3 More Held in Charles Arsons

A Charles County sheriff's deputy views the damage to one of the homes at the Hunters Brooke subdivision. (Matt Houston -- The AP)

In an interview Friday, David Parady said his son had some difficult teenage years, culminating in dropping out of Thomas Stone High School in Waldorf.

"He just got goofy," Parady said.

But he added that his son ultimately got his GED and now works as a security technician for ADT, an alarm company. Black and Jamie Parady said he enlisted in the Navy last year and planned to be a firefighter in the service until a knee injury forced him to drop out before the end of boot camp.

Everhart was experiencing adversity, said Rosemary Mello, 47, a neighbor of Everhart's family. She said that he had bounced from job to job, most recently working at Best Buy in Waldorf, and that he had been staying with friends since his family moved this year to his maternal grandparents' home, also in Waldorf.

"Basically, he was pretty much fending for himself," Mello said.

About three weeks ago, she said, Everhart asked if he could rent a room in her house, but Mello had no space for him.

"I wish I could have helped him. It seems like he was crying out for help," Mello said.

Reached by phone, a woman who identified herself as Walsh's mother declined to comment.

Yesterday's arrests were the most dramatic development in the investigation of the fires, the biggest case of residential arson in Maryland in recent memory.

In the first days after the fires, speculation over motives abounded. Some suspected eco-terrorism, citing the subdivision's proximity to an environmentally sensitive bog that has been the focus of a dispute between regulators and preservationists. Others wondered whether it was a hate crime. Most of Hunters Brooke's future residents were African Americans, buyers of homes in the half-million-dollar range in a rural county that is mostly white.

But investigators soon focused on Speed, himself an aspiring volunteer firefighter. Members of the Clinton and Potomac Heights volunteer departments said last week that Speed expressed interest in joining about two months ago but never followed up.

Speed first attracted the interest of investigators when he appeared at the scene of the fires shortly after they had been brought under control. He told a Washington Post reporter that he worked for Security Services of America and described a van that he said was "lingering around" the area before the fires started.

During questioning by investigators, according to the federal affidavit, Speed displayed a detailed knowledge of arson techniques that might have been used at Hunters Brooke. Asked who might have set the fire, he said it was "someone who works at the site who has recently experienced a great loss."

In the same interview, according to the affidavit, Speed told authorities that he left Security Services for several months this year because of what he viewed as its indifferent reaction to the death of one of his 10-week-old twin sons.

After a series of contradictory statements about his whereabouts, investigators tracked his movements by pinpointing the cell phone towers that handled his calls in the hours before the fires, according to the affidavit.

After failing a polygraph examination Thursday at the Charles County Sheriff's Office, Speed said he was at Hunters Brooke with others he knew when the fires were set, the affidavit says. He also said he told the others how to gain access to the site.

Earlier that day, Speed told WUSA-TV that police suspected the wrong man: "Everything that I'm doing, I'm doing willingly to prove to them that I am innocent."

Staff writer Amit R. Paley contributed to this report.