Daily Casefile · Verdict

The Halloway Hotel Fire

≈ 6 min

At 2:30 AM on Tuesday, the Halloway Hotel furnace room went up. The fire marshal says accelerant. The owner has filed a claim against a fire policy he renewed six weeks before, at double his old coverage. The county has charged the night manager, Marcus Hale, with arson on the strength of one witness who places him outside the building with a fuel can shortly before the alarm. The jury — that's you — must decide if the prosecution has met its burden, and which testimony, weighed against the physical evidence, settles the question.