Fatal Noyac Fire Was 'Homicide,' Wiener Family Attorney Says

An attorney representing the family that rented a Noyac home where two sisters died in an August fire criticized the Suffolk County district attorney’s office and Suffolk County Police Department’s homicide squad this week, more than two months since the tragedy, for failing to bring criminal charges against the owners of the rented home where the fire broke out.

The numerous safety violations found in the home that could have directly contributed to both the start of the fire and the deaths of the two sisters, Lindsay and Jillian Wiener of Potomac, Maryland, should be investigated as a homicide with the potential for felony charges against the Sag Harbor couple who owned the home, Melville attorney Andres Alonso said this week.

The attorney also said that the online short-term rental portal VRBO, through which the family had rented the home, failed to ensure that the house was safe and met basic fire safety standards, and that, ahead of their moving in, the site had misrepresented to the family caught in the tragedy that it had done so.

The owners of the Spring Lane home, Peter and Pamela Miller, have been charged by Southampton Town with 29 violations of town code and state fire and safety laws — including improper electrical wiring to an outdoor kitchen, where investigators have said the fire began; inadequate and inoperable smoke detectors throughout the house; and failing to have a town-mandated rental permit that would have required a thorough safety inspection of the property and remedied the safety hazards.

While some of the violations issued are listed as “unclassified misdemeanors” that carry potential jail sentences, Alonso said that the charges amount to little more than “tickets” and that the circumstances of the tragedy demand a criminal investigation, which he says there have been no signs of since the morning of the fire on August 3.

“This is a homicide,” Alonso said this week. “The actions of the Millers, or the inactions of the Millers, fall squarely in the realm of criminally negligent homicide in the State of New York.”

“These are violations, the kind you would get if you fish without a license,” he added. “They got 30 tickets, the same thing they would have gotten if this fire had happened in the middle of winter and the home was unoccupied. But it wasn’t the middle of the winter and it wasn’t unoccupied, it was summer — and these girls are dead. It’s appalling.”

Alonso said that county investigators have not contacted the family since speaking with the three surviving members at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital just hours after the tragedy unfolded. “The three most important witnesses haven’t been interviewed,” he said.

In a letter to District Attorney Raymond Tierney last week, Alonso told the D.A. that the lack of an active criminal investigation into the fire was “troubling.”

“After hearing nothing from your office, the undersigned checked with your office and confirmed that you were not undertaking an investigation of this matter,” the letter reads. “A call to the homicide squad of the SCPD further confirmed that there was no current police involvement in this matter. Beyond a cursory arson squad investigation, the morning of the fire, there has been no investigation of this matter by your office or the Suffolk County Police Department.”

“Please help us understand why you have decided to do nothing,” the letter concludes.

A spokesperson for Tierney’s office said that the county homicide bureau is investigating the fire, but that the D.A. cannot comment further on an ongoing investigation.

The house on Spring Lane in Noyac had been rented by the Wiener family for a week via the VRBO.com website, the attorney said.

Early in the morning of August 3, less than two days after the family of five moved in, Lewis and Alisa Wiener were awakened in their first-floor bedroom by the sound of breaking glass to find the rear of the house engulfed in flames. Their son, Zachary, escaped from the second-floor bedroom he was sleeping in by climbing out a window and leaping to safety.

But his sisters — Jillian, 21, and Lindsay, 19 — were sleeping in a second upstairs bedroom and did not emerge. Responding firefighters found the girls unconscious in the bedroom and carried them out of the house as the fire was extinguished but were unable to revive them.

The family and firefighters reported that no smoke alarms had gone off.

Investigators later found that the home lacked a smoke detector in a key location that could have alerted the girls to the fire, that at least three of the five smoke detectors in the home were completely inoperable because they had no power source and no backup batteries. They also said that improper wiring related to the outdoor kitchen had probably rendered other detectors in the house inoperable soon after the fire broke out.

Town officials have said there was no smoke detector at all in the hallway outside the two upstairs bedrooms, as is required by safety codes — a key early warning failure to those asleep in the upstairs, where smoke and heat from the fire at the rear of the house would have quickly built up. Additionally, one of the smoke detectors inside one of the two upstairs bedrooms was found on the floor, behind a door and not connected to a power source and had no backup battery. The other bedroom’s smoke detector was connected to an electrical source, but the backup battery installed was dead, and when the circuit tripped as the fire spread, the detector was left inoperable.

An electrical inspector’s investigation report shared by the family’s attorneys indicates a power outlet to the outdoor kitchen had been spliced into the same electrical circuit that powered one of the first-floor smoke detectors. The investigation found that this circuit breaker would have “tripped” early in the fire, cutting off power to the smoke detector nearest the fire. The other first-floor smoke detector, inside the master bedroom, also would have lost power and had no backup battery installed.

In the charges against the Millers, a town fire marshal had reported that the power outlet to the outdoor kitchen had been installed through the home’s wooden siding, without the protection of a metal electrical box, posing a substantial fire hazard, the report said.

While the investigation report does not pinpoint the specific suspected cause of the fire, Alonso said that the Millers had bragged about the improvements made to the home, including the outdoor kitchen, and represented that they had done the work themselves. “It is my understanding that they did most of that work, none of which was ever inspected,” the attorney said.

Alonso put no small amount of blame on VRBO, saying the company should be expected to make a significant effort to ensure that the homes being rented through its service are safe. He said that an email received by the Wieners prior to their moving into the Millers’ house specifically listed smoke detectors.

“VRBO represented to the Wieners that the house was safe, and we think it is incumbent upon them to make sure the houses they are renting are safe,” Alonso said.

The VRBO website offers guidance to its “hosts” to comply with all local and regional permitting and safety regulations and that rental permit numbers must be displayed in ads in areas where they are required. The site provides Red Cross guidelines for smoke alarms, fire extinguishers and proper fire safety egresses. But it makes no mention of whether or how the company confirms those guidelines or that any laws are being followed.

A spokesperson for Expedia Group, the parent company of VRBO, offered a simple statement in response to inquiries about how the company ensures that the homes listed on its site comply with local regulations and general safety standards: “We take traveler safety seriously and our hosts agree to abide by all local requirements and safety-related laws. In addition, we provide online safety resources and education for our hosts.”

The Wieners’ attorney said that the family has no specific plans for any civil lawsuit related to the fire.

“Frankly, the only thing the Wieners want at this point,” he said, “is for the Millers to be held accountable and for the Suffolk County district attorney and the Suffolk County Police Department to do their jobs.”