In the early morning hours of July 2, 2015, a devastating fire tore through a three-story apartment building on South 2nd Street in the Old Louisville neighborhood, claiming the life of 51-year-old Thresa Shultz, a Caucasian female. The blaze, which was intentionally set, quickly engulfed the historic building, trapping several residents inside. Firefighters arrived to a chaotic scene with people jumping from upper-floor windows to escape the flames and thick smoke.
Thresa Shultz was
found in her second-floor bedroom and was pronounced dead at the scene from smoke inhalation. Two other residents, Florence "Flo" Filatreau, 51, and John Bullock, 46, also perished as a result of the arson. The fire, which was set with accelerants at both the top and bottom of the building, also left two other people with serious injuries after they jumped from the third story, and four individuals were rendered homeless. The intensity of the fire was so great that a responding firefighter became trapped when a stairwell collapsed and had to be rescued by fellow firefighters.
The deaths were immediately investigated as homicides. Investigators quickly identified a person of interest from surveillance video footage captured at a nearby gas station around the time the fire broke out. The footage showed a man who was seen leaving the apartment building just before the fire was reported. Despite releasing the images to the public and generating some leads, the identity of the man in the video remained a mystery for years, and the case grew cold.
For a decade, the families of the victims waited for answers. The investigation, a joint effort by the Louisville Metro Arson Bureau and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, continued. A significant break in the case finally came in October 2022, when a witness came forward with crucial information that identified the suspect as Michael Robertson.
In September 2025, ten years after the fatal fire, the Louisville Fire Department publicly named Michael Robertson as the individual responsible for setting the fire that killed Thresa Shultz and the two other victims. However, justice would not be served in a courtroom. Investigators revealed that Robertson had died in 2023, before he could be formally charged with arson and murder. Though the suspect was never brought to trial, the identification brought a sense of closure to the long and painful investigation for the victims' families and the investigators who had worked on the case for a decade.
