FLASHOVER
2023 - ongoing project
Gerald Leroy Hurst was a chemist and fire expert born in 1937 in Davis, Oklahoma, and died in 2015 in Austin, Texas, at the age of 77.
Son of a sharecropper and a waitress mother, he grew up, after his parents' divorce, between the outskirts of Oklahoma and the streets of Los Angeles. Thanks to his German stepfather, he spent part of his adolescence in Nuremberg, where he learned the language. Back in the U.S., he studied at the University of Ames in Iowa, where he achieved the best results in the country in physics and chemistry, and received his doctorate in inorganic fluorine chemistry from Cambridge University in the early 60s. His work focused on high-energy chemistry.
He began his career as a rocket scientist during the Moon Race, developing fluorochemicals and rocket propellants.
Hurst went on to work for the arms industry as an industrial chemist during the Vietnam War. He managed various secret weapons programs for American companies. His main task was to find possible methods of destroying enemy infrastructures, which he described as "legal arson". During this period, he found a way for secret agents sent to Vietnam to create homemade bombs on the spot.
In 1967, he was offered a position at the Explosives Corporation of America in Washington, where he developed Kinepak, an explosive with two separate inert components that could be shipped as is and combined on site. He also perfected an explosive T-shirt whose fibers were impregnated with nitrates. At the same time, Hurst developed Astrolite, a family of binary explosives he used to improve napalm bombs. Astrolite G, a mixture of ammonium nitrate and hydrazine (rocket fuel), is known as one of the world's most powerful non-nuclear explosives. Its low mass means it can't be used for major demolitions, but its very high detonation velocity of 8,600 m/s is almost twice the explosive force of TNT, making Astrolite a formidable anti-personnel mine. Moreover, one of its characteristics is a high degree of persistence. Its low volatility enables it to be dispersed on the ground and then absorbed, while retaining its explosive characteristics over a period of 4 days, unaffected by rainwater. It will eventually inactivate, eliminating the need for demining. Even when active, Astrolite cannot be detected by a normal mine detector.
In 1970, the Explosives Corporation of America merged with Atlas Powder Company, one of the two offshoots of Du Pont Powder Company - an explosives company founded in 1802 by French-American chemist and industrialist, Éleuthère Irénée Du Pont de Nemours.
Officially incorporated in Delaware in 1912, Atlas Power Company operates as an independent explosives and chemicals company. Initially specializing in the manufacture of dynamite and gunpowder, in 1919 it became a military supplier and subsequently one of the largest explosives manufacturers in the United States.
In 1961, the decline in anthracite and the closure of explosives factories prompted the Atlas Powder Company to change its name to Atlas Chemical Industries Inc. and merge with The Stuart Company, a Pasadena-based pharmaceutical manufacturer. In 1997, after several restructurings, it became a predecessor of AstraZeneca LP.
Hurst became Managing Director of the Atlas Powder Company, where he worked for the next 20 years. During his years at Atlas, he developed other projects in his spare time, including an improved version of Liquid Paper, and patented his best-known invention, the Mylar balloon, whose BoPET sheets were developed by DuPont and Imperial Chemistry Industries, among others. He works in a pressurized spacesuit in the basement of his home, which he converts into a laboratory.
In 1972, he began working as a fire consultant, mainly on fires in industrial environments.
In 1994, he underwent an emergency liver transplant following liver failure probably caused by his laboratory work. After an arduous period of physical rehabilitation, Hurst finally came to terms with his conscience and left the arms industry in 1995, taking refuge in his basement. Now living off his patents, he devotes the rest of his life to volunteering as an expert witness in a number of arson cases.
On November 10, 1991, a fire broke out at Bill Richardson's home in Fort Stockton. Investigators concluded that it was arson, pointing to the presence of an accelerant at the scene as evidence, and put forward as a motive an inheritance story of which his daughter-in-law (formerly his niece), Sonia Cacy, the only survivor of the fire, was the only heiress. Cacy was accused of dousing her uncle with gasoline and then setting fire to the house.
A week before the fatal fire, Sonia Cacy and Bill Richardson had already reported two other fires on the property, which were extinguished without causing any damage. There was also evidence that Richardson was a notorious smoker and had repeatedly been careless in leaving cigarettes burning. In February 1993, Sonia Cacy was convicted of arson and murder, and sentenced to 55 years in prison.
In 1995, the Court of Appeal ordered a new penalty hearing. Gerald Hurst retrieved the file through a lawyer who needed an arson expert to evaluate the forensic evidence. Reading the trial report, Hurst was appalled by the way the investigation had been conducted. He then went to the scene to give evidence to another expert, Ken Gibson. Both asserted that the results of the laboratory conducted by Joe Castorena, a trained toxicologist, had been misinterpreted. What appeared to be gasoline was in fact burnt residue from rubberized curtains and a polyurethane foam mattress. Pyrolysis (chemical decomposition of an organic compound generated by its combustion, reminiscent of an accelerant) had, however, been found in the original tests. Hurst also believed that Richardson had died of a heart attack while trying to open a window, rather than from burns; evidence of Richardson's poor health had been presented by the defence. According to Hurst, the fire reached the curtains after Richardson's death and fell on his body, which also appeared to be holding the remains of a crank handle in its hand. Despite the evidence, the jury upheld Sonia Cacy's conviction. She was sentenced to 99 years in prison, 44 years more than her original sentence. Enraged, Hurst set about getting her out.
In 1998, obsessed with the case, he assembled a group of a dozen leading experts and pathologists in the field. They all came to the same conclusions as Hurst, and made a detailed presentation to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles (a state agency that makes parole and clemency decisions for Texas inmates). This court recognized the evidence as credible and confirmed Sonia Cacy's "actual innocence", releasing her on parole the same year.
After this case, Hurst was increasingly in demand. He realized that people all over the country were in Sonia Cacy's position, and decided to apply his method to other arson cases.
Gerald Hurst mainly handles post-conviction cases, and works on a number of high-profile cases, including Ernest Ray Willis and Cameron Todd Willingham.
He set out to re-establish the truth on a solid scientific and evidentiary basis, pointing out that a large proportion of investigators relied on "old wives' tales" to conduct their investigations, repeating pseudo-scientific folklore handed down over the years, believing that they did not have to be subject to the same rules as other forensic sciences, that their experience alone was sufficient.
Gerald Hurst died in March 2015 following complications from the transplant he had received.
