* Interviewed the surviving children when possible. They didn't.
* Taken photos of the undisturbed potential crime scene. They didn't.
* Examined the burn patterns on the survivors and the deceased girls. They didn't.
* Taken appropriate floor samples (not ashes, as they did) at and near the suspected points of origin, and from areas not suspected of being a location of arson. They didn't.
* Formally interrogated the main suspect, Gene Keidel. They didn't.
* Taken several days to complete the investigation and assign a cause. They didn't.
The failure to do any of these things, Romaneck's attorneys argued in the civil case, constituted gross negligence.
Moore said last year that his orders from his supervisor before he had gone to Citrus Way on the morning of January 11, 1967, were direct: "I was to go out and collect the evidence, and if the evidence warranted, they wanted him [Gene Keidel] in jail by 5, by the time I went home."
But this was not a situation in which a rush to judgment was appropriate. For starters, there was the issue of the DiAnne Keidel missing-persons case.
Phoenix wasn't such a big city in 1967, and the disappearance of a mother of four was curious enough. That a fatal fire had occurred at the missing woman's address four months later--and that her estranged husband's activities in both events was suspect--should have made police detectives froth.
But there's no indication that arson detective Moore ever spoke with missing-persons detectives Sem or Groom about the status of the DiAnne Keidel case. Instead, Moore and Bivin looked inside the burned home for a short time, then looked at some of the charred belongings firefighters had toted outside.
Gene Keidel again tagged along as investigators went about their business. At one point, Keidel pointed out that his stove's rear burner was in the "on" position. That, Moore said later, led him to conclude that the fire accidentally had started there.
In 1994, however, Bivin--with far more experience in arson investigation than Moore--said he'd never believed the fire was accidental. He said the extent of the damage to the kitchen struck him (and others) as exceptional.
Just as telling, Bivin recalled, were unusual burn patterns in a corner of the family room--near the location where Lori later said she'd been burned and forced with her siblings to retreat:
"Everything was burned in that [family room] area more than it should have been. . . . Usually in these kitchen fires, there's so many openings above the kitchen that it usually goes up and then hits the windows, and you do not get the smoke demarcation line so low in the back rooms."
Bivin said that led him to suspect a second origin of the fire, which meant it was arson. But there's no evidence that Bivin--the expert--ever suggested to Moore that a classification of "suspicious" or "undetermined" would be appropriate.
The designation of "suspicious" could have turned the Keidel home into a crime scene. Now, perhaps, missing-persons detectives could have gotten permission to dig in the backyard for DiAnne Keidel's body.
On the other hand, think of the fallout if authorities had excavated without finding DiAnne's remains in 1967. (It took Phoenix police 16 months to secure a search warrant, even after Lori Romaneck directed them in 1993 to her mother's grave.)
Police in both eras erred on the side of caution.
The Case Vanishes
Detective Bill Moore insists his "accidental" determination shouldn't have automatically spelled the end of the fire investigation. But it did.
There's no evidence that fire or police officials continued to investigate the blaze after a Justice of the Peace (and coroner) ruled January 13--three days after the fire--that the girls' deaths resulted from "carbon monoxide poisoning caused by accidental fire in the home."
That day, Susie and Kelly Keidel were buried in unmarked graves at a cemetery on West Van Buren Street.
At the hospital, little Lori was struggling to survive. She almost died twice in the first few days, and doctors weren't sure of her chances.
Hospital records show Keidel spent little time at his daughter's bedside during the critical first days. The records also document what Lori was saying to herself and to nurses at the time.
On January 20, the day before Lori's sixth birthday, a nurse's handwritten note says, "Patient says, 'Kelly and I slept together last night.' Also states, 'Daddy, I hear you. Hear my daddy.' No visitors present at time. Patient continues to speak to people not present in room."
On January 29: "Patient sleeping, but appears quite restless. Patient crying out for her mother."
Gene Keidel collected his insurance money from the fire, then rebuilt his home mostly by himself. He presented himself to friends and neighbors as a sympathetic figure.
First, his wife's disappearance had saddled him with the responsibility for raising four young children. Then, he lost two daughters and almost a third.
Many in the neighborhood didn't buy it. ". . . I felt sure that he had killed [DiAnne] . . . just the way she come up missing," George Jones told investigators in 1994. "And to leave four kids [in the house] like that doesn't make sense."
Stories about Lori's slow recovery from burns dotted the papers in Arizona and in Gene Keidel's native Illinois.
