Hi crime junkies, I'm your host Ashley Flowers, and I'm Britt, and the story I have for you today is a baffling one.

It's about two crimes, a decade apart, and the man at the center of both.

This is the story of Clarence Roberts.

I'm sure at least some of you listening have seen a house fire, but if you haven't, I think you can still appreciate how terrifying they can be.

They burn hot and fast, and if you don't move quickly, just about everything you own can be gone in a matter of minutes to hours.

Which is why, when a woman named Ella is driving home one evening, the distinct glow of flames catches her eye as she passes by her neighbor's house.

The flames are coming from the garage, but there's no mistaking that the fire is already blazing.

Now she rushes home to call for help, and it's 1970, so way before cell phones, even before 911 as we know it today, so she calls the local police department, and then heads back to the scene of the fire.

And when she pulls up again, she is horrified to find that the fire has spread from part of the garage to the whole structure.

Oh my god, so it's spreading pretty quickly, is there anyone still inside the house?

Well she can't tell, I mean there's no one standing outside and she can't hear or see anyone like trying to get out, but honestly by the time the firefighters get there and start fighting the blaze, there's not much hope for survivors if there was someone inside.

All they can really hope for is that the owners, which were a couple named Geneva and Clarence Roberts and two of their sons, they're just hoping that they're safe away from the garage before the fire even started.

And thankfully, as they're putting the fire out, two members of the Roberts family do show up. It's Geneva and one of their sons, Lauren.

They say that they left the house at around 5 p.m., roughly an hour and 15 minutes before their neighbor spotted the flames, but the thing is, there's no sign of Clarence, who they say had still been at the house when they left.

Thankfully, they know their other son is fine. I couldn't find where he was at at the time of the fire, but all I know is that he was out of the house, so he was all well and good.

So that just leaves Clarence unaccounted for? Right. By 745, the fire is out, and firefighters are sifting through the rubble of the garage.

And that's when one of them calls out that they found a body. It's badly burned, I mean, beyond recognition.

But with every other member of the family accounted for, there's really no question that it's probably Clarence. Right.

But before anyone moves the body, the sheriff, who, by the way, also happens to be Clarence's brother, orders the body not to be touched because laying across the body,

charred and partially burned away, are the remains of a shotgun.

So right away, even before the body is examined or moved, this theory starts to form for many there at the scene.

They start to think that Clarence set the fire himself and then potentially died by suicide.

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