61 year old Jeannie Saffin, with a mental age of 6 years old,
was terrified of open flames. In 1982, at her home in England while
sitting in the kitchen at about 4pm she suddenly bust into flames with
her father, Jack, sitting nearby at the table.
He
saw a sudden flash and when he turned to ask Jeannie if she had seen it
he noticed she was surrounded by flames, mostly around her face and
hands. According to Mr Saffin. his daughter did not move or cry, but
simply sat there with her hands in her lap.
In
an effort to save Jeannie's life, her father disfigured his own hands
while pulling her to the kitchen sink. Putting out the flames
surrounding Jeannie, her father began calling for his son-in-law Donald
to help, screaming “Jeannie's burning!” Donald stated that he ran into
the kitchen seeing Jeannie with roaring flames around her face and
abdomen while contacting EMS.
When
the flames were extinguished, Jeannie began to whimper. Upon an
inquest, it was found that due to her mental condition, shock, and
endorphins that resulted from the incident her pain was minimized. The
EMS personnel who escorted Jeannie to the hospital testified that the
kitchen and its contents were unharmed. Both Donald and Jack testified
that the flames coming from Jeannie displayed a roaring sound.
In
the reports from the incident, Jeannie's injuries were listed as facial
burns as well as burns to the chest, neck, shoulders, left arm,
abdomen, thighs and left buttock along with both sides of both hands.
Some of these were full thickness burns in which the skin is destroyed
down to fat tissue. Jeannie's face afterward was described as horribly
disfigured. Soon after, she went into a coma and died from pneumonia due
to burns.
PC Marsden from the Edmonton Police Station,
in a report to the coroner's office, stated that no cause for the
flames had been found. This report also states that the chair and walls
of the kitchen were undamaged by fire and smoke, that the closest source
of ignition (a gas stove)
was at least 5 feet away and that Jeannie was still burning when he got
to the residence. He helped put out the flames with a towel. In
conclusion of his report, which was accepted by the coroner, Jeannie was
a victim of spontaneous human combustion.
In 1995, Marsden reiterated his belief in the cause of death and that years after the incident he had been questioned by a senior officer.
In John E. Heymer's 1996 book titled “The Entrancing Flame”, Jeannie
Saffin's case is discussed among others who may have been victims of
spontaneous human combustion. Upon examining these cases, familiarities
include that the victims do not seem to struggle, show no signs of
awareness, do not cry out and survivors such as Jack Angel and Wilfred
Gowthorp, have no memory of the event which leads researchers to believe
they are not conscious while they are burning.
Heymer
alleges that defective mitochondria are to blame, insisting that they
allow hydrogen to build in the cell. This allows the cell to burst into
flames due to the 0.225 volts of electricity that is generated across
the inner membrane which sets off a chain reaction in other cells of the
body.
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