“When I woke up there was a fire. I know it wasn’t anything I was doing,” Mark William Roberts said in the audio recording. During that interview, Roberts was “very specific” that the fire did not start in his apartment, but he talked “about the fire being in the living room of his apartment,” testified Mike Nance, a now-retired Tulsa Police Department homicide investigator. Nance indicated that regarding the investigation of the March 10, 2009, fire at the Royal Arms Apartments, “we began to believe the fire had started because of an explosion of a working meth lab in Apartment 210,” which is where Roberts lived. Roberts said he had been asleep on a couch in his second-floor apartment, according to Nance. Scott Winford, a Tulsa Fire Department investigator, testified that “it was clear the apartment of origin was Apartment 210.” In the 2009 questioning, Roberts said there “wasn’t a meth lab in my house.” “I never really saw the fire. I saw heat,” he said in 2009. According to Nance, Roberts indicated that he had cooked methamphetamine previously. Roberts, 46, is on trial for four felonies – two counts of felony murder and single counts of first-degree arson and attempted manufacturing of a controlled dangerous substance. Investigators say the fire began about 4 a.m. in Roberts’ unit at the complex, in the 5100 block of South Norfolk Avenue, and spread to other apartments. Maria Martinez, 39, and Armando Nunez, 35, who were in a neighboring apartment, died after being burned in the blaze. Another neighbor, Nikki Cain, was rescued from her apartment by firefighters but suffered smoke inhalation and brain damage. Cain remains in a vegetative state and is not expected to recover, according to testimony. Roberts received treatment at a hospital for burns he suffered in the fire. He has been in the Tulsa Jail since July 2009. Winford was in the process of showing jurors photos of the Royal Arms fire scene, via a Power Point presentation, when Friday’s court session ended. Testimony is scheduled to resume Tuesday in District Judge William Kellough’s court. Prosecutors Erik Grayless and John Salmon are expected to rest their case Tuesday. Defense attorneys Mark Collier, James Huber and Ian Shahan will then have the opportunity to present evidence.
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