous for?