One of the first calls to report a fire that killed three people at the Boardwalk Apartments last month originated from the apartment of the man authorities accuse of starting the blaze.

Of the 24 fire-related 911 calls that came into the county’s emergency dispatch center the morning of Oct. 7, among the earliest came from 510 Fireside Drive, Apt. 2, home of Jason Allen Rose.

“Yeah. My apartment complex is on fire,” the caller told a dispatcher, according to a transcript of the call obtained by the Lawrence Journal-World through a freedom of information request.

Dispatcher: “OK. What’s your address?”

Caller: “510 Fireside Drive.”

Authorities have refused to release recordings of incoming calls to the dispatch center that morning, citing the ongoing investigation. People directly related to the case also have declined to comment, citing a gag order imposed by Douglas County District Judge Jack Murphy.

But the dispatch center’s call logs show that the call came from the apartment, using a phone line signed out to “Rose, J.”

“The 911 database shows that’s who owns the telephone line,” explained Jim Denney, Douglas County’s director of emergency communications. “That’s in a residence. That’s a residential phone, and that’s the person who pays the bill on that telephone.

A log of 911 calls on the morning of the Boardwalk Apartments fire Oct. 7 shows one of the first reports coming from a telephone registered to Rose,

“If it wasn’t J. Rose, it was someone who was using J. Rose’s telephone line.”

A ‘red flag’

Calls to 911 from arsonists, or those suspected of committing arson, are not unusual, said Kent Harris, assistant chief of the Olathe Fire Department who has testified as an arson expert in more than 200 trials during the past 21 years. He has not worked on the Boardwalk case.

Harris said 911 calls often lead investigators to suspects, or help corroborate evidence.

Two days after the fire, Lawrence police picked up disks containing recordings of incoming calls to the dispatch center during the fire. Rose was arrested two days later.

“The red flag goes up: ‘This is not right,'” Harris said. “As an investigator, it makes me want to stop and think: ‘OK, we’re looking at this guy, we get a call from this apartment.’ There are a lot of things that make me scratch my head.”

Rose, 20, was charged Oct. 12 with three counts of felony murder and one count of aggravated arson. Three of Rose’s neighbors died in the fire – Kansas University student Nicole Bingham, social worker Yolanda Riddle and electrician Jose Gonzalez – and dozens more were injured or displaced.

Ron Evans, Rose’s court-appointed attorney, declined to comment on the phone call or any other aspect of the case.

Charles Branson, Douglas County district attorney, said he would reserve comment until the preliminary hearing, scheduled for Feb. 22 in Douglas County District Court.

Any investigation related to the phone call, he said, would be subject to Judge Murphy’s gag order.

“It is what it is,” Branson said.

‘It’s crazy’

Others who called 911 to report the fire aren’t bound by such restrictions.

Charles Knapper, a Johnson County Community College student, called into dispatch just before the report came in from Rose’s apartment. Records show that Knapper called just after 1:17 a.m., or 11 seconds before the call from Rose’s apartment came through.

Knapper still can’t believe anybody could have chosen to be inside the building at 510 Frontier Road, considering how fast the fire was spreading as he peered outside from his second-floor apartment across the street.

“By the time I opened the door, you could tell it was a total loss,” said Knapper, who suspected trouble when his cable TV went out. “It was just unreal. You don’t expect to see that in real life; you expect Hollywood to make those things with special effects. You don’t expect things that real. In seconds, it was just up in flames. It was amazing how fast it spread, horizontally.

“From the time I made that phone call, I don’t know why anybody would be in that building, because of what was going on. He was in great danger, if he made that call after I did. … For him to be in that building, and to place a phone call from there, it’s crazy.”

Records show that Raju Ahmed made the first call to dispatch about the fire. He’d been watching “Oprah” when he saw fire on the stairwell outside his apartment at 516 Fireside Drive.

He shut the door to his bedroom before connecting with a dispatcher. He hooked into dispatch just after 1:16 a.m., a little more than a minute before a call would come from Rose’s apartment.

“What’s on fire?” the dispatcher asked, according to the transcript provided by authorities.

“The whole apartment,” Ahmed said. “I’m in the apartment.”

Ahmed managed to jump to safety, fracturing his heel in the process.

Piece of the puzzle

Harris, the arson expert from Olathe, acknowledges knowing “nothing” about Rose and the case authorities are building against him, but did say investigators generally find arsonists fit into one of two profiles.

One, he said, “is setting the fire to be a hero – discovering the fire and calling it in, to be the hero for calling it in and saving the day.”

The other: “After setting the fire, having second thoughts about what he’s done and calling it in because it’s gotten out of hand.”

Harris said that an arsonist could have a wide range of motives for setting a fire. He’s certain that investigators would be spending the coming weeks compiling lab results, reviewing testimony and working on hundreds of other aspects of their case against Rose.

The 911 recording, Harris said, likely would be in the mix.

“It puts him at the scene. That’s part of it,” Harris said. “There are a whole bunch of cards that have been played that I don’t know about, but that’s another one of those puzzle pieces that will probably fit in a good, good spot.”