Daniel Allen waited for the police on his doorstep to arrive, as his rented bungalow burned down with three generations of the same family, which also included a baby lying dead within its damaged wall.
The quadruple-killer had to be pushed aside by people trying in vain to battle the blaze and save the four people inside on a February day in 2018 that Derrylin in Northern Ireland will never forget.
Before seeking out a police officer to ask who was going to arrest him, he had stood looking towards the gate, seemingly with little interest in the fire raging behind him. “I’m sorry… I started the fire. A promise is a promise. I promised to put them to the next life as they didn’t want to stay here no more”, he was heard saying.
Allen had immediately began pushing claims that he set the blaze as part of a suicide pact with his partner Denise Gossett, who was handcuffed to a bed as he stood uninjured outside, despite the chaos at the scene. Her daughter Sabrina, 19, son Roman, 16, and Sabrina’s 15-month-old daughter Morgana Quinn were also inside the burning building with her.
Neighbour Maureen McGerty was washing the dishes after breakfast as she watched watched the tragedy unfold from her kitchen window.
“I don’t believe that bulls**t [story] of a suicide pact. He should have got the electric chair,” she told MailOnline.
She added: “To think that a whole family was wiped out is hard to take in. I didn’t know them — not many did about here.”
