Autistic Twins' Hoarding Leads to Tragedy

Frederick Mother Always Feared That Sons' Hidden Collection of Paper Might Someday Start a Fire

They were born three minutes apart into a world they didn't always understand and that often misunderstood them.

And for the next 15 years, Carolyn Stone worried that her identical twins, Jerrell and Joshua Williamson, might get into trouble she couldn't protect them from.

As toddlers, severe autism, a developmental disorder characterized by verbal, social and emotional problems, was diagnosed. With a mother's love came constant anxiety -- that the boys might crash their bikes while riding in their Frederick subdivision, that their habit of stuffing toys and meticulously folded paper under their beds might one day result in a fire.

Late Saturday, as Stone and her boyfriend watched television in the living room of their townhouse, one of her sons set a cigarette lighter to a pile of paper that had collected under Joshua's bed upstairs, authorities said. In the chaos of a burning home, Jerrell became separated from his twin brother as Stone and her boyfriend tried to rescue them.

When firefighters found Jerrell in an upstairs bathroom, he was unconscious. He died a short time later from smoke inhalation at Frederick Memorial Hospital.

"All the time I worried about them," Stone said yesterday, alternately breaking into tears and gentle laughter at memories of Jerrell, the more verbal one of the inseparable pair. "I really try to make sure they're okay."

Maryland's fire marshal, in a news release Sunday, said it was Joshua who started the fire. No charges have been filed, and the fire remains under investigation.

Joshua's family, as well as some neighbors and friends, say they have no idea whether it's true that he had a role in the fire. "I'm going to wait until Josh is ready to talk, and then I'll ask him what happened," his mother said.

Frederick fire officials referred calls yesterday to the fire marshal, whose office was closed and did not respond to phone messages.

At the charred townhouse in the 6700 block of Sandpiper Court yesterday, a memorial to Jerrell formed beneath a maple tree in the front yard. Neighbors and friends left poinsettias and a wreath, a stuffed reindeer, a wrought-iron cross. Michael Butler, a firefighter who responded to the blaze, came from Christmas celebrations with his wife and two boys to pay his respects.

"It's really affected me," Butler said as rain pelted the shrine. "Anytime it's a child, it's a lot worse, and especially considering these circumstances."

Less than a mile away, Joshua, his mother and her boyfriend, Ray Pulliam, found temporary shelter at a Residence Inn, paid for by the Red Cross. Not comprehending his mother's grief, Joshua silently opened two giant bags of Christmas toys donated by firefighters.

"This is keeping him preoccupied," Pulliam said, "because he doesn't know how to react."

At one point, Joshua pointed to his brother's smoke-stained jacket hanging in a closet and said, "That's Jerrell's." He thinks his brother is asleep.

Stone said her sons were lanky, happy 10th-graders at a school for disabled children in Frederick. They also were a source of frequent worry, she said, particularly last year when her oldest son, who is 22, brought a lighter into the townhouse and the boys found it and used it.

That fire was small and quickly extinguished, she said. "We talked about it. I told them, 'Fire hurts.' "

One thing that did not change was the boys' habit of putting "everything, everything that's valuable to them under the bed," their mother said.

She said she took care to clean out the area every week or so. But she had let it accumulate longer this month because she was working overtime at her job at a wholesale music dealer. "I said to them, 'We're going to clean all this junk this weekend,' " she recalled, bursting into tears.

Stone said she had no idea how a lighter got into the house this time because she and Pulliam do not smoke.

A neighbor and close friend, Lisa Petronchak, said she ran into the townhouse to help before firefighters arrived. She said she heard Jerrell banging on the floor of his bedroom and his mother screaming, "My baby's in there! Someone help me!"

The twins were always together, she said, and clearly "loved each other." Petronchak described Stone as a responsible mother who raised the boys on her own until Pulliam came into her life a few years ago.

"It was rough," she said. "She was told these boys were not going to walk. They walked." The boys still were in diapers at age 10.

It's a life that Kathy Keller and her daughter, Katelyn, know well. Kathy's son Kyle, 13, is autistic. Yesterday, she and Katelyn, who attended elementary school with the Williamson boys, came in the rain to place a gold angel beneath the tree.

Katelyn said her brother frequently folds and unfolds paper as a compulsion and once set an accidental fire. "They have no sense of how dangerous things are," Kathy Keller said. She said her son is "fascinated with fire. . . . I have to hide lights and matches. But as much as you hide things from these kids, they manage to find them."