Arson that killed Parks remains unsolved
Published 9:00 pm Saturday, February 16, 2002
By Scott North
Herald Writer
Who killed Gary Parks?
After 15 years, investigators simply can’t say.
The Everett firefighter died in an arson that consumed the Everett Community College library on Feb. 16, 1987. It is a case that has produced few leads and fewer suspects, Everett Fire Marshall Warren Burns said earlier this month.
Since 1993, speculation has focused on confessed serial arsonist Paul Kenneth Keller, a former advertising executive who worked in Everett.
Keller has spent nine years behind bars after admitting to setting dozens of fires around Puget Sound in 1992 and 1993. The arson spree resulted in millions of dollars in damage and three deaths. He’s serving 99 years in prison.
| Can you help?
Do you think you know something that may help identify the arsonist who set the Everett Community College library on fire in 1987, killing firefighter Gary Parks? Tips can be made at: Telephone: 800-55-ARSON E-mail: fire@ci.everett.wa.us |
Keller has repeatedly denied any involvement in the EvCC arson. He’s also refused to speak with investigators.
“I have consistently denied involvement because I was not involved, in any fashion,” Keller wrote in a Jan. 15 letter from Clallam Bay Corrections Center. “The investigators who seek to use my name, publicly, in their speculations and insinuations, simply cannot admit to the public or the victim’s family that they just don’t know. If I were the perpetrator, I would say so. That should be abundantly clear.”
Burns said Keller emerged as a suspect after his family told investigators that in 1987 he had lived in an apartment across the street from the college. A fire department buff from childhood, Keller told his family he didn’t know about the EvCC fire and hadn’t visited the scene that morning, Burns said.
A firefighter who knew Keller remembers seeing him at the college the morning of the blaze, Burns said.
“Until he’ll sit down with me or somebody else and explain why those things are, he’ll remain a suspect,” he added.
In a Jan. 31 letter, Keller wrote that he wasn’t at the fire, and family members made honest mistakes when they talked with arson investigators. He also said he didn’t live across from the college until months after the EvCC fire.
“Every feeling person wishes for the crime to be solved,” Keller wrote. “I wish it for the Parks family, my family and for the citizens of my beloved Everett, who all lost a fine public servant.”
