This is a photo of the back door of the cottage before the fire. It is the back door that, 5 ft, 3 in, Paul Pollard claims to have run out of and then back in to get dressed after the building was doused with gasoline and the fire was raging. Forty-two veteran Fire Marshal Wilbur Ricker's expert opinion was that the building exploded.

The photo below I received from Fire Inspector Wilbur Ricker. He took it the day he found Mike's body. He said the reason he took the photo was because he was not taking the can. He explained during his Jan. 8, 1990 deposition that the can was below the back door. He said it looked to him as though someone reached out and dropped it there. You can see a long narrow square in the cement foundation to the left of the back door in the first photo.  This long narrow square can also be seen in Ricker's photo. This helps to show where the back door was in Ricker's photo and that the gas can was dropped below the back door.

MSP CPL Allan Jamison's (I have copies of his certificates on bombing investigations, arson and fire investigations, cause and origin of fire and explosions) fire investigation report states "on the east side of the home between the garage and the house, glass could be found some distance from the wall without any exposure to smut or carbon. This would indicate that the glass blew out on ignition of the flammable liquid placed inside or might possibly have been broken out by someone inside. However, when being broken out from inside the break would not be so complete as it was discovered to be. Exposure of glass to an explosion would result only in such a complete break."  Page 4 of Jamison's 9 page fire investigation report. Paul Pollard said in his 3-3-1981 and 2-12-1985 statements that he ran out and back in to get dressed while the place was on fire.  Ricker and Jamison's say in their reports that they believed  the building exploded. Looking at the photo of the back door if Pollard could have gone out and then back in to get dressed did he perhaps step on the gas can to help him get back inside.