Helpless neighbors heard dying cries of fire victim

<p>LUCERNE — Investigators Tuesday were sifting through the melted remnants of a single-wide mobile home searching for clues to the cause of the suspicious fire in which Harry Jon Waner is believed to have perished.</p><p>“We can’t rule arson in. We can’t rule arson out,” said Chris Vallerga, an investigator for the Northshore Fire Protection District.</p><p>Among other things, investigators are looking for cigarette butts. Waner, 58, was a smoker, Vallerga said.</p><p>It will take at least several days before authorities can confirm the identity of the badly burned body found in the home, said Lake County Sheriff’s Capt. James Bauman.</p><p>Meanwhile, Waner’s wife of two weeks remained jailed on suspicion of violating a restraining order for going to Waner’s home the night before the fire.</p><p>Sandra Jean Bronson, 53, is being held on $250,000 bail pending further investigation, Bauman said. While circumstance arouse suspicion, authorities said they have not determined whether there was foul play involved. They also said that Bronson, Waner’s fifth wife, currently is not a homicide suspect.</p><p>The two had a volatile relationship marked by physical and verbal fights, neighbors said Tuesday, confirming statements Waner’s son made to The Press Democrat Monday evening.</p><p>“It was always her screaming at him,” said Marissa Motley, who lives across the street. She said there was shouting in and around the trailer every other night.</p><p>Motley said she once saw Bronson punching Waner in the doorway of the residence, located a block from Clear Lake’s northwest shoreline.</p><p>Bronson and other neighbors described Waner as a nice guy who played his guitar outside and invited neighbors to cultivate vegetables in his garden and swim in a pool that until recently had been in his back yard.</p><p>If he had cake, he’d take some next door to share with Jason Solomon’s children, Solomon said.</p><p>“He was a good guy,” he said.</p><p>“He was the friendly neighborhood guy,” Motley said.</p><p>It was Motley who spotted the flames as she got ready for work and made the 4:50 a.m 911 call.</p><p>She won’t soon forget the calls for help from inside the mobile home as it was engulfed in flames.</p><p>“We could hear Harry inside,” she said.</p><p>Her boyfriend, Brian Milhaupt, and a neighbor she knows only as Jimmy tried to get into the trailer, but when they opened the door, flames drove them back.</p><p>Twenty foot flames were shooting from the trailer when the calls for help halted and they realized all they could do was wait for firefighters to arrive.</p><p>“It was the most helpless I’ve ever felt,” Motley said.</p><p>Waner was a Vietnam veteran who was on disability for post traumatic stress syndrome, according to his son, Jon Waner.</p><p>Harry Waner also was suffering from cirrhosis of the liver brought on by alcohol and drug abuse, he said.</p><p>While neighbors described Waner as quiet and passive, he, like Bronson, had been arrested multiple times.</p><p>Waner had been arrested on suspicion of domestic assault at least three times in Lake County between 1993 and 2006.</p><p>Waner met Bronson about a year and a half ago through a friend who was then her boyfriend, his son said. She became his caretaker, then his girlfriend.</p><p>Waner was arrested on suspicion of domestic violence on May 29, just days after he and Bronson married, according to his son and court records.</p><p>Bronson was arrested on suspicion of domestic violence June 11, her birthday, according to court records. The restraining order against her was issued June 15, the day she was released from jail, Bauman said.</p><p>Both Waner and Bronson also had multiple arrests related to alcohol and drugs, according to Lake County Court records.</p>