Ex-chairman of soccer club hit by deadly blaze linked to eight other fires

The former chairman of English soccer club Bradford City, where 56 people died in a 1985 stadium fire, can be linked to eight other blazes, a new book claims.

Stafford Heginbotham, who died in 1995, was chairman of Bradford City on the day the timber main stand at their Valley Parade ground burned down during a third-tier match against Lincoln City, claiming 56 lives.

Martin Fletcher, who fled the fire, which killed his brother, father, uncle and grandfather, alleges in a book that eight other premises owned by or associated with Heginbotham had burnt down prior to the disaster.

"Could any man really be as unlucky as Heginbotham had been?" Fletcher asks in the book, 56 - The Story of the Bradford Fire, which was serialised by The Guardian on Wednesday.

Fletcher, 12 at the time of the disaster, has spent 15 years investigating Heginbotham and alleges that eight other buildings linked to him caught fire in the 18 years prior to the Valley Parade tragedy.