Mom, Daughter Charged With Burning Connecticut Home

A mother and daughter have been charged with setting a fire that heavily damaged the older woman’s home in Stratford.

Police tell the Connecticut Post they became suspicious after finding valuables and all the food from the mother’s refrigerator in her daughter’s car.

Luz Davila-Nieves, 60, and Madeline Griffin, 41, were charged Thursday with first-degree arson, conspiracy to commit arson, first-degree larceny and insurance fraud. Each was being held in lieu of $250,000 bond. It was not immediately clear if either had hired an attorney.

Police determined the May 2011 fire was fueled by gasoline poured throughout the house.

Davila-Nieves and her daughter told police they had been at the daughter’s home in Brookfield and didn’t learn about the fire until the next day.

Davila-Nieves later collected $337,000 in insurance money for the house, while her daughter collected nearly $2,000 for her damaged car.

But police say they found frozen food, two television sets, a digital camera, jewelry and four cellphones from the house inside the vehicle, which had been parked in the mother’s garage.

Police said Griffin is also a suspect in an arson at her former apartment in Bridgeport in 2009. That duplex burned shortly after Griffin’s landlord sent her a letter informing her that the rent was going up, police said.