Man cleared of killing his wife and two daughters in house fire after 26 YEARS in prison... and he's finally able to visit their graves

David Lee Gavitt, from Ionia, Michigan, was freed from prison on Wednesday after prosecutors agreed he had been found guilty based on faulty evidence and outdated science.

The 54-year-old, who had languished behind bars for nearly three decades even though he had tried to save his family from the deadly fire, immediately went to a cemetery to visit them.

'It was a very emotional scene,' David Moran, a law professor and co-founder of the Innocence Clinic at the University of Michigan, which fought for Gavitt's release, told the Detroit Free Press.

As many as 20 of Gavitt's family members met him outside Carson City Correctional Facility as he pushed along a white bin full of his belongings.

He was freed with the help of the Innocence Clinic, which sent evidence from the case to an independent clinics to be reviewed and found that initial tests had been botched.

The clinic found that a Michigan State Police crime lab technician, who has since died, wrongly concluded carpet in the home showed traces of gasoline, the Free Press reported.

On Tuesday, Ionia County Prosecutor Ronald Schafer agreed the evidence against him was flawed. He added that, today, investigators would not have ruled the fire a crime.

Moran praised Schafer: 'He did what a prosecutor should do, which is to approach a case with an open mind and make a skeptical but honest assessment after consulting with experts.'

It comes 27 years after Gavitt and his wife Angela went to bed - to be woken by their dog scratching at their bedroom door. The 26-year-old factory worker opened the door to see flames in the living room and yelled at his wife to save the children, three-year-old Katrina and 11-month-old Tracy.

He made his way to a bedroom where he smashed a window, cutting his arm in the process. When he tried to run back to the children, he could not reach them. Instead, he jumped from the broken window and tried to reach their bedroom from outside - but their window was too high.

As neighbours held him back so he didn't run inside, his wife and the two girls were overcome by the smoke and later found dead.

Investigators believed arson had been committed due to burn patterns inside the house - now explained as flashover, where a room fills with toxic gases and explodes into flames.

They also ignored the fact Gavitt had no motive for the killings and had smashed the window to help them escape, before trying to re-enter the house.

Investigators also did not find a gas can at the scene - despite claiming there were traces of gasoline in the carpet - and overlooked how Gavitt had run into the snow in his bare feet without a shirt.

A year later, in 1986, he was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

The Innocence Clinic, which has helped release six innocent prisoners since 2009, took on the case due to Gavitt's protestations of innocence and the lack of evidence.

The clinic sent the carpet test results to be reviewed in an independent lab, while a fire expert looked at the other evidence.

'In light of modern fire science, there is simply not one shred of credible evidence that the fire at the Gavitt residence was intentionally set,' the fire expert said in the affidavit last September.

Prosecutor Schafer asked experts from the State Police, U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and a private laboratory to re-examine the evidence. 'We now know that the evidence introduced at trial was not good,' he said.

Original report




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