Questa is a tiny Taos County village on the edge of the Kit Carson National Forest, a rich mountainous forest in Northern New Mexico. The nearest towns are Red River and Taos, popular destinations for hunting, camping, hiking, and skiing. Questa is a beautiful place, and it is tight knit and small. Everyone knows everyone. While this may seem charming to people accustomed to the cold hustle and bustle of big cities, it also makes murder extremely difficult to solve in Questa.
This is a problem, because Questa has six unsolved murders that occurred between 1987 and 1999. Though there were many witnesses to most of the killings, no one will talk. There were also plenty of leads in the horrific 1999 double murder of Earl and Clarissa Gonzales, but again, police encountered the same silence.
People worried that if they ran their mouths, they would be next. They spoke of the killers threatening everyone into silence. It is also probable that the killers had kin in the town, who refused to betray family. Widespread incompetence and corruption were uncovered in the Questa Police Department, which greatly contributed to the frozen investigations as well.
Not every small town is a picturesque, idyllic place. In fact, small towns can be quite nasty. Criminals thrive in these towns, where they are shielded by family members and life-long buddies, and where cops don’t have the training, funding, or experience to do things right. This is what has happened in Questa. Now the memories of these deaths are fading, successfully swept under the rug, but many of the victims’ family members are still here and they still remember quite well.
I want to make sure that the rest of the world remembers, as well.
1987: Fritz Vialpando
Fritz Vialpando III was at a Fourth of July family reunion in 1987 when he was murdered. His case is still unsolved. It shouldn’t be, though, because there are an estimated 100+ witnesses who saw the person who shot him. None of them will talk, though.
Fritz was only 29 when he died. He had been born in Denver, but had lived most of his life in Questa. He had played football in high school and had lots of friends. After graduating, he took an art course via correspondence. He is remembered as a gifted artist. He went to Arizona to stay with his older brother and find work for a while in his 20s, before returning to Questa and getting hired onto a road crew. He also got married. Tragically, his poor wife had had a stillborn baby just months before he was murdered. That breaks my heart. I hope she has been able to heal from all that heartbreak that was unfairly piled on her.
On Fourth of July of 1987, Vialpando and a few of his friends showed up to the Padilla and Vigil family reunion around 11:30 pm. The reunion was a huge party with people from all over the States, a band playing, mountains of food…and rivers of alcohol. Many prominent Questenos were present. Some witnesses from that night said that Fritz and his friends were just peacefully hanging out; others reported they were uninvited, unwanted nuisance guests who behaved like imbeciles. Whichever version is true, around 1:00 am, an unnamed man confronted Vialpando and his friends and asked them to leave. That’s when it got violent. People were throwing punches and fighting.
Vialpando got into his truck to leave, reversed, and accidentally hit someone from the party. Who that person was, is not known. That’s when two unknown men attacked him. One tried to pull Vialpando out of the vehicle. The other man tried to pull his keys out of the ignition through the truck window. Vialpando shouted to his friends, “Help me!” Then there was a bang and a flash. People said they thought it was a firework before they realized it was a gunshot.
Fritz Vialpando had been shot in the back of the head around 1:15 am. He was lying in a field near his truck. Vialpando was taken to Holy Cross Hospital and then airlifted to Albuquerque. During that helicopter ride, he died. His family was able to be with him as he departed this world. They were confused and did not know where he had been shot or what had happened in his last moments.
Who all was involved in the altercation and the murder is totally fuzzy. The witnesses who cops interviewed were all family of these men – yet they all deny knowing who did what. They apparently don’t know who fired the gun, or who was involved in the altercation, which honestly just sounds like BS to me. Their accounts of how the night had unfolded all varied, too, which I guess happens when it’s late and you’ve been drinking. But still, it all seems so fishy to me. Like a lot of people are involved in a cover-up for their own family members.
As details of the party emerged, the Vialpandos realized that people they knew well and even considered friends had witnessed the murder. Yet no one was talking. Fritz’s mother, Irene Vialpando, said that people wouldn’t even talk about it with the family privately. She felt disgusted and let down and very alone.
There were two strong suspects, both unnamed in papers. They both had admitted to fighting with Vialpando and his friends at the party. They then left the party together shortly after the murder. One of the men hid at his sister’s house, where he removed his blood-stained shirt and asked his brother to hide it. In a later police interview, he said he had been “freaked out” and he denied killing Fritz Vialpando. The police apparently never retrieved the bloody shirt or even tried. Despite this suspicious story, no charges have been filed.
The Vialpando family talks about how Fritz’s death was swept under the rug by Questa residents and police alike. The murder only gets mentioned whenever another horrible murder strikes Questa. But it doesn’t get any closer to being solved. The family just wants closure and they have been denied that for nearly 4 decades. The family was especially hurt by the callous way the Taos County District Attorney, Sammy Pacheco, dodged their calls and did not instruct his staff to work especially hard on the case.
The murder of Chris Romero, who was shot in self-defense by the Taos mother of a girl he was stalking, incited the rage of Romero’s sister, Michelle Remero Jeantete. She believed that his death was not even properly investigated by the DA and the killer should have been charged. This led Jeantete to start a petition for a grand jury probe into DA Sammy Pacheco’s office. She wanted the grand jury to consider the “cavalier attitude” with which the law enforcement treated crimes in the Taos area and the fact evidence was often mishandled and charges were not properly filed. The Vialpandos signed the petition and their son’s name was included on the petition as one of the victims that the DA had failed. Other victims named included two overdose deaths, Joe Cordova and Jamie Flores, and the name of Ray Cordova, whom investigators did not recognize.
Then Fritz Vialpando’s case was reopened and the parents withdrew their signatures from the petition. They said they felt worried that the DA would not handle their case properly if they participated in the petition. I think this shows a level of corruption in the DA’s office. The Vialpando family should not have had to fear any sort of retribution for exercising their right to petition. Michelle Romero Jeantete agreed that this whole thing stunk.
The results of this petition were dismal. Though 465 signatures of the required 200 were collected, the Taos county clerk found ways to discount or discard all but 119. Pacheco attempted to quash the probe but was denied. However, in court, the judge sided with Pacheco that the signatures were unverifiable. Hence, the probe collapsed and Pacheco was allowed to continue with his callous indecency and incompetence in Taos County.
1988: Riddle and Landwermeyer
Randy White decided to drop by his neighbors’ place in Cabresto Estates, near Questa, on August 15, 1988. He noticed that the house reeked, like a backed up sewer, and the grass was overgrown and the dogs appeared starved. He went to a nearby neighbor’s house and asked if the neighbor had seen Michael or Egg. When the neighbor replied that he hadn’t, White went back to their property. He gingerly entered the house, where he found the well-decomposed bodies of Keith “Egg” Landwermeye and Michael Riddle.
He fled back to the neighbor’s house and shouted, “They’re dead! They’re dead!” The two men didn’t want to call police at first and hesitated for a long time. Finally, White did call the police from his house. The reason for their hesitation became apparent when cops arrived at the scene and discovered that Landwermeyer and Riddle had quite the successful pot farm growing. New Mexico State Police and Tommy Pacheco, the Questa Police Chief at the time, handled the investigation. The land where the double murder happened was not technically in the municipality of Questa, so it fell under the State Police’s jurisdiction.
Landwermeyer was lying on a foam mattress pad near the plastic sheet dividing the bedroom from the rest of the small house he shared with Riddle. He was covered partially in a blanket and his head was wedged between two bloody pillows. Riddle laid near him, facedown in a pool of his own blood, with his shirt hiked nine inches up his waist. Both men had died of blunt force trauma to their heads and maggots were already eating their flesh. A medical examiner determined that they had been dead at least a week by the time they were found.
The light was on in the living room of the house, as well as in the greenhouse out back. The greenhouse contained about 200 marijuana plants, most of which were dead by the time the cops came. The tire of the truck out front was slashed. There was a purple and white tennis shoe, lying near the front door. It is not clear if any other evidence was found in the home.
Michael Riddle was 32 and former military. He was living in the house which was owned by his ex-girlfriend, Joan Dare. Dare was living in Dallas and letting Riddle rent the home. Keith Landwermeyer was his roommate and business partner. He was only 25. The two men did a variety of odd jobs all over Northern NM, working as security guards, handymen, landscapers, and weed dealers. While it would seem likely that they had been murdered for their weed plants, it didn’t appear the plants had been stolen. Many good, healthy plants were actually left to die from lack of care over the week that the men lay dead in their home. So this tells me the killer didn’t care about the plants. Randy White may have held the key to solving the murder and he gave cops a few crumbs to chew on.
Randy White and his wife, Constance, owned a little store in Mesita, CO. My jaw dropped when I learned that his son is Richard Paul White, the serial killer of 3 to 6 people in Colorado. Just last night, I watched the Evil Lives Here episode where Richard White’s sister, Danyall, shares her side of living with her brother and the aftermath of his crimes. What that episode did not mention was how Richard White’s father, Randy, had a connection to this double murder in Questa.
Police were curious when Randy White claimed that Michael Riddle was a bad dude and so whoever killed him must have been very, very bad. The most puzzling thing to police, though, was how White had been in the house after finding the double murder victims for at least twenty minutes before going to the neighbor’s house and eventually calling the police. They considered him a definite person of interest.
They decided to go to his store in Mesita, where they met Constance. She agreed to interview them but then Randy White showed up and put a stop to the interview, insisting that investigators talk to him directly. Initially, White refused to be recorded, then he relented after a few minutes. He requested a lawyer because he was worried he would be charged for the marijuana plants, but he decided to talk anyway without an attorney present.
As he talked, he divulged that he had spent about twenty minutes with the dead bodies but he didn’t want to share what he had done during that time frame. Most people can’t stand to be around the smell of decaying flesh, so that seems very suspicious. White told cops that there may have been a videotape he filmed during this time frame, which seems like a pretty weird statement to make. Why was he filming the whole thing? Why did he have a video camera with him in the first place? In the 80s there weren’t mobile phones you could just whip out to film and video recorders were pretty bulky, so he had to have been carrying one intentionally. Perhaps he knew who was behind the murder and he wanted to gather and document evidence for himself?
Then the weirdest part of the interview happened. White said he wouldn’t say more without an attorney, but he would go talk to a tree and cops could listen if they wanted. This seems like someone who isn’t all there to me. White told the tree (and the listening investigators) that Landwermeyer and Riddle had been selling marijuana in Questa and had a very small, trusted circle of friends, which included Randy White himself. They had begun to steal from locals in Questa which may have contributed to their deaths. He said a few neighbors were “frustrated” with the men for the thefts. He also said that he had not been to the house for two months and his fingerprints could only be found on the window and the door; he had opened the window to let fresh air into the death-reeking house. His closing statement to the tree was that the marijuana plants weren’t even ready for harvest and so he didn’t understand why the men would be killed over them.
A few years after this weird interview, White was arrested for marijuana cultivation in Colorado. Four videotapes were confiscated from his belongings. Police thought one of them might be the tape of his twenty minutes with the dead bodies. But nothing came of that and police never released details of the confiscated tapes. White passed on in 2022 and he took whatever he knew about the deaths with him.
In 2003, Randy White’s son, Richard Paul White, confessed to murdering his friend by accident and also killing and raping three women. He was one of those religious nut jobs who believed that prostitutes deserved to die for sinning – even though he was actively having sex with them and sinning just as much himself. He received two consecutive life sentences for the murders and additional rapes. Randy White tried to sell video tapes of his confession and claimed he would donate the proceeds to the victims’ families, but he got in trouble for this because criminals are not to profit from their crimes. State Police reached out to Richard Paul White to find out if he knew anything about the Questa double murder; his attorney simply said no comment. Richard White was about fifteen when the murders happened and he may have seen something or heard something.
Like with the other murders discussed here, people in Questa didn’t want to talk. Witnesses would dodge the police or leave letters and phone calls unanswered. The State Police were unable to make any headway. As of now, this is just one of many unsolved homicides, lingering thickly over Questa. The body count would only grow over the next few years.
1993: Arnie Cisneros
Arnie Cisneros was only 30, eager for life ahead and eager to see his son grow up. He had just left El Monte Carlo Lounge in Questa on December 22, 1993, when he was run over with a truck between 12:45 and 1:00 am. He was found in the parking lot of the Rael’s Market across the street from the bar, coughing and choking on his own blood, unable to speak. A woman found him and called the police; she was never interviewed. His mother, Sofia Cisneros, then ran to the scene and cradled his head and asked him who ran him over. He tried to speak, but couldn’t. One of his shoes was missing. He was airlifted to the UNM hospital in Albuquerque, where he succumbed to internal injuries and bleeding about 12 hours later.
According to one news report in the November 28, 1999 Albuquerque Journal, Arnie was run over by his own truck. Then his truck was found abandoned not long after, with no evidence of who had stolen it. But I couldn’t find verification of this anywhere else. His sister even wrote a letter to the Taos News editor in March 1994, begging for information, and she never once mentioned his own truck was used. So I don’t believe he actually was hit by his own truck.
Cisneros’s mother, Sofia, said the family didn’t celebrate Christmas or Thanksgiving for years after her son died. They used to make holidays a big thing for their six grandchildren, but they didn’t have the heart after Arnie was killed. Arnie’s ex-wife would take their son to his grave and she struggled with how to answer his questions about what had happened to his dad. The Cisneros family patiently waited for answers, but the small Questa police force appeared useless.
Sammy Pacheco of the Taos County District Attorney office wrote the Questa Police a letter in 1994, pointing out glaring holes in their investigation. They had not performed an accident diagram. They had failed to interview several witnesses and persons of interest. They had basically dropped the ball. When the DA didn’t get a response, they sent a second letter, to which the Questa Police Chief Danny Pacheco replied that he had already sent over all evidence. He still never got around to the accident diagram and several interviews were never conducted, however. This flagrant bungling by the Questa Police Department led the family to request help from the FBI. But the FBI declined to help because it was out of their jurisdiction. The family appealed to the public for answers and got nothing.
After that, a new Questa police officer named Walter Martin called for a third-party investigation into incompetence on the parts of two Questa police officers – then-Police Chief Danny Pacheco and Officer Frank Gallegos, who later become police chief. Martin claimed that after he was hired at the police department, he found countless examples of sloppiness, incompetence, and corruption, such as unlabeled drugs loose in a drawer, unreported stolen vehicle tags, uninvestigated instances of horrible child abuse, and excessive overtime pay taken by Gallegos. He claimed Gallegos and Pacheco had released key witnesses, lost evidence, and ignored the DA’s request for more information in the Cisneros case. Thus, he blamed them directly for the stalls in the case. It is not clear what happened as a result of this request, but Frank Gallegos’s attorney made a statement to the Taos News that Gallegos was an upstanding officer and Martin did not know enough about police procedure to comment on the handling of the murder investigation.
It didn’t help that Questa residents were reluctant to talk out of fear of becoming victims next. One Questa resident interviewed by the Albuquerque Journal in 1999 went so far as to say that the killer was known locally. He threatened people not to talk about it. Out of fear for herself and her five children, this resident refused to disclose the person’s name. So it sounds like people know who killed Cisneros and the case could be solved – but it probably won’t be. Maybe once the killer dies, someone will talk?
My first thought reading this case was “It sounds like either a drunken accident or a jealous girlfriend or ex.” Interestingly, there was an unnamed female key witness who was questioned by police in her home. They then brought her to the police station to interview her. She was read her rights and then she requested a lawyer. In the taped interview, she can be heard repeating, “It was a freak accident. Just an accident.” It’s not clear what came of that interview, but she was never arrested. She was instead released, which is not how key witnesses like that should be handled, according to the DA. She seemed to have some pertinent information.
Cisneros’s last day alive had included shopping with his ex-wife and high school sweetheart, Berta Vigil, for their toddler son, Arnold Jr. Arnold Jr. had been in a car accident that left him with permanent severe brain damage. Cisneros then spent the evening at El Monte Carlo Lounge, drinking beers and playing pool with his girlfriend and some friends. He left around 12:45 pm, which was when he was struck. An unidentified female found his body and was never interviewed by police.
I think this case would be easy to solve if people spoke up. Someone must have seen Cisneros leaving the bar. They had to have seen who else left and who had been hanging out in the parking lot of the bar. And where did his girlfriend and friends go? Had they stayed in the bar, or left earlier, or did they leave with him? In my experience, usually couples will leave a bar together and go home together. Not always, but usually. It’s kind of weird that he left alone, just to be mowed down by a boogeyman.
He was quite probably hit by accident and the driver was afraid of getting in trouble. That person may have been drunk. Arnie himself had a blood alcohol content of .232 and that could explain part of the accident – he may have stumbled out into the road or fallen onto the highway before someone hit him. But he may also have been deliberately run over. His shopping trip with Berta Vigil and his pool game with his girlfriend may have triggered jealousy in someone. At this point, we’ll probably never know.
Arnie Cisneros had been present in a 1985 drunk driving crash, where Fritz Vialpando’s brother, Veto Vialpando, killed Taos resident Richard Grainger. The two were apparently friends and enjoyed slowly cruising the Enchanted Circle while drunk together. This just goes to show how small Questa is. These murders don’t just affect the victims and their direct families – they affect the entire community. It’s so sad that Fritz would be murdered and then Arnie would be murdered a few years later. It is even sadder that nobody in Questa felt safe enough to speak up and bring justice for the victims and peace for the families.
1999: Earl and Clarissa Gonzales
On the mountainside overlooking Questa, near the edge of the Kit Carson National Forest, an unfinished house decays. This home was once full of love, cheer, and hope. Now it’s eerily silent and empty. The walls are still covered in tar paper – an expansion project forever stalled. The yard bears remnants of the sweet little girl who lived there – dolls and toys are scattered in the dirt. This was the home of Earl and Clarissa Gonzales, 1999 murder victims. And their slayings have never been solved.
Clarissa was just nine years old. She lived with her father after her parents divorced. A loving little girl, she tried to cook and bake for her dad, though the results were not always delicious. She loved Snoopy and her father with her whole heart. People remember her as a “little light” and “an absolute pleasure to have around.”
Earl was a “beloved Questa resident” and a Vietnam veteran who worked as a contractor. He was 51 when he was murdered. He had finally built his dream home overlooking the Cabresto Canyon, on the edge of the Kit Carson National Forest. But he had even bigger dreams for it and kept adding to it. The house was not finished by the time Earl and Clarissa were murdered.
The night of September 2, 1999, the two were asleep when someone broke into their home and robbed them of their lives. Earl was shot in the left temple with a small handgun, most likely his own .45 Ruger Blackhawk, which was missing from his things. Clarissa was raped and then strangled with a ligature, possibly a phone cord or electric blanket cord. Their bodies were left in the house – Earl by the living room couch and Clarissa on the floor next to her bed upstairs.
Earl’s girlfriend kept calling the house the next day with no answer. She became concerned, so she went by and stumbled upon the horrific scene of her dead boyfriend. When police visited the house, they didn’t find Clarissa immediately and so they assumed she had run into the woods. Neighbors began to search for her. Then police went upstairs in the 3-story home and made the heartbreaking discovery of her strangled body.
No one knew who killed them. Or if they knew, they didn’t want to say out of fear. State Police ran into a lot of resistance and silence from Questa residents, just like with the other cases. Most people did state they believed that the killer lived in Questa and knew the victims personally. However, Earl’s house was near Cabresto Canyon, an area popular with hikers, hunters, and campers. Was this a crime of opportunity by a creep passing through the area? Or was it more personal?
The rape of Clarissa was the most likely motive. The killer got rid of Earl, then targeted the little girl for his sick enjoyment. This means that someone knew Clarissa lived there. In a small town like Questa, though, practically every person in the town would know about Clarissa living alone with her dad in the remote house. Everyone would also know that Earl left his door unlocked so that his friends could stop by anytime. That doesn’t narrow the suspect pool down much. If the killer was a hunter from nearby Kit Carson Forest, then he may have noticed the girls’ dolls and pink bike in the yard, leading him to plan a nocturnal attack.
Interestingly, Earl’s 1994 black Ford truck had been stolen on August 27, right before he was murdered. Earl reported the vehicle theft to the Questa Police Department. After he was killed, the truck was tracked down and two juveniles who were charged with grand theft auto. Their names haven’t been released. Could they have been responsible for this horrific double murder?
Earl was buried in Questa after a service at St. Anthony’s Church. Clarissa was buried in Colorado, near where her mother lived. In 1999, Frank Gallegos, the Questa Police Chief, said they were confident they could solve the case. That still hasn’t happened, almost a quarter of a century later.
2022: Albina Gallegos and Cynthia Ortega
On October 27, 2022, the Questa Fire Department got a call around 10 pm about a trailer fire on Old Red River Road. They responded to the trailer, only to find it was well beyond saving. The flames jetted several feet into the air, totally consuming the structure. Inside, the bodies of Albina Gallegos and Cynthia Ortego were found. Their family members identified them. Firefighters stated that they were deeply mournful that they weren’t able to save the women.
Albina was 86. Cynthia Ortega was her daughter and she was 58. They reportedly lived together in the trailer. They had been seen alive less than an hour before the trailer erupted in flames.
The police said that the trailer fire was suspicious. The debris from the burnt trailer has been sent to a lab for testing to find out if an accelerant was used. The results are still not available. The police were also checking to see if the women had been injured or killed prior to the fire. Again, that information can take a long time and so we are all still waiting for news.
The weird thing about the fire is a neighbor’s statement. This neighbor reported he is dating Cynthia Ortega’s daughter. He said that on October 27, he had taken the two women to Albuquerque to cash a check. He dropped them off at the trailer at 9:00 pm. Less than an hour later, he saw the flames. He asked his girlfriend (remember, the victim’s daughter) to call 911 but she refused and fled the area. That seems pretty strange for someone to do after seeing her mom’s house on fire!
Neighbors told police that there had been domestic violence and conflict in the home before. They also suspected illegal activity of some unspecified type. I wonder if the trailer may have been a meth lab that exploded, which would explain the daughter’s reticence to call police.
But it also seems possible that someone attacked the women and lit the trailer on fire to hide evidence. If the women had been conscious when the fire started, they may have been able to escape before flames totally engulfed the structure. Trailers burn more quickly than regular houses; one source I looked up says that you have about 11 minutes to get out before the roof collapses. That’s not a lot of time if you’re unaware of a fire or stuck somewhere, like the bathroom or bed. Let’s not forget that Albina Gallegos was 86 and probably not that nimble anymore.
But 11 minutes should be enough time to flee a small trailer if you just got home, because you would likely still be standing somewhere near the door. Also, most trailers have doors on opposite walls and they are fairly small, making escape easier. Since the fire started shortly after the women were dropped off, then there wasn’t that much time between them entering the home and the blaze starting. Enough time to go to the bathroom and maybe start getting ready for bed, but maybe not. It all depends on when the fire actually started, which has not been released yet. That makes me wonder if the victims were already dead or otherwise incapacitated.
The daughter’s actions are beyond suspicious to me. She must have known something. Fleeing the area instead of sticking around to check on her mom makes me think she either knew about a meth lab or she knew someone wanted her mom and grandmother dead. She definitely didn’t want to be there when cops showed up. Has she been questioned?
All we can do is wait for more information. This crime may still be solved. But given Questa’s record with murder investigations, I admit that I don’t have much hope. The longer we wait, the more likely this case will go cold. I don’t know if Questa’s police department has improved since the 80s and 90s when these other cold cases occurred, but I hope that they don’t overlook key witnesses and lose evidence like they did before. I will update this if I ever get more information.
Conclusion
Years have passed since each of these murders. They have become as quiet as the town of Questa itself. In a town this small and tight knit, there are undoubtedly rumors of who was behind each of these murders. Rumors typically have at least a few kernels of truth to them. But nobody was willing to speak to police – and police were not competent enough to solve them without tips or confessions.
In addition to these murders in Questa, there are many other unsolved crimes in nearby Taos. The July 26, 2013 hit and run death of three-year-old Fidel Contreras in Taos; the 1996 disappearance of Barbara Holik, a German woman living in Taos who vanished in 1996 while leaving her purse and car behind; the 2005 disappearance of Harvey Dale Fernandez, last seen in a gas station in Taos after partying with friends in the Penasco Valley; the 2011 shooting of Jeffrey King from New Hampshire in Tres Piedras. People don’t talk and interviews hint at perpetrators who are related to local law enforcement, especially in the Harvey Fernandez case. Corruption and incompetence alike seem to keep these cases cold.
Quiet towns are not always as idyllic as they look on the surface. Sometimes, the quiet hides a lot of secrets…and a lot of evil. Kin protects kin and lifelong buddies take secrets about each other to the grave. I can only hope that these people can one day get the justice they deserve. Before they are completely forgotten.
Sources
The Disappearance of Harvey Fernandez
https://namus.nij.ojp.gov/case/MP632
https://counteverymystery.blogspot.com/2020/04/murders-of-earl-and-clarissa-gonzales.html
http://www.nmsoh.org/gonzales_earl_clarissa_us.htm
https://news.yahoo.com/state-investigates-fatal-fire-questa-160700330.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall