The harrowing arson attack that destroyed Aretha Franklin’s home
There aren’t many worse tragedies that one can possibly imagine than losing all of your belongings, but for Aretha Franklin, this was a reality that the iconic soul singer was made to contend with.
People will often argue that anyone who has achieved the highest level of fame and success in their field has everything they could possibly ever want, and for Franklin, this was undoubtedly the case, having been dubbed the ‘Queen of Soul’ and sold millions of records around the world. There was nobody else in her field that could reasonably come close to matching her levels of talent, and yet, just one small incident can change all of that and seemingly leave you with nothing but a legacy.
It was in 2002 when her $1.6 million mansion in Detroit caught fire unexpectedly, ravaging the 12-bedroom property, and although Franklin wasn’t home at the time, the damage was sufficient enough to cause immense loss for the singer, burning virtually everything in the house to a crisp. Located in the private neighbourhood in Bloomfield Township, it was unclear how this fire would have started, or who would have had a motive to carry out such an act if it was indeed done with intent.
Boxes of her belongings were lost in the blaze, as was all of her furniture, much of which would have been valuable, but there were a lot of mysterious circumstances surrounding the incident that led to police asking plenty of questions about the nature of the fire.
For starters, Franklin was conveniently not in the area at the time of the fire, as she had driven down to Houston to prepare for an upcoming performance as part of her ongoing tour. While the fire coinciding with her schedule is nothing unusual, it was perhaps the case that the fire was never meant to cause harm to Franklin herself, but to the property instead, with over 10,000 square feet of land on a single storey, all destroyed by the inferno.
When police looked further into the case, Franklin was relatively uncooperative with questioning, and they eventually issued a subpoena to the singer because of her inability to comply with the authorities. As it turns out, one of the main suspects in the case would then be revealed to be her own son, Edward Franklin, which raised further eyebrows as to why a member of her own family would want to commit such an act.
In the end, nobody was ever charged, and despite there being a thorough investigation into the nature of the fire, it was impossible to fully determine who was responsible for starting the blaze that brought Franklin’s mansion to the ground. Many wonder if this was a ploy to claim insurance money, although the motive behind this was also never clear enough to establish whether this was the case, and as a consequence, the nature of this harrowing incident remains unsolved to this day. With Franklin having passed in 2018, it’s unlikely that we will ever uncover the truth.
