Burnt-out house where body was discovered was not inhabited: police

Police will resort to dental records and DNA samples to identify a body found in a Bellbird Park home officers said was officially uninhabited when it burnt down on Thursday evening.

Officers arriving at the two-storey brick house on Verran Street in Bellbird Park noted a smell of petrol when they arrived about 5pm Thursday, Assistant Commissioner Matthew Vanderbyl said.

“We are very much treating that as a suspicious fire,” Vanderbyl said.

Although fire crews arriving about the same time said the home was partly ablaze, the fire was extremely hot, the assistant commissioner said.

“The entire top story of that two-story house had collapsed onto the remainder of the house, rendering it quite unsafe to get into,” he said.

Four fire crews extinguished the blaze about 6pm on Thursday, but police guarded the house – which sat on a “fairly significant-sized block of land” – overnight while it remained too hot to search.

On Friday morning, firefighters scoured the building using ladders to access the remains of the top storey.

They found the body on the top floor.

Fire crews had initially accounted for everyone at the scene, with paramedics treating one man in his 30s for smoke inhalation on Thursday evening.

Vanderbyl said the man was not believed to be linked to the home, and said neighbours had phoned in the fire.

“No one was meant to be living in the house at that time,” he said.

The body was unable to be identified on Friday, and Vanderbyl said officers would resort to DNA or dental records, as well as tracing property records.

“We have detectives in place, from the Ipswich criminal investigation branch and others, undertaking fairly intensive enquiries as to identifying that individual and the remains, and also as to the full circumstances of … the occupancy of the house,” he said.

The assistant commissioner said police had spoken to the owners of the home, who had accounted for their family members, but had yet to contact the previous tenants of the house.

He said details of the house’s occupancy has been stitched together from inquiries on Friday.

Police would continue investigations into the suspicious fire over the weekend and urged anyone who might have information or footage linked to the fire, or about the time of the blaze at 5pm on Thursday, to come forward.

“It’s quite a populous area and I imagine that there would be a predominance of CCTV, and our investigators would really, really like to hear from anybody who thinks they might have something,” he said.

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