Criminals will go to almost any lengths to cover their tracks when they commit a crime that will send them to jail. Starting a fire deliberately will send them to jail also, but sometimes the act they committed will be worse than a fire. People have been using fire to destroy evidence and cover up crimes for hundreds of years or longer and probably at the top of the list is murder.

These days some criminals have learned the hard way that using fire to cover up a crime might not be as easy as it used to be. There have been so many new techniques developed to bring the truth straight out of the ashes. It should make any law breaker afraid of relying on a fire to get away with anything.

In the first place, a criminal will sometimes use some sort of accelerant to start the fire and it is easy for fire investigators to spot this today. They might also use a lighter or matches, but when they use accelerants to start the fire it is a more reliable way to ensure the fire will burn longer and hotter than using other methods. Trained dogs can be used to sniff out accelerants like gasoline, charcoal starter, or other flammable liquids that a criminal might use.

Murderers make the mistake of thinking that a fire can destroy a human body to the point that it can not be identified, but dental records or any trace of DNA can still be use for identification. A murderer might also think that a fire will cover up the cause of a death, but that is not necessarily true either. If there is any usable remains left, many times a coroner will be able to find the cause of death especially if a poison or sever trauma to the body was used.

So actually, when it comes to using fires to cover up crimes today, there is a very good possibility that someone will still be caught and prosecuted for their crime. It is no sure bet that a fire will destroy all evidence that can the guilt of someone or the actual facts of a case. If someone wants to get away with something, they might want to look for an alternative to setting fire to the scene because it is no where near as reliable as it once was.