New England’s Unsolved: 1969 Deadly Wilmington Fire

WILMINGTON, Mass. — At Wildwood Cemetery in Wilmington, Susan McNamara visits her family’s gravesite every week.

This is where Susan’s mother, Nancy, her two sisters and three of her brothers are buried.

All of them were victims of a horrific house fire in 1969.

53 years later, Susan says she has serious doubts about whether this fire truly was an accident.

She says information has come to light that leads her to believe that this fire, was arson.

“We’ve thought it was accidental, and then you find out it wasn’t accidental, you need closure,” Susan McNamara said.

Early in the morning of September 26, 1969, the entire Landers family, ten of them, plus a cousin who recently moved into the house on Clark Street, suddenly woke up as the house filled with smoke.

Susan McNamara was 15.

She remembers her father picking her up and putting her on a small ledge outside her window.

“I couldn’t see him,” Susan said. “It was very dark. I don’t recall seeing smoke or anything. I just remember being put out on that little ledge.”

Susan did not see her mother, or her sisters.

“I recollect hearing them crying. I believe my mother was there also with them, because that’s where they were found. I had no idea they didn’t make it,” Susan said.

The Landers fire was long thought to have been an accident, blamed on an extension cord underneath a carpet.

But in 2011, Janis Jaquith, Susan’s sister-in-law, started looking into the fire.

“I got a voice recorder and notebook and I cold-called people. Firefighters, people I had never met before to essentially say, ‘You know the worst night of your life? May I talk to you about it?’” Janis said.

Janis Jaquith contacted investigators, including a former Wilmington fire chief, who Janis says shared investigative pictures and new insight.

“Chief Bradbury said, ‘See that? That’s where they pull the rug back there with the extension cord. It’s fine. It’s not even charred nothing,’ " Janis remembers. “And he looks at a picture of inverted v’s on the wallpaper and he said, ‘That’s two points of ignition. That is the classic sign of arson.’”

If it was arson, who could possibly do something like this?

The family says it has suspicions.

Susan McNamara tells me that in 2012, a man approached her at her family’s grave on the anniversary of the fire.

“He said, ‘I want you to know that I’m a Christian man now, and I’m glad I saw your dad before he passed away because he gave me forgiveness, ‘” Susan remembers. “I said, ‘My father did not give you forgiveness for anything! ' "

After all this time, there are no arrests.

And the surviving members of the Landers family are hoping new information will surface soon about what really happened that awful night in Wilmington.

“I keep thinking somebody knows something, and I wish they would come forward with what they know,” Janis Jaquith said.

“It’s just as important as every other case that’s out there. Whether it was last week or last year, doesn’t matter if it was 50 years ago,” Susan McNamara said.

The Middlesex County District Attorney’s office says the Landers case remains open.

If you have any information, contact the Massachusetts State Police assigned to the DA’s office at: (781) 897-6600.

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