The Fire Man

"The fire was actually in the backyard of the house on 22nd, around the corner from Al," Miranda explains, "but the way the alleys are configured it was practically under his window. The garage and the camper that were on fire belonged to his neighbor, Cordell Larson, who'd just retired."

Larson and his brother had purchased the camper shortly before the fire. "My mother had died of cancer a few months before," says Janine Heitland, Larson's daughter. "My dad was just coming around, starting to cope with things again. Him and my uncle intended to take that camper up north and use it to hunt and fish once winter was over. They were both really looking forward to it."

The firemen arrived at a smoky, chaotic scene. Accounts differ about what they found there. According to one report, a fireman thinks he spotted Larson standing in the backyard when he arrived. Others don't mention seeing him on his feet. What's certain is that he was discovered lying near the back door of his house while the blaze was being extinguished. He was shirtless in the below-zero weather, with a large, bloody cut on his head. He died an hour later at the hospital. An autopsy revealed that he'd had a heart attack at the scene.

"His tools, his woodworking shop, his whole life was wrapped up in that garage and that camper," says Miranda. "He came out, saw it all on fire, and I think it put him over the edge. Yeah, he had heart disease, and maybe he'd have died in a few years anyway, but in my opinion the fire killed him. I'm 99.5 percent sure that Alan Enger started that fire, but we can't prove it.

"It was pretty confusing there," Miranda continues. "The scene looked like a homicide, with the blood and the victim on the ground, but it's been recorded as a death by natural causes." However Larson died, it was devastating for his family. "Dad's brother committed suicide afterwards," says Heitland. "They were very close, and he never recovered from that incident."

Enger later told investigators that he had no idea what happened at the Larson home: "I was like, holy Christ, what happened there? Right in my own backyard, and then later I read that he died. Had a heart attack or some shit. I still got the paper. But really, I don't have a clue about that one."

On one previous occasion, Enger had allegedly gotten violent when someone interfered with him at the scene of a fire. In the early morning hours of July 4, 2000, Enger was wandering the streets of northeast Minneapolis. Police in a patrol car spotted him on 22nd Avenue around 2:00 a.m. According to Officer Isaac Raichert, the sighting sparked a short discussion between himself and his partner, Officer Steven Derhaag, concerning the life and times of "Backdraft."

The conversation was fresh in their minds half an hour later when they spotted a garage on fire at 824 22nd Avenue. Firemen were already working on the blaze, so Raichert and Derhaag proceeded to the Second Precinct, where they reported seeing Enger in the vicinity shortly before the blaze was set. The incident seemed destined to become just another entry in the "Documented Alan Enger Fires" list, but the night was still young.

Around 4:30 a.m., a garbage truck driver named Frank Martin drove his rig into the alley behind the 2400 block of Central Avenue. He saw a garage burning. "The fire was halfway up the door," Martin later explained to investigators, "so I grabbed my extinguisher and put her out." Even so, Martin could tell that the smoldering wooden door was hot enough to burst into flames again. He kept an eye on it as he emptied several dumpsters. The flames reappeared, and as he was extinguishing them a second time he noticed someone in the alley. "I didn't have a phone with an outside line," he recalled later, "so I asked this guy if he lived nearby and could call the fire department. He said he would."

Martin hung around to see if the garage blazed up again. It did. He doused it a third time. Hearing no sirens, he used the intercom radio in his truck to contact another driver, and asked him to call 911. As he stood in the alley waiting, he noticed that the man he'd asked to call the fire department earlier had reappeared. He asked if the call had been placed.

"Instead of answering me," Martin told the police, "he walks up and says, 'You just cost me 700 bucks, you son of a bitch.' I'm like, what? 'That's right, you bastard, we been trying to get rid of this place,' he says. 'Why don't you mind your own goddamn business! What're you doing messing with my life this way?' I told him to fuck off, but he was getting more and more angry, and pretty soon he came after me."

Enger tried to assault Martin with his fists. Martin retreated, brandishing the fire extinguisher. Enger began picking up chunks of loose asphalt from the alley and throwing them. He has a pretty good arm, according to Martin, who made his way out on to Central just as the fire trucks arrived. Enger kept his distance, but he didn't run away. As Martin was explaining what had happened, Enger threw another rock. "I wasn't watching when he flung that one," said Martin. "It whizzed right past my ear, a chunk of cement the size of a fist. It could have killed me."