The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Thu, 08 May 2025
As each new fire burns, investigators are inundated with tips and leads. They begin to suspect the culprit could have inside information. Binge all episodes of The Arsonist Next Door, ad-free today by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge Crimes on Apple Podcasts and hit ‘subscribe’ or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access. From serial killer nurses to psychic scammers – The Binge is your home for true crime stories that pull you in and never let go. The Binge – feed your true crime obsession. A Sony Music Entertainment and Novel production. Find out more about The Binge and other podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Ken Williams and what role does he play?
This is Ken Williams. He was a local at the time of the arson spree, and still lives in the area.
He wasn't born in Phoenix. He moved here as a young man from the beautiful state of New Jersey, same place I'm from.
Do you want to hear something funny? When my kid brother first visited me out here, and we're getting into the mountain preserves area, he goes, what is this? He goes, is this the landfill? I call it landfill. Oh, my God. No, that's a real mountain, kid.
Ken is an older man with a square jaw, bright blue eyes, and the demeanor of a kind uncle. He's directing me and my producer Leona from the backseat of our cute red Mini Cooper, which he barely fits in. We're driving through the suburban sprawl of North Phoenix towards the striking mountain ranges that encircle the valley.
We're on the way to the scene of a fire that changed the course of Ken's life.
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Chapter 2: What event changed Ken's life during the arson spree?
My brain's fried, man. The heat's getting me. I said the same thing.
Gazing up at those mountains as we drive, I'm struck by the immense beauty of this place. It's way greener than I thought it would be, and the preserves are teeming with life. Cactuses are everywhere, short ones, tall ones, fat ones, skinny ones, long, dangly, ridiculous ones that look straight out of a Dr. Seuss book.
At night, coyotes and javelinas, which are like little wild piggies, will appear in your backyard, and you can hear a chorus of insects and owls hooting. But you'll also hear the constant hum of traffic rumbling down huge six-lane roads. Phoenix is the fifth largest city in the U.S. These beautiful mountains we're driving past, they almost got transformed into urban sprawl.
Back in the 70s, local activists fought hard to protect the mountains from development. But where those environmentalists wrote petitions, made a float for the Phoenix rodeo parade, and even took lawmakers on horseback rides through the mountains, CSP is using arson. And the homes they're burning aren't even in the preserve.
But driving past this peaceful oasis, I can start to understand why any development might feel threatening, and why some people might be driven to take extreme action against it. My daydream is interrupted when Ken begins to tell me a story.
I want to say it was closer to Christmas, you know, like maybe the 20th of December, somewhere around there.
In the year 2000, Ken is at home in his yard.
I was just cooking up some chicken, some steaks on the grill for family, and I see an orange glow reflecting off my backyard window. And I turn around, I go, oh my God, a fire. And I could see the flame shooting up into the sky. And so I called the wife. I said, hey, take over.
Ken hands over the barbecue tongs to his wife because he knows immediately this fire must be part of the arson spree. That was 25 years ago. Now I want to see the place for myself. From the backseat of the car, Ken directs us to the scene of the fire.
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Chapter 3: How did Lieutenant Rob Handy respond to the arson attacks?
Chino Bandito?
Mm-hmm. Chino Bandito Tiki Audi. Ha ha.
Love it.
It's delicious, but we always remember just the meal we had the night of the fire.
On the same evening that Ken Williams was working the barbecue, Danielle and her family were enjoying black beans and jade chicken from Chino Bandito. It's a local restaurant with a menu that's Chinese and Mexican.
And Jamaican, too, is a little hodgepodge.
Danielle is tall with long, striking white hair. She speaks gently and distinctly. I find myself leaning forward slightly to listen when she talks. At the time of the fires, Danielle is a doctor at a local hospital, teaching medical students and residents. She and her husband have three kids, two boys under 10, and a daughter just two months old.
So the whole family is crowded around the dinner table. The baby is in a high chair.
We lived in a house that had gotten a little too small for our family, but we absolutely loved the neighborhood. So we bought some empty land a couple blocks away and spent a few years designing a house and saving up money to be able to build our dream house and then started building it in 1999.
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Chapter 4: What was Danielle Sink's experience on the night of the fire?
Over the next several hours, firefighters put out the blaze. Neighbor Tom's house lives to see another day. When the dawn comes, it's bright and clear. Just four days until Christmas. Danielle drives to the site of the fire to assess the damage. The scene is swarming with people. Law enforcement, fire investigators, journalists, and neighbors are milling around.
The mountain looked pristine, and my lot was just a burned-out black apocalypse in the middle of this beautiful neighborhood.
The only thing that's still standing is an outdoor fireplace.
Everything else was charred and black and on the ground.
A police officer approaches Danielle.
And said, bam, this is yours. And he held out his hand and there was a little ceramic Santa Claus. He found it in the rubble, pulled it out of the rubble and gave it to me. Just the night before it had been bright red with rosy cheeks. And now he had baked in the fire back to just a plain white ceramic fireplace.
Danielle takes the tiny Santa and closes her fingers around it, thinking about how she's going to explain all this to her kids.
Santa survived. Santa's still going to come.
Was there anything else you recovered from the home?
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Chapter 5: How did the community react to the escalating arson attacks?
Soon after Lieutenant Rob Handy accepts the help of the FBI, a huge joint task force is assembled.
Within a couple weeks, we had swelled from 10 to 15 people working on it to about 40 or 50.
Among the dozens of agents told to join the task force is Ken Williams, the local man we met earlier who left his grill to run to the fire. Because Ken Williams is more than just a neighbor of Danielle Sink. He's also a special agent with the FBI. And now his bosses want him to investigate the case unfolding in his very own neighborhood.
It's not a democracy. You know, you got to do what the boss tells you to do.
At first, Ken is resistant to the idea of joining the arson task force because he already has his hands full with another case.
I have a confidential human source who was a member of a terrorist organization.
Ken has a source who's a member of a terrorist group. And he's paying this source for information.
This guy was making a pretty substantial chunk of change a month because he would give us good information.
The source has just given Ken a new lead.
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Chapter 6: Why did Lieutenant Rob Handy decide to involve the FBI?
Imagine the paranoia that must have been running through the community by this point. Reading through some of the leads that got called in through the tip line, so many of them were just complete shots in the dark. A park ranger called in to report some graffiti he found in the preserve. Someone spray-painted, quote, Civic Legacy Andromeda Success.
It's not CSB, but it does have a C, and there's also a S. And then there's a young guy spotted with a painting in the back of his car window. It says, you build it, we burn it. The same tagline used by the Earth Liberation Front and CSP. They tail this kid to the coffee shop where he works, drag him out back, and give him the shakedown. He's a journalism student.
He swears that he just thinks it's a cool phrase, nothing more. Sounds pretty suspicious, right? But it turns out he's telling the truth. He's just a kid with a subversive taste in art. And here's the thing. All of us do things that can look kind of suspicious in the right context.
In my career, just over 20 years, there was probably only one or two times I had a case where there wasn't a skeleton in the closet.
I mean, if you go look in anybody's trash can on a consistent basis for a couple months, you're going to find weird stuff. It just teaches you people are strange.
You can't just go down one rabbit hole. You kind of have to try to look at as many possibilities as you can.
Veteran investigator Ken Williams has some advice for his young teammates. Start diving down a few of the most promising rabbit holes to see if any of the little bunnies who live there hate mansions and love fire. Rabbit hole number one.
We got contacted about this particular female firefighter.
A firefighter suspected of arson.
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Chapter 7: What challenges did Ken Williams face with his dual investigations?
This is Scott Meyer. He's tall, a bit more put together than you'd expect from a lifetime activist. And he has a sort of permanently bemused expression on his face.
There's a lot of piles of boxes on one floor.
The office in his house is full of anti-capitalist memes, printed out and stuck on the walls.
— Got some cool stuff here. — Yeah, this cool stuff, quote-unquote.
— He's been an environmental activist in Phoenix for decades. His specialty is taking polluters to court. And he's really good at it.
— We've put over 95 people in federal court, one every one of them. We just scared the hell out of everybody.
Scott lives with his longtime collaborator, Steve. They run a group called Don't Waste Arizona, and they're both frustrated at the narrative springing up in the news. About environmentalists being eco-terrorists, which is just pure bullshit. Next thing he knows, Scott hears a knock at the door. He cracks it open, and his dog goes crazy in the hallway. Outside are two serious-looking dudes.
$3,000 suits, you know, and this one guy, he had a magenta suit. I was just like, wow, it's a really nice suit, you know?
It's the FBI. The agents introduce themselves and come inside. Scott drags his dog out of the room to protect that gorgeous suit from dog hair. Once they've settled down, the interrogation begins.
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