Flames of suspicion: after being burned out of their Montana home in an apparent hate crime, a lesbian couple say they're being victimized again--this time by police who they say suspect them in the arson. (Crime).

When Carla Grayson and Adrianne Neff filed a lawsuit last winter demanding that the Montana University System provide them domestic-partner benefits, the women hoped to improve their lives--and that of their 2-year-old son. But only a week later it seemed that life as they knew it was all but ruined.

Shortly after 3 A.M. on February 8, fire swept through the family's ranch-style home in Missoula, Mont. The trio escaped through a bedroom window with only a few bruises, scrapes, and sprains. The home, however, was completely lost to what police quickly determined was a case of arson. "Inside it was a nightmare," says Neff, who suspects the fire is linked to the lawsuit.

As Neff and Grayson started sifting through their charred and soot-stained possessions, Missoula investigators started sifting through evidence, speculation, and suspicion. Was the arson a hate crime, they asked, an attempted triple homicide, or a hoax committed by Neff and Grayson?

"The period where we thought we were being treated like the victims was very short," says Neff, who has temporarily relocated with Grayson and their son to Ann Arbor, Mich., where they lived prior to moving to Missoula and where Grayson is working on research with the University of Michigan. "It became clear that [the police] suspected us," Neff continues. "We were horrified and scared and angry all at once." Grayson adds, "It feels like a witch trial."

Authorities won't discuss the investigation--the Missoula police refer inquiries about the case to Missoula County prosecutor Fred Van Valkenburg, who says succinctly that he can't discuss suspects in the case because the county attorney's office "isn't involved in naming suspects--that's the police."

But a 17-page application for a warrant to search Grayson and Neff's home safe, executed August 8 and made public by the Missoulian newspaper, makes police suspicions clear. The application states that arson investigators are skeptical about the couple's account of the fire, since it allegedly involved the time-consuming process of stringing gasoline-soaked ropes, draped with gasoline-soaked rags and socks, through the house and pouring gasoline taken from the couple's garage down a stairwell and over living room furniture.

"An outsider," the application states, "would have been unfamiliar with the residence, would not have known where the items used would have been stored, and would have had to have laid down all the gasoline-soaked trailers in the dark without disturbing the residents who were in the home."