October 1, 2024 • 33 mins
On a beautiful spring morning in May of 2008, the calm air of spring was disturbed by the heat and smoke of a house fire in Springfield, OH. The fire department rushed to the scene to put out the fire, but much of the house was engulfed with the flames. After fighting the fire the crew began to clean up the remains of the fire as the fire marshall made his way through the scene. Noticing something strange about the burn pattern the fire marshall began to think the fire was set intentionally. The rest of the crew continued to sift through the remains of the debris when Under the Rubble they found the badly burnt body of a young woman. The young woman was making a name for herself at her job. Her name was Alia Hartman and someone decided she had to go. The fire marshall ruled the fire an arson and the manner of death was ruled a homicide. To this day no one has been brought to justice for the brutal murder of Alia. She didn't seem to have any enemies, so who would want her dead, and who would go to the lengths to burn her in an arson? So many questions with no answers. Who would want to leave Alia Hartman buried Under the Rubble?
Contact Information: Springfield Police Division
130 N. Fountain Avenue Springfield, Ohio 45502
Chief Allison Elliott937-324-7685
Contact Information: Cold Case MHS: coldcase@masonohioschools.com
513-398-5025 ext. 33304
513-967-0368
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Cold Case MHS, Monsters and Demons. We're Real Education, Meet Your Life. I'm
(00:06):
your host, Randy Hubbard. And I'm your co-host, Lydia Lisco. And we thank you for listening.
(00:36):
There you've left their mark. We've dumped in memory. Let's find the enemy. We won't leave it behind.
Behind every shadow. A story to be told. Who lies, I was special. But some hearts have grown cold.
(01:04):
And the jumps of the darkness. Stuff the guru for remains. Behind every cold case. There's people fighting day to day.
Welcome back to Cold Case MHS. We have had all kinds of cases this year, but this year was an unusual situation that we had three fire cases.
(01:30):
And this is our third one. And this is the story of Aliyah Hartman and what happened to her in Springfield, Ohio.
And I'm going to allow the students to introduce themselves and talk a little bit about Aliyah's case for us.
Hi, so my name is Janna. I'm Gabby. And I'm Janna. So Aliyah's case on May 9th, 2008, approximately around 12.30 a.m.
(01:53):
Aliyah's one-story ranch home at 1805 Sweetbar Lane, Springfield, Ohio, became engulfed in flames.
The fire division was then contacted and responded quickly. After many hours of putting out the fire, a secondary sweep of the premise was conducted,
where they found a body burnt beyond recognition on the floor by the bed in the bedroom.
(02:16):
It took a while to locate the body due to the ceiling falling, and it was later determined through dental records that the body belonged to 25-year-old Aliyah M. Hartman.
And after an investigation of the incident, it was determined that the fire had been intentionally set and the case was ruled a homicide.
Who called the fire department?
(02:37):
I don't know who called the fire department. When we asked Nick, the fire chief on the case, he didn't seem to know. Nobody seemed to know who called 911.
Okay. So was there anyone else in the house at the time?
There was no one at her house at the time, but she was married and she did have a child, but both were not seen at her house.
(03:01):
And the neighbors, they didn't say anything about it when, after the fire?
We were told by the owner of the house that there were people who tried to help and stuff, but we don't know who originally called.
We know that they saw flames or whatnot and tried to go see Aliyah was home and whatnot and tried to help all they could,
but the house was pretty much burning up by the time anybody really got over there.
(03:28):
So the fire was considered a homicide and an arson, correct?
Yes.
Okay. And the accelerant, where did they say the accelerant was placed in the house?
There were a lot of different paths that we found for the accelerant.
The one theory is that there were multiple use in multiple different places of the house for multiple different reasons.
(03:51):
Another theory that there was just one that was used and it was very sporadic and unprofessional because that's what we think the suspect was kind of more leaning towards.
But one of the chemicals, it was highly flammable and highly dangerous to people and just living.
And so, for that to be in a common household was just weird.
I think something you said was very interesting. You said that the fire could have been set sporadically.
(04:13):
Do you think how the fire was set could lead to an analysis of potentially who could have set it?
Yes, I think so. I think one of the places it was set was near doorways, which was interesting to me because it was like,
maybe they wanted the fire to be blocking the doors so no one could get in and get out, which was very planned.
But then the other theory was like, oh, just spread aimlessly around the house.
(04:36):
So that kind of made me think like, okay, that matches our suspect profile a little bit better.
So we mentioned a little bit of that suspect profile.
So why don't we talk a little bit about Aliyah?
Who was she? What could have possibly happened that would cost somebody to take this kind of action?
So tell me a little bit about her.
So Aliyah grew up not well off and she had a strained relationship with her mother.
(04:59):
And when she kind of moved to Ohio and stuff, she wanted to become an independent woman.
And she did this by one going and attending school and getting a job at Tinker Omega.
And where she had a pretty good relationship with all the coworkers and a good relationship with her boss.
How long had she been in that position?
(05:22):
Was she fairly new to that job or had she been there a while?
She, before the fire, she was promoted to an assistant.
But she did work at the workplace for a while then.
But she had a flexible schedule because she was still going to school and she had a child to take care of.
What kind of work was she doing?
(05:43):
She was doing, I believe it was some like design, engineering, production, something along those lines.
When they looked into the house, you said her body was the only one found there, right?
But you just mentioned she had a child, right?
Yes.
Where was the child at the time?
We don't know 100% exactly where there were some guesses of maybe with Alan's mom.
(06:09):
But we are 100% sure because nobody said 100% this is where the child is.
And was the father involved, was the father around for that child?
Is that where they possibly could have been or do we know?
That could be a possibility that the child was with Aliyah's husband.
But around this time their relationship was pretty strained and they argued a lot.
(06:35):
So do we know what led or caused some of the strains in their relationship?
Definitely just Aliyah's independence.
She really wanted to get a self-made woman and once she got the kid, her husband Alan wanted her to be a stay-at-home mom and kind of just focus on the child.
So a lot of times when we're talking about victimology, which is the personality behind the victim and their characteristics and everything,
(07:00):
victims we usually deal with in cold case tend to be a bit more high risk sometimes,
where they're involved in drugs, prostitution, other criminal activities.
But then there are other victims who may be a little bit more low risk where they may not be putting themselves in those kind of situations.
Do you think Aliyah was more low risk or did she engage in some high risk behaviors?
(07:21):
I think she was pretty low risk.
There wasn't really much that we were told that she did that would get her in trouble or in any way.
Maybe just like some of her relationships were maybe a little rocky, but other than that, most of her life was pretty well off at that point in time.
And everyone we talked to in regards to her said that she was a really amazing person and mother and co-worker.
(07:45):
Never said anything bad about her or her lifestyle.
Yeah, and we heard from her boss, like his wife had very good characteristics and qualities stated about Aliyah and her sister in spirit stated that she never drank and she didn't smoke.
So she was very low risk.
So if you're low risk, throwing you back into the forensics profiling part of class a little bit, if they're low risk and somebody sets an arson in their house,
(08:16):
what kind of people are you looking for? What would be the profile of your suspect?
Definitely someone that had a relationship with her and known her and had some kind of motive or vengeance towards that person.
Or could have just been a random act of violence too. We don't know for sure if it was somebody she knew or could have just been somebody down the street.
(08:40):
Was the house completely destroyed or were they able to tell if there were signs of forced entry into the house?
So the door when investigation came, the bolt was like attached or something where you can like literally just like open the door and walk in.
Nick Hylandlick explains that for a while so we can listen to him explain it better, how the house was laid out and all that type of stuff.
(09:04):
It's a one story ranch home. The front door is in basically the middle of the structure as you're approaching it.
And when you walk in the front door, you're in the main living area of the home and diagonally back to the left goes towards the kitchen.
And you step in the front door about six to that's probably more like eight feet.
(09:27):
And then there's a hallway to your right and that hallway goes by a bathroom and another room, small room and enters the bedroom at the far right front of the house,
which is the room where we found the lead up. So there's smoke and fire damage in the living room area as you enter the door, but it's not very heavy.
(09:50):
Then you can start to see it getting more intense in the hallway, which you would expect. And then that leads you into the final room, which is the, it was a Leah's bedroom where we found her.
And that's where the fire was the most heavily involved in the room.
There were burn patterns in the carpeting in the bedroom out the door down the hallway and into the living room and eventually I noticed that afternoon,
(10:16):
or exactly when, but that's when we were finally to the point where we're taking up carpet because you look for evidence of ignitable liquids that have soaked into the carpet,
but haven't had a chance to burn. And that's when the ignitable liquid pattern was determined.
The carpet was completely destroyed in portions of the bedroom. But as you got closer to the hallway and went on out and into the living room,
(10:40):
it was less and less destroyed damage on top, but not underneath. And so standard carpeting has a layer of carpet and then usually foam padding beneath it.
And then in this case, a concrete slab under that there's no basement under this hole.
And so many times these liquids will go through sometimes they stay in that foam pad. Sometimes they go through that pad.
(11:04):
It's not always foam, but they go and collect below and the liquid does not burn.
What burns is actually the vapor that the liquid creates as it evaporates.
So if you have a puddle of gasoline, the liquid gasoline doesn't really burn only the top surface of the gasoline results in a fire.
(11:26):
And so when the carpet is pulled up, you can smell it. If it's strong enough to hit your nose, then you know all of the detection instruments are going to tell you the same thing.
And so carpeting is sampled, collected in specimens. And one of the other things that's sort of important to the context here is that unlike in the television shows,
(11:48):
we do not have a forensic laboratory available directly to us. There's not somebody I can just run that right down to and stand over their shoulder and say,
tell me this, tell me that, nor did we have a forensic pathologist here that would do the autopsy.
So all of the sampling that we take, any evidence that we collect ends up going to London, Ohio, to the BCI lab there,
(12:09):
because that's the forensic laboratory that does examinations and work for us.
And so we're just one of hundreds of departments that use that facility.
And so you get a little bit of benefit from the fact that it's a fatality, the triage submissions for evidence, review and evaluation based on criticality.
(12:30):
In the case that we got a little bit of a value there, but we didn't get results from that for several days.
So you suspect you have this pattern that you're developing that you're understanding about the process, but you don't have what I would call clinical proof.
Kind of going off of that. Was there any sort of blunt force trauma that had happened before the fire had happened?
(12:53):
We had several questions about those kinds of issues.
And I asked specifically because I had made several notations as I was exhuming her body about issues that I noted to her actual physical presentation.
Questions I specifically asked of the physician performing the coroner performing the autopsy.
(13:17):
And to each of my observations and questions, and I'm going to refrain from bringing graphic care and more detailing information that others might find to be distressing if they're hearing this information.
In each of those cases, I was instructed by the coroner and in the results that those specific things that I had made requests of could also be consistent with damage that was created by the high heat of the fire that she was exposed to.
(13:47):
So when a body is exposed to fire, one of the things that happened is that our musculature contracts much faster than it would. In a normal death process, the muscles become rigid in the position in which it was last placed.
Bodies that are exposed to fire change position as a result of the heating that occurs if the fire is of significant volume and degree. And so Aliyah's posture at the time was attributed to effects of the fire.
(14:20):
Several of the other abnormalities that I noted during excavation of her body were also similarly could have been contributed to her by the fire. So there was an unclear determination of whether that was a potential pre-existing injury or not.
So the results that I got from the forensic examination were maybe that we don't think so across the board. So I had no clear evidence of a specific kind of trauma or a traumatic occurrence because my obvious concern was that one, the position of the body was not in a position that a person would normally adopt to protect themselves from fire.
(15:03):
Right, so if you were, in fact, if you were concerned about anything, you generally have certain reactive things that you do to protect yourself. You encapsulate, you cover, you draw in, and you do those kinds of things.
Her body was not in a position that suggested that that was the case. So I'm concerned that she's not capable of protecting herself when the fire occurs.
(15:28):
And also because she's not standing, there is a portion of her body that's significantly protected on the floor, you know, area, because she's also located against or in this pile of clothing that I was talking about.
So she's inside a space that protects a portion of her body while other portions of the body are seriously degraded by fire. I mean, some of the external tissue is completely gone. It's been completely decomposed and consumed by the fire.
(16:00):
So it's very difficult under those conditions to make any determination. There was no indication of a bullet injury or stab wound or anything that indicated internal trauma that was created prior to the fire.
So my information on all of those levels was equivocal.
So when the fire causes them to contract, right?
(16:24):
Yes.
So what was that postulation or whatever that's called? So there was no sign that she was restrained or anything?
None that was discernible. So if you were going to sit down on the floor and you went down to your knees and put your feet behind you and then sat down on your feet so that you're kind of sitting kind of kneeling, you know, on the floor in that position.
(16:47):
And then reclined backwards. That was essentially the position that her body was in when we discovered it, right?
Yes.
So it's sort of different. And it was also facing the bed or the center of the room. So back more towards the wall facing the center of the room.
(17:09):
And so what happens as part of that process is their feet are protected and no, there was no sign of any kind of securing or restraining devices underneath her.
Both her arms are, again, I don't want to become too graphing, but because of the contraction, her arms are actually pulled upwards in front of her.
And so because they're exposed in 360 degrees, they suffered the most insult and damage from the fire themselves. So a large portion of her forearms was heavily injured and damaged by the fire.
(17:42):
So there's a strange element to that posture that you see first, but it's explainable by the effects of the fire, even if her arms had originally been completely down by her side, the contracture would have caused the arms to raise.
So that's what I meant by posturing that wouldn't appear to be protected, but was certainly being and discerning and disinteresting at the same time.
(18:06):
You have to just kind of, what's a clue here and what's just a result of the physical processes that, you know, occurred during the fire.
So can you guys tell me a little about what happened before? Is there anything important going on? And then how did the investigation proceed after?
I know before there was, her workplace was having this like trade show that only happened like a few years and it was like a really big thing.
(18:31):
And she was super excited to go and we talked with her boss and they had asked her if she felt safe going home that day and she said that she did.
But that was also the last time that they saw her.
And she never ended up going on that work trip, but they did do some sort of memorial for her.
So were there tensions between her and Allen at this time? I know you guys said they mentioned that they fought a lot. Was it coming to a peak or anything?
(18:57):
They were talking about divorce. It was around that time when Aliyah wanted to ask Allen for a divorce.
And they were seen arguing earlier that day at her house, but that's just speculation. We don't know anything for sure.
And Allen wanted custody of their child.
So that to me is a motive of possibly committing a crime like this, but why fire? Why do you think they picked a fire to do that?
(19:22):
Maybe something else happened. She has some blood force trauma which could have been from something else or it could have been from the fire itself.
Maybe whoever did was trying to cover up whatever they did and burn any evidence.
Yeah, sometimes arson is called like a crime of concealment to cover up something else worse. So that could be a very good possibility.
Along with that, she had cuts on her neck which showed that it obviously couldn't have been from the fire.
(19:47):
Looking through the autopsy, it could be a tool or rope. It couldn't have been strangulation.
So that was also another question we had, like what happened there?
The ceiling also did fall. So there is a chance something like that could have caused those types of cuts too.
But there's no 100% sure of anything.
So when you looked at the autopsy, did it have any information about smoke inhalation or anything in her lungs?
(20:12):
Yes, a lot.
Okay, so she was alive when the fire was set?
Yes. So the fire was deemed her cause of death?
Yes.
Or not the previous interest she had?
She died from the fire.
Okay.
Now I know you talked to, they kind of look about it. And he was at the scene, correct?
Yeah, he was there. I think they had, he said that they had put the fire by time he got there or that was around the time he was at the scene
(20:34):
because he was like, was the assistant fire chief at the time? So he wasn't like first on scene.
Okay. Talk a little bit about how we got information along the way. Because you guys had kind of a roller coaster ride, trying to find information and things like that.
And the reason I brought that up is that he also sent you some pictures that would show that it was very difficult to find her until they were actually cleaning up the scene.
(21:00):
When we were trying to contact people, there was a lot of different ways we went about it, social media, we tried to find phone numbers to text or emails to email.
But for Nick, kind of in particular, we tried all that and since he was a retired fire chief at the time, none of his contact information was up to date.
So we resorted to good old fashioned mailing, add a letter to him and hoping that he still lived at the address that we found.
(21:25):
And he did and he emailed us back and responded. So we ended up getting to talk to him.
You also ended up getting some information from, well the autopsy, and did you also get other information from the fire department later?
We didn't get anything from the police department. We talked about that in a minute.
Yeah. I think we had talked to some sort of lawyer who was involved with the fire division and he eventually gave us a lot of information on the incident for an autopsy and just various pieces of information that we previously were denied access to.
(22:03):
The thing about that was a little stressful for you guys because you got that about a week and a half before a presentation or two weeks before.
So it was kind of stressful to get all that information in. But one thing that I would say is that there was a lot of information that was important in there, especially one piece.
Talk a little bit about that.
We got a witness list in that packet of things that we got from the city lawyer and basically had just old names of people that were witnesses to the scene or perhaps new Aliyah.
(22:34):
And one of the names was redacted and it was not the name that we had suspected could have been the person behind it.
And we tried asking the city lawyer what the name might have been but it was redacted for a reason and we did not get a response.
The only answer we got is it was a suspect. That's all we got.
(22:57):
And so the reason why you know it's not your person suspect is because was that was your potential suspect's name on Blist was available?
Yes, his name was on the list.
Sometimes names can be redacted because it could be a minor. Do you think that's applicable in this situation?
I mean it could be.
But like if it was a suspect, probably not but you never know.
(23:21):
I know that when he talked to us in the email, he did say that it was a suspect. Now could the suspect be a minor? Yes.
But I don't think they would have redacted just a minor. I think they redacted it because it was somebody specific.
There was also a sex offender that the investigators were looking into.
(23:43):
They're going back and forth between him and somebody else and they never really settled on anybody so it could be him because we don't know who that person is or it could be somebody completely different for a completely different reason.
You mentioned earlier how you thought it could be your random act of violence. Were arson's common in the area?
Yes, she was from Springfield, Ohio but I don't think that there was really any specific arson cases in her neighborhood.
(24:12):
So Springfield, I will say this, depending on what part of Springfield she's from. Springfield has a very high crime rate.
Now most of the crime rates or crimes that occur in Springfield are shootings, gang related, drugs and prostitution, things like that.
Arson is not one that shows up on their radar very often but it does go along with possibly that random act of somebody just walking into her house at the right time I guess.
(24:44):
I don't know if she was there or maybe didn't even know she was there until they got in the house.
So it could have happened. Kind of to me after listening to you guys talk about it and watching you do your research,
it seems to me that it was somebody, one that either knew her or that knew how to get in her house and may have known her as an acquaintance.
(25:07):
How hard time would even arson be just a random thing. They usually don't do that.
Tell us a little bit about your expectations when you came into the class and what your feelings were in the middle of it when you really got into it.
So I guess I had done forensics previously. I think all of us, that's like a prerequisite for this course.
(25:30):
I guess I was just going in expecting, actually not a lot. I know the course is like, oh yeah we researched cold cases and stuff, but I was like, is this actually real?
So I was like, let's go in and just see. So I remember when we first pulled up that website about all the cold cases and we actually found Aliyah in her story.
(25:54):
I did not expect anything to come from it. I didn't think I would feel connected to her story at all because she's way older than us and just everything different from me.
But when we read her obituary, that was I think the first time I was like, this is real.
And when we got to speak with her sister in spirit, I think that was when I got really locked into this course.
(26:21):
But there was, I remember when we were trying to get stuff from the police department, that was the most frustrating thing I've ever encountered.
We were like calling and trying to get her autopsy and nothing was working. I was like, oh this is so difficult.
Going into it, I didn't really know what to expect either. I just knew I was going to work.
(26:42):
My hardest to get as much information as I could, but I didn't know if we were actually going to be able to get in contact with anybody.
So when we talked to the sister in spirit for the first time was when I realized that we actually were getting some stuff done and getting somewhere.
I definitely thought this class was going to be hard. I knew that coming in, especially from forensics.
I felt in forensics like we learned so much standard things like, oh this is what happens, what this happens.
(27:06):
But in cold case, anything can happen and you don't know what's going to happen and when it's going to happen or what you're supposed to do.
So thinking on your feet and knowing how to respond and react in certain situations.
But also knowing that some days we're going to be slow and some days we didn't have any information or any calls or any people and that's okay.
And that's like because it's real world, that's just not how it works. But I definitely learned a lot from this class and knowing how to pace myself and being able to work with others and work with people in the real world.
(27:36):
Well, I know you and I had a conversation.
Yeah.
I had to be through, which was a good conversation because at the time you weren't really sure because it was slow and you were having trouble.
And then tell us about the one thing that changed for you and all of a sudden you realize this is something that we can really help somebody with.
(27:58):
I think what Gianna said with the emotion, once we started kind of getting those calls and once we started getting information because when I have the information, I like to work on it and type up different things and make different papers and stuff.
But when there wasn't anything to go off of, I just kind of wasn't confused but stuck. So it was like once we started getting those calls, it was kind of like a spark for me to kind of motivate like, okay, like here we go.
(28:23):
Like now like I'm doing this for Leah.
Right.
And I think that's the biggest thing for me and I think Lydia will say the same thing is that when you start these things, it's a name on a website.
It's pictures. It's newspaper articles, but as soon as you call somebody and talk to them, the fact that you're talking to somebody who has lost someone in such a way and they're still willing to talk to you is something that I think drove me to be, you know, more into what I'm doing and the fact that it drove me to start this class too.
(28:59):
Something Mr. Hubbard said in an earlier podcast is this isn't a project. This is an experience because the people you're talking to, the people that have went through this traumatic event, they live with this every day.
Their loved one is never coming back. And I think that until you're talking with those people until you get to the frustrations that they feel, we don't know who did this. We're not getting any information.
(29:24):
Like, we want to talk about this. We want to tell a Leah's story. You don't truly know what it feels like until you're in the thick of it.
And I mean, and hopefully this never happens to any of us. Hopefully we'll never experience what this happens, but you can get insight into the lives of the family and friends of these victims because you're struggling with getting information,
with getting all of this knowledge that you want to know to help solve a Leah's case. And unfortunately, sometimes they may never be solved until one person can come out and say something.
(29:55):
If someone has any information on a Leah's case, where should they go? Who should they talk to?
If there's any new information on a Leah, please contact the Springfield Cold Case Unit and the Springfield City Police Department. And then also, I guess, if there's information you could send it to us and we could hopefully send it to them.
Is there anything else you guys want to mention about the case that you think we should cover?
(30:19):
I don't think so. Yeah, I think they ought to know.
And then my final thing is, what are some lessons that you guys learned from Cold Case that you're going to take with you into your future years?
I guess just like talking to people. But like, on the phone you have to express your words in a certain way, like because when you're in person, you know, you can use your facial expressions,
(30:42):
but on the phone you have to, especially expressing like sentiment and being like sympathetic to the victim's family and like the victim's friends, your words have to convey that.
And that's something that this course taught me.
Something it taught me is you have to like work really hard and think around the box because sometimes every single angle you think doesn't work.
(31:05):
So you still have to find another way to figure out where to go from there because just feeling like, well, that didn't work and giving up isn't going to get you very far in this class.
Something I'll take with me is definitely perspective and being able to see things in a new light and, you know, see things with multiple people and a new light.
And this class isn't like any of my others for sure.
(31:27):
So having been able to have this perspective on this type of topic in the world is different from, you know, math and science and English.
I think that's really important because it is real world and these are real people.
Well, I want to say thank you to all of you for the work that you did for Elia and her story.
And I'm sure her family and friends are filled the same way.
(31:48):
And again, if anybody has any information out there, please don't hesitate to contact the Springfield Police Department or you can contact us at coldcaseandmasonalloutofschool.com.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Cold Case MHS.
This podcast was edited by the students of Cold Case MHS and produced by Mr. Hubbard and myself.
The music was performed and written by Alexa Dahl and the artwork was created by the students of MHS Design Studio Internship.
(32:14):
Please consider sharing this podcast to bring more light to these victims.
Tune in next time to Cold Case MHS, Monsters and Demons.
(33:18):
The Gourouf of remains behind every cold case.
The Gourouf of remains behind every cold case.
Welcome to Cold Case MHS, Monsters and Demons. We're Real Education, Meet Your Life. I'm
(00:06):
your host, Randy Hubbard. And I'm your co-host, Lydia Lisco. And we thank you for listening.
(00:36):
There you've left their mark. We've dumped in memory. Let's find the enemy. We won't leave it behind.
Behind every shadow. A story to be told. Who lies, I was special. But some hearts have grown cold.
(01:04):
And the jumps of the darkness. Stuff the guru for remains. Behind every cold case. There's people fighting day to day.
Welcome back to Cold Case MHS. We have had all kinds of cases this year, but this year was an unusual situation that we had three fire cases.
(01:30):
And this is our third one. And this is the story of Aliyah Hartman and what happened to her in Springfield, Ohio.
And I'm going to allow the students to introduce themselves and talk a little bit about Aliyah's case for us.
Hi, so my name is Janna. I'm Gabby. And I'm Janna. So Aliyah's case on May 9th, 2008, approximately around 12.30 a.m.
(01:53):
Aliyah's one-story ranch home at 1805 Sweetbar Lane, Springfield, Ohio, became engulfed in flames.
The fire division was then contacted and responded quickly. After many hours of putting out the fire, a secondary sweep of the premise was conducted,
where they found a body burnt beyond recognition on the floor by the bed in the bedroom.
(02:16):
It took a while to locate the body due to the ceiling falling, and it was later determined through dental records that the body belonged to 25-year-old Aliyah M. Hartman.
And after an investigation of the incident, it was determined that the fire had been intentionally set and the case was ruled a homicide.
Who called the fire department?
(02:37):
I don't know who called the fire department. When we asked Nick, the fire chief on the case, he didn't seem to know. Nobody seemed to know who called 911.
Okay. So was there anyone else in the house at the time?
There was no one at her house at the time, but she was married and she did have a child, but both were not seen at her house.
(03:01):
And the neighbors, they didn't say anything about it when, after the fire?
We were told by the owner of the house that there were people who tried to help and stuff, but we don't know who originally called.
We know that they saw flames or whatnot and tried to go see Aliyah was home and whatnot and tried to help all they could,
but the house was pretty much burning up by the time anybody really got over there.
(03:28):
So the fire was considered a homicide and an arson, correct?
Yes.
Okay. And the accelerant, where did they say the accelerant was placed in the house?
There were a lot of different paths that we found for the accelerant.
The one theory is that there were multiple use in multiple different places of the house for multiple different reasons.
(03:51):
Another theory that there was just one that was used and it was very sporadic and unprofessional because that's what we think the suspect was kind of more leaning towards.
But one of the chemicals, it was highly flammable and highly dangerous to people and just living.
And so, for that to be in a common household was just weird.
I think something you said was very interesting. You said that the fire could have been set sporadically.
(04:13):
Do you think how the fire was set could lead to an analysis of potentially who could have set it?
Yes, I think so. I think one of the places it was set was near doorways, which was interesting to me because it was like,
maybe they wanted the fire to be blocking the doors so no one could get in and get out, which was very planned.
But then the other theory was like, oh, just spread aimlessly around the house.
(04:36):
So that kind of made me think like, okay, that matches our suspect profile a little bit better.
So we mentioned a little bit of that suspect profile.
So why don't we talk a little bit about Aliyah?
Who was she? What could have possibly happened that would cost somebody to take this kind of action?
So tell me a little bit about her.
So Aliyah grew up not well off and she had a strained relationship with her mother.
(04:59):
And when she kind of moved to Ohio and stuff, she wanted to become an independent woman.
And she did this by one going and attending school and getting a job at Tinker Omega.
And where she had a pretty good relationship with all the coworkers and a good relationship with her boss.
How long had she been in that position?
(05:22):
Was she fairly new to that job or had she been there a while?
She, before the fire, she was promoted to an assistant.
But she did work at the workplace for a while then.
But she had a flexible schedule because she was still going to school and she had a child to take care of.
What kind of work was she doing?
(05:43):
She was doing, I believe it was some like design, engineering, production, something along those lines.
When they looked into the house, you said her body was the only one found there, right?
But you just mentioned she had a child, right?
Yes.
Where was the child at the time?
We don't know 100% exactly where there were some guesses of maybe with Alan's mom.
(06:09):
But we are 100% sure because nobody said 100% this is where the child is.
And was the father involved, was the father around for that child?
Is that where they possibly could have been or do we know?
That could be a possibility that the child was with Aliyah's husband.
But around this time their relationship was pretty strained and they argued a lot.
(06:35):
So do we know what led or caused some of the strains in their relationship?
Definitely just Aliyah's independence.
She really wanted to get a self-made woman and once she got the kid, her husband Alan wanted her to be a stay-at-home mom and kind of just focus on the child.
So a lot of times when we're talking about victimology, which is the personality behind the victim and their characteristics and everything,
(07:00):
victims we usually deal with in cold case tend to be a bit more high risk sometimes,
where they're involved in drugs, prostitution, other criminal activities.
But then there are other victims who may be a little bit more low risk where they may not be putting themselves in those kind of situations.
Do you think Aliyah was more low risk or did she engage in some high risk behaviors?
(07:21):
I think she was pretty low risk.
There wasn't really much that we were told that she did that would get her in trouble or in any way.
Maybe just like some of her relationships were maybe a little rocky, but other than that, most of her life was pretty well off at that point in time.
And everyone we talked to in regards to her said that she was a really amazing person and mother and co-worker.
(07:45):
Never said anything bad about her or her lifestyle.
Yeah, and we heard from her boss, like his wife had very good characteristics and qualities stated about Aliyah and her sister in spirit stated that she never drank and she didn't smoke.
So she was very low risk.
So if you're low risk, throwing you back into the forensics profiling part of class a little bit, if they're low risk and somebody sets an arson in their house,
(08:16):
what kind of people are you looking for? What would be the profile of your suspect?
Definitely someone that had a relationship with her and known her and had some kind of motive or vengeance towards that person.
Or could have just been a random act of violence too. We don't know for sure if it was somebody she knew or could have just been somebody down the street.
(08:40):
Was the house completely destroyed or were they able to tell if there were signs of forced entry into the house?
So the door when investigation came, the bolt was like attached or something where you can like literally just like open the door and walk in.
Nick Hylandlick explains that for a while so we can listen to him explain it better, how the house was laid out and all that type of stuff.
(09:04):
It's a one story ranch home. The front door is in basically the middle of the structure as you're approaching it.
And when you walk in the front door, you're in the main living area of the home and diagonally back to the left goes towards the kitchen.
And you step in the front door about six to that's probably more like eight feet.
(09:27):
And then there's a hallway to your right and that hallway goes by a bathroom and another room, small room and enters the bedroom at the far right front of the house,
which is the room where we found the lead up. So there's smoke and fire damage in the living room area as you enter the door, but it's not very heavy.
(09:50):
Then you can start to see it getting more intense in the hallway, which you would expect. And then that leads you into the final room, which is the, it was a Leah's bedroom where we found her.
And that's where the fire was the most heavily involved in the room.
There were burn patterns in the carpeting in the bedroom out the door down the hallway and into the living room and eventually I noticed that afternoon,
(10:16):
or exactly when, but that's when we were finally to the point where we're taking up carpet because you look for evidence of ignitable liquids that have soaked into the carpet,
but haven't had a chance to burn. And that's when the ignitable liquid pattern was determined.
The carpet was completely destroyed in portions of the bedroom. But as you got closer to the hallway and went on out and into the living room,
(10:40):
it was less and less destroyed damage on top, but not underneath. And so standard carpeting has a layer of carpet and then usually foam padding beneath it.
And then in this case, a concrete slab under that there's no basement under this hole.
And so many times these liquids will go through sometimes they stay in that foam pad. Sometimes they go through that pad.
(11:04):
It's not always foam, but they go and collect below and the liquid does not burn.
What burns is actually the vapor that the liquid creates as it evaporates.
So if you have a puddle of gasoline, the liquid gasoline doesn't really burn only the top surface of the gasoline results in a fire.
(11:26):
And so when the carpet is pulled up, you can smell it. If it's strong enough to hit your nose, then you know all of the detection instruments are going to tell you the same thing.
And so carpeting is sampled, collected in specimens. And one of the other things that's sort of important to the context here is that unlike in the television shows,
(11:48):
we do not have a forensic laboratory available directly to us. There's not somebody I can just run that right down to and stand over their shoulder and say,
tell me this, tell me that, nor did we have a forensic pathologist here that would do the autopsy.
So all of the sampling that we take, any evidence that we collect ends up going to London, Ohio, to the BCI lab there,
(12:09):
because that's the forensic laboratory that does examinations and work for us.
And so we're just one of hundreds of departments that use that facility.
And so you get a little bit of benefit from the fact that it's a fatality, the triage submissions for evidence, review and evaluation based on criticality.
(12:30):
In the case that we got a little bit of a value there, but we didn't get results from that for several days.
So you suspect you have this pattern that you're developing that you're understanding about the process, but you don't have what I would call clinical proof.
Kind of going off of that. Was there any sort of blunt force trauma that had happened before the fire had happened?
(12:53):
We had several questions about those kinds of issues.
And I asked specifically because I had made several notations as I was exhuming her body about issues that I noted to her actual physical presentation.
Questions I specifically asked of the physician performing the coroner performing the autopsy.
(13:17):
And to each of my observations and questions, and I'm going to refrain from bringing graphic care and more detailing information that others might find to be distressing if they're hearing this information.
In each of those cases, I was instructed by the coroner and in the results that those specific things that I had made requests of could also be consistent with damage that was created by the high heat of the fire that she was exposed to.
(13:47):
So when a body is exposed to fire, one of the things that happened is that our musculature contracts much faster than it would. In a normal death process, the muscles become rigid in the position in which it was last placed.
Bodies that are exposed to fire change position as a result of the heating that occurs if the fire is of significant volume and degree. And so Aliyah's posture at the time was attributed to effects of the fire.
(14:20):
Several of the other abnormalities that I noted during excavation of her body were also similarly could have been contributed to her by the fire. So there was an unclear determination of whether that was a potential pre-existing injury or not.
So the results that I got from the forensic examination were maybe that we don't think so across the board. So I had no clear evidence of a specific kind of trauma or a traumatic occurrence because my obvious concern was that one, the position of the body was not in a position that a person would normally adopt to protect themselves from fire.
(15:03):
Right, so if you were, in fact, if you were concerned about anything, you generally have certain reactive things that you do to protect yourself. You encapsulate, you cover, you draw in, and you do those kinds of things.
Her body was not in a position that suggested that that was the case. So I'm concerned that she's not capable of protecting herself when the fire occurs.
(15:28):
And also because she's not standing, there is a portion of her body that's significantly protected on the floor, you know, area, because she's also located against or in this pile of clothing that I was talking about.
So she's inside a space that protects a portion of her body while other portions of the body are seriously degraded by fire. I mean, some of the external tissue is completely gone. It's been completely decomposed and consumed by the fire.
(16:00):
So it's very difficult under those conditions to make any determination. There was no indication of a bullet injury or stab wound or anything that indicated internal trauma that was created prior to the fire.
So my information on all of those levels was equivocal.
So when the fire causes them to contract, right?
(16:24):
Yes.
So what was that postulation or whatever that's called? So there was no sign that she was restrained or anything?
None that was discernible. So if you were going to sit down on the floor and you went down to your knees and put your feet behind you and then sat down on your feet so that you're kind of sitting kind of kneeling, you know, on the floor in that position.
(16:47):
And then reclined backwards. That was essentially the position that her body was in when we discovered it, right?
Yes.
So it's sort of different. And it was also facing the bed or the center of the room. So back more towards the wall facing the center of the room.
(17:09):
And so what happens as part of that process is their feet are protected and no, there was no sign of any kind of securing or restraining devices underneath her.
Both her arms are, again, I don't want to become too graphing, but because of the contraction, her arms are actually pulled upwards in front of her.
And so because they're exposed in 360 degrees, they suffered the most insult and damage from the fire themselves. So a large portion of her forearms was heavily injured and damaged by the fire.
(17:42):
So there's a strange element to that posture that you see first, but it's explainable by the effects of the fire, even if her arms had originally been completely down by her side, the contracture would have caused the arms to raise.
So that's what I meant by posturing that wouldn't appear to be protected, but was certainly being and discerning and disinteresting at the same time.
(18:06):
You have to just kind of, what's a clue here and what's just a result of the physical processes that, you know, occurred during the fire.
So can you guys tell me a little about what happened before? Is there anything important going on? And then how did the investigation proceed after?
I know before there was, her workplace was having this like trade show that only happened like a few years and it was like a really big thing.
(18:31):
And she was super excited to go and we talked with her boss and they had asked her if she felt safe going home that day and she said that she did.
But that was also the last time that they saw her.
And she never ended up going on that work trip, but they did do some sort of memorial for her.
So were there tensions between her and Allen at this time? I know you guys said they mentioned that they fought a lot. Was it coming to a peak or anything?
(18:57):
They were talking about divorce. It was around that time when Aliyah wanted to ask Allen for a divorce.
And they were seen arguing earlier that day at her house, but that's just speculation. We don't know anything for sure.
And Allen wanted custody of their child.
So that to me is a motive of possibly committing a crime like this, but why fire? Why do you think they picked a fire to do that?
(19:22):
Maybe something else happened. She has some blood force trauma which could have been from something else or it could have been from the fire itself.
Maybe whoever did was trying to cover up whatever they did and burn any evidence.
Yeah, sometimes arson is called like a crime of concealment to cover up something else worse. So that could be a very good possibility.
Along with that, she had cuts on her neck which showed that it obviously couldn't have been from the fire.
(19:47):
Looking through the autopsy, it could be a tool or rope. It couldn't have been strangulation.
So that was also another question we had, like what happened there?
The ceiling also did fall. So there is a chance something like that could have caused those types of cuts too.
But there's no 100% sure of anything.
So when you looked at the autopsy, did it have any information about smoke inhalation or anything in her lungs?
(20:12):
Yes, a lot.
Okay, so she was alive when the fire was set?
Yes. So the fire was deemed her cause of death?
Yes.
Or not the previous interest she had?
She died from the fire.
Okay.
Now I know you talked to, they kind of look about it. And he was at the scene, correct?
Yeah, he was there. I think they had, he said that they had put the fire by time he got there or that was around the time he was at the scene
(20:34):
because he was like, was the assistant fire chief at the time? So he wasn't like first on scene.
Okay. Talk a little bit about how we got information along the way. Because you guys had kind of a roller coaster ride, trying to find information and things like that.
And the reason I brought that up is that he also sent you some pictures that would show that it was very difficult to find her until they were actually cleaning up the scene.
(21:00):
When we were trying to contact people, there was a lot of different ways we went about it, social media, we tried to find phone numbers to text or emails to email.
But for Nick, kind of in particular, we tried all that and since he was a retired fire chief at the time, none of his contact information was up to date.
So we resorted to good old fashioned mailing, add a letter to him and hoping that he still lived at the address that we found.
(21:25):
And he did and he emailed us back and responded. So we ended up getting to talk to him.
You also ended up getting some information from, well the autopsy, and did you also get other information from the fire department later?
We didn't get anything from the police department. We talked about that in a minute.
Yeah. I think we had talked to some sort of lawyer who was involved with the fire division and he eventually gave us a lot of information on the incident for an autopsy and just various pieces of information that we previously were denied access to.
(22:03):
The thing about that was a little stressful for you guys because you got that about a week and a half before a presentation or two weeks before.
So it was kind of stressful to get all that information in. But one thing that I would say is that there was a lot of information that was important in there, especially one piece.
Talk a little bit about that.
We got a witness list in that packet of things that we got from the city lawyer and basically had just old names of people that were witnesses to the scene or perhaps new Aliyah.
(22:34):
And one of the names was redacted and it was not the name that we had suspected could have been the person behind it.
And we tried asking the city lawyer what the name might have been but it was redacted for a reason and we did not get a response.
The only answer we got is it was a suspect. That's all we got.
(22:57):
And so the reason why you know it's not your person suspect is because was that was your potential suspect's name on Blist was available?
Yes, his name was on the list.
Sometimes names can be redacted because it could be a minor. Do you think that's applicable in this situation?
I mean it could be.
But like if it was a suspect, probably not but you never know.
(23:21):
I know that when he talked to us in the email, he did say that it was a suspect. Now could the suspect be a minor? Yes.
But I don't think they would have redacted just a minor. I think they redacted it because it was somebody specific.
There was also a sex offender that the investigators were looking into.
(23:43):
They're going back and forth between him and somebody else and they never really settled on anybody so it could be him because we don't know who that person is or it could be somebody completely different for a completely different reason.
You mentioned earlier how you thought it could be your random act of violence. Were arson's common in the area?
Yes, she was from Springfield, Ohio but I don't think that there was really any specific arson cases in her neighborhood.
(24:12):
So Springfield, I will say this, depending on what part of Springfield she's from. Springfield has a very high crime rate.
Now most of the crime rates or crimes that occur in Springfield are shootings, gang related, drugs and prostitution, things like that.
Arson is not one that shows up on their radar very often but it does go along with possibly that random act of somebody just walking into her house at the right time I guess.
(24:44):
I don't know if she was there or maybe didn't even know she was there until they got in the house.
So it could have happened. Kind of to me after listening to you guys talk about it and watching you do your research,
it seems to me that it was somebody, one that either knew her or that knew how to get in her house and may have known her as an acquaintance.
(25:07):
How hard time would even arson be just a random thing. They usually don't do that.
Tell us a little bit about your expectations when you came into the class and what your feelings were in the middle of it when you really got into it.
So I guess I had done forensics previously. I think all of us, that's like a prerequisite for this course.
(25:30):
I guess I was just going in expecting, actually not a lot. I know the course is like, oh yeah we researched cold cases and stuff, but I was like, is this actually real?
So I was like, let's go in and just see. So I remember when we first pulled up that website about all the cold cases and we actually found Aliyah in her story.
(25:54):
I did not expect anything to come from it. I didn't think I would feel connected to her story at all because she's way older than us and just everything different from me.
But when we read her obituary, that was I think the first time I was like, this is real.
And when we got to speak with her sister in spirit, I think that was when I got really locked into this course.
(26:21):
But there was, I remember when we were trying to get stuff from the police department, that was the most frustrating thing I've ever encountered.
We were like calling and trying to get her autopsy and nothing was working. I was like, oh this is so difficult.
Going into it, I didn't really know what to expect either. I just knew I was going to work.
(26:42):
My hardest to get as much information as I could, but I didn't know if we were actually going to be able to get in contact with anybody.
So when we talked to the sister in spirit for the first time was when I realized that we actually were getting some stuff done and getting somewhere.
I definitely thought this class was going to be hard. I knew that coming in, especially from forensics.
I felt in forensics like we learned so much standard things like, oh this is what happens, what this happens.
(27:06):
But in cold case, anything can happen and you don't know what's going to happen and when it's going to happen or what you're supposed to do.
So thinking on your feet and knowing how to respond and react in certain situations.
But also knowing that some days we're going to be slow and some days we didn't have any information or any calls or any people and that's okay.
And that's like because it's real world, that's just not how it works. But I definitely learned a lot from this class and knowing how to pace myself and being able to work with others and work with people in the real world.
(27:36):
Well, I know you and I had a conversation.
Yeah.
I had to be through, which was a good conversation because at the time you weren't really sure because it was slow and you were having trouble.
And then tell us about the one thing that changed for you and all of a sudden you realize this is something that we can really help somebody with.
(27:58):
I think what Gianna said with the emotion, once we started kind of getting those calls and once we started getting information because when I have the information, I like to work on it and type up different things and make different papers and stuff.
But when there wasn't anything to go off of, I just kind of wasn't confused but stuck. So it was like once we started getting those calls, it was kind of like a spark for me to kind of motivate like, okay, like here we go.
(28:23):
Like now like I'm doing this for Leah.
Right.
And I think that's the biggest thing for me and I think Lydia will say the same thing is that when you start these things, it's a name on a website.
It's pictures. It's newspaper articles, but as soon as you call somebody and talk to them, the fact that you're talking to somebody who has lost someone in such a way and they're still willing to talk to you is something that I think drove me to be, you know, more into what I'm doing and the fact that it drove me to start this class too.
(28:59):
Something Mr. Hubbard said in an earlier podcast is this isn't a project. This is an experience because the people you're talking to, the people that have went through this traumatic event, they live with this every day.
Their loved one is never coming back. And I think that until you're talking with those people until you get to the frustrations that they feel, we don't know who did this. We're not getting any information.
(29:24):
Like, we want to talk about this. We want to tell a Leah's story. You don't truly know what it feels like until you're in the thick of it.
And I mean, and hopefully this never happens to any of us. Hopefully we'll never experience what this happens, but you can get insight into the lives of the family and friends of these victims because you're struggling with getting information,
with getting all of this knowledge that you want to know to help solve a Leah's case. And unfortunately, sometimes they may never be solved until one person can come out and say something.
(29:55):
If someone has any information on a Leah's case, where should they go? Who should they talk to?
If there's any new information on a Leah, please contact the Springfield Cold Case Unit and the Springfield City Police Department. And then also, I guess, if there's information you could send it to us and we could hopefully send it to them.
Is there anything else you guys want to mention about the case that you think we should cover?
(30:19):
I don't think so. Yeah, I think they ought to know.
And then my final thing is, what are some lessons that you guys learned from Cold Case that you're going to take with you into your future years?
I guess just like talking to people. But like, on the phone you have to express your words in a certain way, like because when you're in person, you know, you can use your facial expressions,
(30:42):
but on the phone you have to, especially expressing like sentiment and being like sympathetic to the victim's family and like the victim's friends, your words have to convey that.
And that's something that this course taught me.
Something it taught me is you have to like work really hard and think around the box because sometimes every single angle you think doesn't work.
(31:05):
So you still have to find another way to figure out where to go from there because just feeling like, well, that didn't work and giving up isn't going to get you very far in this class.
Something I'll take with me is definitely perspective and being able to see things in a new light and, you know, see things with multiple people and a new light.
And this class isn't like any of my others for sure.
(31:27):
So having been able to have this perspective on this type of topic in the world is different from, you know, math and science and English.
I think that's really important because it is real world and these are real people.
Well, I want to say thank you to all of you for the work that you did for Elia and her story.
And I'm sure her family and friends are filled the same way.
(31:48):
And again, if anybody has any information out there, please don't hesitate to contact the Springfield Police Department or you can contact us at coldcaseandmasonalloutofschool.com.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Cold Case MHS.
This podcast was edited by the students of Cold Case MHS and produced by Mr. Hubbard and myself.
The music was performed and written by Alexa Dahl and the artwork was created by the students of MHS Design Studio Internship.
(32:14):
Please consider sharing this podcast to bring more light to these victims.
Tune in next time to Cold Case MHS, Monsters and Demons.
(33:18):
The Gourouf of remains behind every cold case.
The Gourouf of remains behind every cold case.
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