Feds: No clear leads on Wash. home fires

The fires that destroyed three luxury homes and damaged two others appear to have been started with "available combustibles," such as paper or wood, authorities said Tuesday, while still not ruling out that accelerants may have been used.

FBI agent Dave Gomez theorized that those responsible might have chosen not to use any incendiary devices to avoid long sentences if they ever stood trial. Using a destructive device during a federal offense carries a mandatory 30-year sentence, Gomez said, "so whoever committed this crime may have been cognizant of that."

The announcement that there was no evidence of incendiary devices contradicted a report from a local fire chief the day before.

"It would appear the motive and possibly the way these fires were set were with available combustibles," said Kelvin Crenshaw, an agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, noting that investigators had yet to enter the two damaged homes.

The only definitive clue Tuesday in the fires remained a spray-painted sheet found at the scene of the Monday's pre-dawn fires bearing the initials of the Earth Liberation Front, Crenshaw said. The group is a loose collection of radical environmentalists that has claimed responsibility for dozens of attacks since the 1990s.

"The only thing that is consistent to this point with what we know as an ELF fire is the banner," Crenshaw said, adding that it had been sent to an FBI lab for testing.

The banner mocked claims made by the builders of the homes north of Woodinville, about 15 miles northeast of Seattle, that the large houses were environmentally friendly. It read: "Built Green? Nope black. McMansions and RCDs r not green," a reference to rural cluster developments.

A suspected ELF activist is on trial in Tacoma in the 2001 firebombing of the University of Washington's Center for Urban Horticulture. The FBI has no evidence linking Monday's fires to the trial of Briana Waters, a 32-year-old violin teacher from Oakland, Calif., who is accused of serving as a lookout while her friends planted the firebomb.

A federal jury resumed deliberations in the Waters case Tuesday. She could face 35 years if convicted.

The Snohomish County Sheriff's Office estimated that the fires did $7 million in damage to the "Street of Dreams," a row of unoccupied, furnished luxury model homes where tens of thousands of visitors last summer eyed the latest in high-end housing, interior design and landscaping. The homes were between 4,200 and 4,750 square feet, and for sale at prices as high as nearly $2 million.

The fires were the first Seattle-area attack linked to ELF since January 2006, when a bedsheet bearing a threatening message and the ELF signature was left at a fire that destroyed a mansion under construction on Camano Island north of Seattle, Gomez said. No one was injured in that fire, which caused an estimated $2 million in damage.