Anita Emery was a daredevil.
She spent her free time skydiving and white-water rafting, even though she didn't know how to swim. She rarely sat still and loved a good adventure.
Then an arsonist torched a Bloomfield apartment building Jan. 17, 1993, killing Emery, 31, and two others. Her family was devastated.
"She was our wild child," said her mother, Margaret Emery, 76, of Butler. "She was easily bored and always up to something. I used to tell her not to tell me what she was doing before she did it, because I'd just worry. When she died, it left such a huge, huge void. I hoped I'd live to find out who set that fire."
This week, Margaret Emery and the relatives of Christopher Stahlman, 23, and Florence Lyczko, 63, finally got the answer they'd been waiting for.
Pittsburgh police cold case homicide detectives arrested Daniel T. Carnevale, 42, formerly of Bloomfield, in Placerville, Calif., accusing him of setting the fire at the Columbia/Regal apartment buildings on Taylor Street. Carnevale, who fled Pittsburgh for California three months after the fire, waived extradition at a hearing Tuesday.
He's expected to be returned to Pittsburgh this week. He faces charges of homicide, arson and burglary. Additional charges are expected because another apartment resident suffered severe burns and a firefighter -- one of 80 who responded -- was injured, police said.
Detectives interviewed dozens of people -- including Carnevale -- after the fire and he offered to take a polygraph test, but left the state before doing so. The case went cold, until an April 10 "cold case" column in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review prompted a witness, Sandi Evans, of Bloomfield, to come forward with information about Carnevale, whom she'd long suspected was responsible.
Detectives J.R. Smith and Scott Evans had a general idea of where Carnevale was living in California, and they worked with the El Dorado County Sheriff's Office to pinpoint his location.
A five-officer surveillance team, led by El Dorado Detective Dave Stevenson, found Carnevale in Placerville and put him under 24-hour surveillance until Smith and Evans arrived Friday. Saturday morning, the detectives stopped Carnevale, who has a Steelers logo tattooed on the right side of his head, as he drove near his home and arrested him on a warrant prepared last week by the Allegheny County District Attorney's Office.
"He didn't seem surprised to see us," Smith said.
Carnevale, who is married and has five stepchildren and 11 stepgrandchildren, was working as a laborer in a lumber mill in Camino, Calif., Smith said. His wife was out of town this week, Smith said, but his stepchildren told investigators they knew Carnevale lived in Pittsburgh at one point though they didn't know he was ever a suspect in the fatal fire.
Police have not established a motive.
Lyczko's grandson, David Stifler, 29, of Ben Avon, was a teenager when she died.
"I've always wondered, for 13 years, who did that to her," Stifler said. "She was quite a woman. Very intelligent. I'm happy it's over now and we can move on."
Margaret Emery said her daughter, who graduated from Butler High School and Slippery Rock University, was a credit executive at Kaufmann's when she died. She traveled to other states to represent Kaufmann's in court cases involving credit-card holders who declared bankruptcy.
Photos of Anita Emery still adorn her mother's home. Margaret Emery, along with Stahlman's mother, hung posters in Bloomfield through the years, pleading for witnesses to come forward with information.
"I honestly thought that the trail had gone so cold by now that if anyone was going to give up information, they'd have done it a long time ago," Margaret Emery said. "I was losing hope. If this man is convicted, the only thing I want to ask him is why⢠Why did he do that?"
