Alaska: Mom held on murder charges
Patty
Fatal fire set to collect insurance, officials say
By S.J. Komarnitsky And Sheila Toomey
Anchorage Daily News Reporters
(Published November 22, 2000)
A Wasilla woman arrested Tuesday is accused of murdering one son and trying to kill
another to collect their life insurance.
Suzette Welton, 37, is charged with setting fire to her duplex apartment on Mulchatna
Drive on Sept. 15 while both sons and a daughter were in the building.
Fifteen-year-old Samuel Welton died. His 16-year-old brother narrowly escaped by jumping
out a second-floor window. A 6-year-old sister who was on the ground floor was not
injured.
From the beginning, the state fire marshal's office said the blaze was suspicious because
it appeared to have started simultaneously in several different places on the second
floor.
The fire was discovered about 4:30 a.m. and did extensive damage to the home.
The dead boy was found in an upstairs bedroom. An autopsy found sedative drugs in his
body, said Palmer District Attorney Roman Kalytiak.
"She was the only adult in the house when it happened," Kalytiak said.
Details of the investigation will be made available today when Welton is arraigned at the
Palmer courthouse on charges of murder, attempted murder and arson, said Greg Wilkinson,
spokesman for the Alaska State Troopers.
"It's fair to say charging documents are going to disclose insurance policies were taken
out by the defendant on the two boys," Kalytiak said.
Welton was taken into custody without incident at her residence off Knik Goose Bay Road in
Wasilla, Wilkinson said. She was being held without bail Tuesday night at the Mat-Su
Pre-Trial Facility.
Neither Welton nor her attorney could be reached for comment after her arrest late
Tuesday. But according to a story published Tuesday in the Frontiersman newspaper, Welton
denied setting the fire. She offered the denials in affidavits filed in court over the
past two months in a debate over custody of her two surviving children.
Welton alleged that her dead son had been suicidal and caused the fire himself, according
to the Frontiersman, which based its story on filings in a Kenai court case. Welton
claimed in an affidavit to have found computer writings by Samuel, poems and stories
mentioning unhappiness and fire.
The children's father, who lives on the Kenai Peninsula, was given custody of the
surviving children after the fire, the Frontiersman said, and Welton's lawyer filed a
motion on Oct. 30 to get them back.
Happÿ
Of course if she had finished the book she would have realized that starting
the fire in many spots simultaneously triggers a deeper investigation.
H.