April 30, 2001 — The fire that swept through an abandoned building on Beltjen Road in the early morning hours Jan. 15 created a double loss.
It killed Robert W. Heiser, a 36-year-old native of Virginia, who authorities say was trapped inside the building in an upstairs bathroom with security bars on its only window.
And it reduced to rubble and ash a classic West Indian-style wooden house and the attached masonry building, at least a portion of which reportedly dated to the late 1700s.
As of Monday, more than three months after the fire, it was still officially under investigation. "It's not a closed case," Fire Marshal Glen Francis said.
He was still waiting for a toxicology report on the victim to substantiate suspicions that the man was intoxicated or under the influence of drugs at the time of the fire. However, that report is not coming.
Dr. Francesco Landron, medical examiner, said Monday, "The Department of Justice has not provided funds for toxicology for this office." He said his office used to send off island for that type of analysis, but the government account was closed because of money problems.
Landron was able to determine that there was a high level of carbon monoxide in Heiser's body, and that finding is consistent with smoke inhalation, leading authorities to conclude that the victim died in the fire.
As for the origin of the blaze, fire officials have said there was no electrical service to the structure at the time of the fire, nor were there reports of lightening. Neither was there any evidence that the fire was deliberately set.
"We didn't discover any accelerants," Francis said, or any containers that might have held gasoline or other flammables. What the inspectors did find were "hundreds of cigarette lighters" on the grounds, he said, leading to speculation that the structure had fallen into use as a crack house. Neighbors had complained to police that vagrants were living in the building.
Francis said Heiser had been known to frequent the area and was seen about a block away from the house, by the Boy Scouts building on the waterfront, a few hours before the fire was discovered. A witness said he appeared to be staggering and was headed in the direction of the structure that burned.
Until the mid-1980s, the property was one of several along Beltjen Road that the West Indian Co. owned and maintained. WICO spokesman Calvin Wheatley was unable to provide a history of the buildings but confirmed that in the early 1900s, when WICO was still Danish owned, they were used to house company management brought from Denmark.
Each building bore a name. The one that burned actually had two — the lower portion was dubbed Villa Orient, and the upper level was called the Chapel. Built on a hill, the upper structure was behind rather than above the lower one; they were connected only via an interior staircase at the rear of the lower building, which was walled off in the early 1980s. Villa Orient had waist-high windows with wooden jalousies and hurricane shutters, tray ceilings and, in the largest room, a wooden floor. The Chapel had a domed ceiling, a terrace and wooden hurricane shutters. The structure sat on about a half-acre of land, surrounded by a fence overlooking the cruise ship docks, within easy walking distance of town.
When WICO divested itself of its Beltjen Road properties, Bluebeard's Castle Hotel bought Villa Orient/the Chapel. At the time, a hotel representative said Bluebeard's had no plans to develop the structure but wanted to protect its own property on the hill just above. The tenant at the time of the sale (this reporter) moved out in 1992. After that, Bluebeard's timeshare sales personnel lived on the property for a short time; since then, it has remained unused. It now belongs to Equivest, the corporation that bought Bluebeard's.
The property has not been cleared since the fire. Bluebeard's general manager James Storey said Monday that he does not know the status of the resort's insurance claim for the fire losses, or what the corporation will do with the land. "We haven't made that determination," he said.
