Photos copied from Willian "Bill" Ricker's 1-8-1990 video deposition
 
 
Forty-two-year Veteran Fire Inspector Bill  Ricker
 
 
Ricker shows one of the gas cans used in the arson and Mike's murder
 
Fire Inspector Wilbur Ricker's January 8, 1990 deposition  
 
Mr. Popkin: “I want to start at the beginning of what you remember about that Lucerne fire in February 1981.”
     “Well, sometime in the early morning hours between 3 and 4 o’clock in the morning, I received a telephone call at my home, and I don’t remember for sure who called me, but it was from the directions of Norm Herrin the Fire Chief, and said he had a fire at Lucerne and requested my presence as soon as possible. And I started to pick up, get my things together, get both eyes open the telephone rang again. That was a call from my boss Mr. Bissette in Augusta and he told me that he wanted me to come to Bangor immediately because they had a fatal fire with at least two dead and wanted me to report up here.” 
    “So I had to come right by Lucerne, so I went in there and found Norm Herrin and his firemen at the scene. ... I’ve worked with Norm over the years, and I knew when he called me, he wanted me. ... As I drove up to the scene there was fire equipment, there was several men. The first thing I can remember is Norman coming over to me. ... [he] told me that he was glad I was there, and he showed me two, five gallon gas cans, and I noticed that the building was burned pretty well. The walls were laying out ... the firemen were still putting some water on it. ... There was no more structural burning, I don’t think, that took place after I got there. ... I was trying to find out what I could and follow my boss’s instructions and get to Bangor to the fatal fire.
 
First visit to the arson/murder scene

"Now, going back to that first visit to the scene on the 18th of February in 1981, after you followed the tracks, what did you do next?
     “... I asked [Elmer Alto] being a Hancock County deputy, if he would take my place and follow those tracks and see what he could do with them because I had to go to Bangor. ...He was assistant fire chief and deputy for years. I asked him if he would—where I had to go to Bangor—would he continue on those tracks and see if he could find where they led to or get any information for me. [I don’t] recall anything else that night except seeing the general debris, the way the building had opened up and fell right out with the sides in all directions, and of course, the gasoline cans that he showed me, I checked and I asked Norman if he would take care of those because I didn’t want to take them with me, and I’d pick them up— get back whenever I could and asked him when the fire was cleaned up, to leave the scene alone and I’d come back and do what I could.” “After we got clear on the fire scene in Bangor [evening of February 18th]. [MSP Cpl. Allen] Jamison was with me.”   
“We went down, and it was really too dark to really see much and I got the cans from Norman.”
 
Reasons for calling it arson

Ricker said his opinion that the fire was arson “was based on what I saw on the scene of the building opened up and the sides fell out. It indicates a terrible fuel load in the building. Then I took into consideration the gas cans sitting outside, somebody running from the scene of a burning building. There’s no other conclusion at that time. Usually [when the] fire department comes they run to them—they don’t run away from them.”
     Defense attorney Marvin Glazier loudly responded, “Objection! Objection!” Mr. Ricker just looked at him and laughed.
 
Ricker took photo of third gas can

 ...The only reason I took the picture was to show the can—because I wanted a picture of the can, because I wasn’t going to take it. It was out back and it was close to what in my opinion was the doorway out and no stairs.”

Gas can was close to back door - Attorney Glazer

     “Can you tell us how close it was to the door?”
     “No, but it was close to it, my recollection was very close. It would be like you had it there already to set in or you reached down and dropped it out or whatever.”