A week after saying good-bye to her daughters with a heart-wrenching eulogy, the mother who lost her three daughters and her parents in a Connecticut house fire was re-interviewed by authorities. Stamford Fire and Rescue Chief Antonio Conte said of the investigation, "It's nowhere near completion."
Madonna Badger, a NYC fashion branding executive, had been in the middle of extensive renovations of her three-story Victorian on Shippan Avenue in Stamford when a fire broke out on Christmas Day. While Badger survived along with her boyfriend Michael Borcina, the contractor overseeing the work, her young daughters—7-year-old twins and their 9-year-old sister—and parents were killed in the massive blaze. Investigators say that Borcina emptied still-smoldering embers from a fire into a bag and placed the bag in the mudroom or in a trash enclosure; later, the embers triggered fire. (The embers may have been removed so the girls would not worry about Santa Claus being injured when coming down the chimney.) By the time firefighters were called to the house, they could only rescue Badger and Borcina. Later, Stamford's Buildings Department ordered the home to be razed, because it was structurally unsound.
According to the Stamford Advocate, "Stamford Police Capt. Richard Conklin said officers interviewed Badger as part of their joint investigation into the fatal fire with Stamford fire marshals, who are working to determine the origin and cause of the blaze." Authorities are also trying to figure out if there were working smoke detectors. Borcina's permits indicated he was working on installing carbon monoxide detectors and another official said that based on Borcina's paperwork on June, smoke detectors should have been installed by the time of the fire.
Assistant Fire Chief Peter Brown said that based on his 38 years of experience, he suspected there were no working smoke detectors and said of embers-as-cause-of-fire hypothesis, "It's a stupid thing to do, discard hot ash in a flammable container, but there's no criminality to it. It's just a horrible accident."
