Fire investigators point to mattress as cause

San Marcos police and fire investigators said the combustible material that caused a fire that killed five, seriously injured others and displaced more than 200 residents of the Iconic Village apartment complex in San Marcos in July 2018–the deadliest in the city’s history–was a discarded mattress.

A complaint and affidavit of probable cause for arrest for San Marcos Police Department case #18-45297, obtained by the Daily Record, presents a chronological narrative of nearly five years worth of interviews and evidence that led to the arrest Wednesday of a 30-year-old Austin man and former resident of the apartment complex. He is the man who investigators said is allegedly responsible for setting the mattress afire that summer–perhaps an act of frustration that accelerated too quickly to stop.

The most recent interview described in the affidavit is dated June 26, just nine days before the long, seemingly cold, fire investigation would ignite again.

At approximately 6:45 a.m. Wednesday, July 5, members of the U.S. Marshal’s Lone Star Fugitive Task Force arrived at the 700 block of East Slaughter Lane in Austin, and took Jacobe De Leon O’Shea Ferguson of Austin into custody without incident as he was on his way home from work. He appeared before a magistrate in San Marcos on Thursday where he was charged with arson causing serious bodily injury/death, a felony 1 crime. He is currently held in the Hays County Jail with a cash/ surety bond of $250,000. Officials said that Ferguson has no previous arrests on record and no attorney is listed for him, according to information posted on the Hays County Jail website at time of press.

The announcement of Ferguson’s arrest in connection to the fire at the Iconic Village came during a joint press conference early Thursday in San Marcos with representatives present from the city of San Marcos, its fire and police departments and an agent from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

At that time, none of the officials present chose to discuss information contained in the affidavit regarding the potential source of the ignition or materials involved, nor did they offer a motive in connection to the alleged actions of Ferguson, a 2019 graduate of Texas State University with a bachelor of science degree in anthropology and an undergraduate student at the time of the fire.

The affidavit is signed by San Marcos Deputy Fire Marshal Robert Dallimore and Maggie Moreno, in the capacity of Hays County magistrate, and is dated June 30, and here both of those questions are given possible explanations.

The affidavit recounts that “on July 20, 2018, at approximately 4:27 a.m., a fire occurred at the Iconic Village Apartments Building 500,” located at 222 Ramsay St., in San Marcos.

At that time, responding to the fire were units from the San Marcos Fire Department, the San Marcos Police Department, and Hays County EMS.

Firefighters found multiple individuals with injuries including Zachary Sutterfield who sustained burns over much of his body.

Eventually, five deaths were confirmed: Haley Michele Frizzell, Dru Estes, David Ortiz, James Miranda and Belinda Moats, who was the last victim to be identified through DNA analysis. The five deaths resulting from the fire were ruled homicides in December 2018.

In a Daily Record article dated Dec. 17, 2018, Hays County Justice of the Peace Pct. 1, Place 2 Moreno stated that the cause of death for Frizzell and Ortiz was thermal injuries. For Moats, Estes and Miranda, the cause of death was thermal injuries and the inhalation of the products of combustion.

The Travis County Medical Examiner’s Office performed the autopsies for all five of those who died in the fire.

The investigation in 2018 by the San Marcos Fire Department, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, and the Texas State Fire Marshal’s Office began onsite with a 10-day combing through of the rubble and interviews with witnesses and former residents of the apartment buildings.

Evidence and data was then transferred to the Fire Resource Laboratory, an ATF facility located in Maryland which created an ATF Certified Fire Investigator Origin and Cause Determination Report, that was finalized in December 2018.

This report stated that the fire’s cause officially was termed incendiary and therefore arson, acknowledging that it was “human intervention by the application of a competent ignition source to available combustible material … namely a discarded mattress located in the defined area of origin,” the breezeway near apartments 507 and 509 that led to five fatalities and a five-year mystery.

The affidavit stated that following the creation of a new San Marcos-based task force in October 2022, with the assistance of ATF, the SMPD and the Texas Rangers, investigators, infused with new enthusiasm, retraced their steps and sought to re-interview at least two of the witnesses from 2018: Jazz Galaviz, a female acquaintance of Ferguson and the owner of the mattress.

During questioning, she said she moved out of the complex and claimed to have left a box spring, pillows and the mattress behind, with a note on the mattress with the name, “Cobe,” implying she was leaving these items for Jacobe Ferguson.

The other significant interviews came with a young man, Weldon Moore, also an acquaintance of Ferguson and a former resident of apartment 511.

Both Galaviz, who had lived in apartment 509, and Moore spoke to investigators from July 2425, 2018, but provided additional information to investigators in their most recent interviews in 2023.

Additionally, the affidavit stated that Ferguson was interviewed on July 24 and July 25, 2018, first telling investigators he knew nothing about the mattress, but during the second interview, he recanted his earlier account and allegedly “admitted to investigators that he lied about knowing about the mattress,” and also said that he had misinformed Galaviz that he had picked up the box spring and pillows, but left the mattress.

Investigators said that in 2018, he said he was “negligent” for not moving the mattress from the breezeway located somewhere near apartments 507 and 509, but he did not take responsibility for starting the fire when talking with investigators. Moore in his interviews in 2018 alerted investigators to the existence of the mattress and in his most recent interviews, made more specific allegations that form much of the case against Ferguson as presented in the affidavit.

Investigators cited an interview conducted on Feb. 8, 2023 with Beth Conboy, a former resident who jumped from a window of Building 500 and sustained serious injuries. She said she was briefly in a relationship with Ferguson in June 2018, but that she ended it, stating that she considered Ferguson was allegedly “too emotional.”

Later that month, investigators questioned Galaviz again, and this time, she added that in conversations with Ferguson, he allegedly told her to lie to investigators, and then suggested that she say shedid not remember what had transpired with regard to the fire or the mattress, as it was now nearly five years later.

On June 26, 2023, in the most recent interview with Moore, he told investigators that he met with Ferguson the day after the fire, July 21, 2018, at Ferguson’s new apartment. He said, in his opinion, Ferguson was allegedly “frustrated,” for multiple reasons, including a rejection by Conboy of him after a date, his continued aggravation over having to get rid of the mattress left behind by Galaviz, all culminating in what Moore said was Ferguson’s stated “contempt for women.” Moore said that Ferguson was also annoyed with having to work three jobs, and voiced to Moore his sense that he was not getting ahead in life.

Moore is quoted in the affidavit, stating that Ferguson, “Didn’t tell me he did it, he told me why he did it [referring to the fire].”

Moore is described in the affidavit as the individual who told investigators in 2018 about the mattress because he was “trying to give a full picture of the scene.”

The affidavit further stated that Moore “confirmed several more times during the interview, Ferguson set the fire, indicating Ferguson told him.” He also told investigators that Ferguson allegedly said that the fire took over “super-fast” and was “super-hot.”

The affidavit does not provide specifics as to the type of mattress that was owned by Galaviz or its flammability standard.