Opinion ID: 4534699
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Death of Todd Stermer

Text: Linda and Todd Stermer were married for fourteen years. But this was not a happy marriage. On January 6, 2007, Todd discovered that Linda was having an affair with a co-worker named Chris Williams and told her that he wanted a divorce. No. 19-1075 Stermer v. Warren Page 3 The next morning, according to Linda, she and Todd argued, this time about a financial matter. Linda then went to a gas station, filled her Chevy Blazer with fuel, and bought breakfast. The gas station attendant testified that the back window of Linda’s truck was open, and at one point it appeared that Linda was pumping gas through the back side of the vehicle, and not into the gas tank. Linda had previously filled containers with gasoline at that station. Back at the house, Linda told her sons they had to leave the house because she and Todd needed to discuss some things. (Cf. Trial Tr. vol. 4, R. 24-10 at PageID #1510–11 (“Q. . . . [W]ere you given a reason as to why you guys had to be out of the house? A. Because they were getting divorced and they needed to decide how to split everything up.”).) According to Linda, she later went into the basement to do some laundry. There she found a towel, placed there by Todd, that smelled like fuel. During this time, Linda said that Todd remained in the living room but was yelling at her from there. At some point, Todd’s yelling turned to painful screaming, and Linda ran upstairs. She found a fire spread across the house, and Todd himself was on fire. She ran outside and got into the family van to go get help. At around this time, neighbors saw smoke and flames coming from the Stermers’ house and drove over to help. When they arrived, the neighbors saw the Stermer’s van backing down the driveway, but then stop and drive forward instead (away from them). According to Linda, once she got in the van, she started to reverse down the driveway, but then saw Todd outside the house and covered in flames. Linda got out of the van and tried to get Todd to lie down, but realized she was unable to help him and needed to get outside aid. She got back in the van but was stuck in the mud and could not reverse, and so she drove forward instead to get unstuck. At some point, she saw Todd lying on the ground (no longer on fire) and got back out of the van to help him. Based on Todd’s injuries and on blood later found on the front driver’s side of the vehicle, Linda had struck Todd with the van. At this point, Linda saw her neighbors heading toward them and screamed at them to call 911. When the neighbors found Todd, he was severely burned and largely naked, wearing only No. 19-1075 Stermer v. Warren Page 4 boots and a pair of sweatpants pulled down to his ankles. One of the neighbors grabbed clothes from his vehicle and draped them over Todd to keep him warm. Emergency responders eventually arrived and provided aid to Todd, who was unresponsive. They moved Todd away from an oil tank near the house (in case that too caught fire), but soon after moving him, Todd stopped breathing. Although the first responders performed CPR, he was pronounced dead at the scene. Dr. Michael Markey later performed an autopsy of Todd Stermer and found the cause of death to be a combination of burns and smoke inhalation. Additionally, Dr. Markey found bluntforce injuries to Todd’s head, but could not say if these injuries were caused by him being struck by an object multiple times, being struck by a vehicle, or both. While Todd’s blood tested negative for controlled substances, the toxicology lab found hydrocodone (the opioid in Vicodin) in his urine. This suggests that the hydrocodone was ingested some hours or days before his death, since the drug had been cleared from his blood but remained in his urine. On the day of the fire and again two days later, Linda Stermer was interviewed by a detective with the sheriff’s department and conveyed her version of events. She was also interviewed by private investigators hired by the insurance company for her homeowner’s policy, and these interviews were recorded and transcribed. When speaking to the insurance investigators, Stermer was asked if she had any opinions as to what could have started the fire. In response to this, she said, “I feel like maybe—Todd yelled at me once during the day and told me that nobody else would ever have me and I just—I think maybe that he meant for both of us to—I don’t think I was supposed to be here.” (Trial Tr. vol. 2, R. 24-8 at PageID #1069–70.) Stermer also told the investigators that Todd had an oil lamp and candles burning in the house, and that he would often have to bleed fuel from the furnace, which could explain how it got on the towel in the laundry (and perhaps on Todd as well). The insurance investigators tested two towels from the home’s washing machine: both tested positive for gasoline. No. 19-1075 Stermer v. Warren Page 5