Father speaks about deadly Christmas fire

• Tweet

STAMFORD, Conn., April 24 (UPI) -- The father of three girls killed in a Christmas Day fire in the Stamford, Conn., home of his estranged wife says he still wonders why the fire happened.

Matthew Badger, the estranged husband of the girls' mother, said he has questions about the fire that started after contractor Michael Borcina -- a friend of Badger's estranged wife Madonna Badger who was renovating the house -- left a bag of smoldering embers in a mud room behind the house, ABC News reported Tuesday.

Badgers' daughters, Lily, 9, and twins Sarah and Grace, 7, died in the blaze along with their maternal grandparents.

Borcina and Madonna Badger escaped.

"It was very difficult to see," he said in an interview for ABC's "Good Morning America." "Why did this happen? I mean, it doesn't make any sense and I'd just seen them the day before."

He said he and his daughters had spent Christmas Eve at his apartment in New York.

Matthew Badger has hired a private investigator and filed to be the administrator of his daughters' estates in February, a necessary move for a possible wrongful death suit, The Advocate, a Stamford newspaper, reported Tuesday.

At the time, Matthew Badger's attorney, Richard Emery, stressed that nothing has been decided about whether to file a wrongful death suit.

The Advocate said police and fire officials described the blaze as accidental and no criminal charges were expected to be filed. An investigation indicated Borcina cleaned the fireplace, put embers in a bag and left them either in a mudroom or in an enclosed trash bin.