AKRON, Ohio β A family of seven, including five children, perished in a fast-moving fire that investigators now say was deliberately set by a man who once called himself the neighborhood’s guardian angel. The blaze tore through a two-story home on Full Avenue in the early morning hours of May 15, 2017, leaving the community in shock and setting off one of the most complex arson investigations Ohio has ever seen. Dennis Huggins and Angela Boggs died shielding three of their children from the flames, their bodies discovered huddled together in a second-floor bedroom.
The couple’s bodies were found on top of three young children in a desperate final act of protection. Another child was found next to the family dog in a separate room, while the oldest, 14-year-old Jared Boggs, was discovered in a stairway where he had succumbed to smoke inhalation and carbon monoxide poisoning.
The victims were identified as 1-year-old Cameron Huggins, 3-year-old Olivia Huggins, 5-year-old Kylie Huggins, 6-year-old Deja Huggins, and 14-year-old Jared Boggs, along with their parents, Dennis Huggins and Angela Boggs. Akron Fire Department officials described the blaze as a “devastatingly quick-moving fire” that gave the family almost no chance to escape. The fire started on the outside of the structure, and with no secondary exits from the second floor, the family was trapped.
It was the worst fire fatality incident in the city’s history, leaving first responders visibly shaken at the scene. One caller to 911 captured the horror in real time, reporting the house was fully engulfed and that people were still inside. Another witness, watching the flames consume the home, said, “If somebody’s in there, they’re dead.”
What made this tragedy even more chilling was the revelation that this was not the first fatal fire on that same block. Investigators from the Ohio State Fire Marshal’s Office realized they were dealing with a pattern. In 2016, a fire at a home on the same street claimed the lives of Gloria Hart and Lindell Lewis, an elderly couple who perished in an upstairs bathroom while neighbors desperately tried to help them escape.
The smoke and carbon monoxide overtook them before anyone could reach them. At the time, that first fire had raised suspicions due to unusual burn patterns on the exterior of the house. Investigators had obtained surveillance video from the Lewis home showing a figure in a jumpsuit making three separate attempts to light the structure on fire.
The suspect’s face was partially visible but not identifiable. That investigation eventually went cold for lack of evidence, despite growing suspicions about a neighbor named Stanley Ford.
Stanley Ford was a 58-year-old man who lived across the street from both fire sites. He portrayed himself as a watchman for the neighborhood, telling investigators that he would take naps during the day so he could stay up at night watching over the elderly residents. He described himself as an angel placed in the neighborhood by God.
But detectives learned that Ford had a contentious relationship with Lindell Lewis, complaining about alleged πΉπππ activity, prostitution, and loud behavior at the Lewis home. Lewis, in turn, had expressed concerns about Ford’s behavior and erratic conduct. When questioned about the first fire, Ford was standoffish and denied any involvement, telling investigators that the victims were “bad people” and that he had nothing to do with the tragedy.
The investigation into the second fire initially focused on other possibilities. Dennis Huggins had recently renovated the home, leading some to speculate about faulty wiring. Fire department sources initially suggested that hot charcoal from a Mother’s Day barbecue may have been dumped into a trash container near the front of the home, which sustained the heaviest damage.
But investigators ruled out all accidental causes, including utilities and electrical sources. The last thing anyone wanted to believe was that someone intentionally set the fire. Within days, however, a person of interest emerged: Patrick Boggs, Angela’s ex-husband.
Boggs had a horrifying history with Angela β 12 years earlier, he had set her on fire and gone to prison for an extended period. He had abused her and attempted to ππΎππ her before, making him an obvious initial suspect.
Police used a parole violation to bring Boggs in for questioning and quickly worked to establish his whereabouts. Video from his apartment complex in Reno, Ohio showed he had never left the property that night, and he was eliminated as a suspect. Police also noted he had passed a polygraph test, though that information could not be used at trial.
With Boggs cleared, the spotlight turned back to Stanley Ford, who had been on the radar since the first fatal fire. Ford refused to come downtown for an interview, which only increased suspicion. Investigators obtained a search warrant for his residence.
During that search, they discovered a pair of tennis shoes in the trash that tested positive for an accelerant. Ford claimed he had thrown them away after cutting the grass, but investigators knew they had found their suspect.
The turning point came when investigators showed Ford’s wife surveillance video from the second fire. The footage showed a figure walking from Ford’s home to his mother’s home, then moving down the street just before the fire was ignited. The same figure was seen running back to the mother’s home after the fire started.
Ford’s wife broke down crying, saying, “That’s not the person I married.” Investigators also matched the suspect’s gait and walk pattern to Ford with striking precision. One detective had the foresight to keep a video camera focused directly on Ford during the search, capturing his movements.
The walk was an exact match. Ford, however, remained in denial even as detectives presented him with the evidence in a recorded interrogation. He insisted he had been asleep next to his wife, a claim his wife’s startled reaction seemed to contradict.
During the interrogation, detectives pressed Ford on his movements that night. They showed him surveillance footage and told him repeatedly that they had him on camera running from the scene. Ford offered shifting explanations, claiming he sometimes walked the neighborhood to relieve Charlie horses in his legs.
He denied seeing any fire, denied running from any house, and insisted he had nothing to do with the blaze. But the evidence was overwhelming: the video, the accelerant on his shoes, the timing of his movements, and his history of animosity toward his neighbors. When detectives finally told him he was being charged with seven counts of aggravated murder, Ford still refused to confess.
“I didn’t do that. I wouldn’t dare do that. That’s not godly.
That’s evil. Pure evil. I’m not evil,” he said during the interrogation.
Prosecutors prepared to bring the full weight of the law down on Ford. He faced 28 counts in all, and the state announced it would pursue the death penalty. The prosecutor, Joe D’Angelo, told the court that the case was unusual because arson homicide was a rare and particularly brutal method of killing.
The intent, he argued, was unmistakable: Ford set the fire at 2 a. m. knowing the family was inside and knowing they might never get out.
All nine victims over the two fires β the elderly couple in 2016 and the family of seven in 2017 β knew they were going to die, D’Angelo told the jury. Ford’s defense team, attorneys Scott Riley and Joe Gorman, faced an uphill battle from the start. Ford himself was a difficult client, objecting to their plans to argue he suffered from a serious brain disorder.
He wanted to fire his lawyers and represent himself, even filing bar complaints against them.
The defense argued that the surveillance videos were too grainy to positively identify Ford as the figure seen at the fire scenes. No witness could definitively say the image was Ford, Riley argued in his opening statement. The defense also pointed to Patrick Boggs as an alternative suspect, noting his history of violence against Angela, his similar height and build to the figure in the videos, and his documented animosity toward his ex-wife’s relationship with a black man.
Boggs was subpoenaed to testify but invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refused to answer questions, a move the defense hoped would plant seeds of doubt in the jurors’ minds. The prosecution, however, hammered home the totality of the evidence: the video showing Ford’s exact movements, the door alarm activation records, the accelerant on his shoes, and his own admissions about being near the scene.
The families of the victims packed the courtroom, desperate for answers and justice. The Huggins family became visibly upset when defense attorney Joe Gorman suggested that Dennis Huggins was a πΉπππ user, a claim they said was an attempt to smear the victims’ reputations. In their closing arguments, prosecutors told the jury that Ford was “our worst nightmare” and a “fallen angel who operates in darkness.”
They urged the jury to hold him accountable for the slaughter of an entire family. The defense countered that the state’s case was so weak it had to resort to pressuring Ford for a confession, noting that detectives had spent hours interrogating him despite what they claimed was overwhelming evidence.
The jury deliberated for two full days before returning a verdict. Stanley Ford was found guilty of 22 of the 25 counts against him, including all seven counts of aggravated murder in the deaths of the Huggins family. The only counts he was acquitted of related to the deaths of the family dog and an unrelated car fire in the neighborhood.
The verdict was a measure of justice for the families, but the case was far from over. The defense team immediately shifted to the penalty phase, fighting to spare Ford from execution. They presented testimony from doctors who had conducted brain scans and tests on Ford, revealing that he had suffered strokes triggered by pneumonia two months before the first fire.
These strokes, they argued, affected his ability to exercise self-control and made him incapable of the kind of premeditation required for the death penalty.
Under Ohio law, a death sentence requires a unanimous jury vote. The jury voted 11 to 1 in favor of the death penalty, but a single juror held out, troubled by Ford’s mental health issues. That one vote spared Ford from execution and resulted in a recommendation of life in prison without parole.
When the sentence was formally imposed, the judge ordered that Ford serve nine consecutive life sentences. But the judge was not finished. In a striking display of judicial authority, she ordered that Ford be held in solitary confinement on specific dates: the birthdays of each of the five children and the anniversaries of both fires.
The dates included May 17, April 18, December 8, December 23, January 10, and January 15 β ensuring that Ford would spend those days in isolation, forced to remember the lives he extinguished.
Before the sentence was handed down, the judge gave family members an opportunity to address the court. Their words were remarkable for their grace and pain. One family member told Ford directly, “I love you, man.
I forgive you. Am I still hurt? Yes.
Do I get angry? Yes. But his fate does not rest in my anger.
It rests in the hands of God.” Another family member worked to set the record straight about Dennis and Angela, describing them as a young, blended, multiracial family working hard to achieve the American dream. “Were they perfect?
No. Did they deserve to die? No,” they said.
The judge, in her own statement, condemned Ford for showing not a shred of sympathy or remorse over four and a half years of proceedings. She noted that if Ford had shown the Huggins family even half of the compassion they had shown him, those seven people would still be alive today. “You may have found that you loved them instead of accusing them of being homosexuals, alcoholics, and gamblers.
But you chose to take it into your own hands,” she said.
Ford himself declined to make a statement in court. He remained silent as the sentence was read, showing no emotion. As he was led away, he gave a small wave to the camera β the same man who had once claimed to be the neighborhood’s guardian angel, a man the judge described as a fallen angel operating in darkness.
The case stands as one of the darkest chapters in Akron’s history, a reminder that the most deadly threats can come not from strangers but from those who live closest to us. The Huggins and Boggs families will forever grieve the loss of seven loved ones taken too soon by an act of pure evil. And the community of Akron will forever wonder how a man who claimed to watch over his neighborhood could become the very monster he professed to guard against.
