Capt. Kevin McAfee of the Butler Fire Department stands outside the East Brady Home that burned Monday. The couple that lived inside died in the fire.

Overloaded extension cords or a hidden electrical short possibly ignited nearby combustibles on the front porch of a home in Butler where a couple died early Monday.

That's the prevailing theory on what investigators believe could have started the blaze that killed 57-year-old George Walter Jr. and wife, 69-year-old Linda Walter.

But a definitive cause will likely never be known due to the extensive fire damage to the more than 110-year-old house.

“It's listed as an undetermined origin,” Trooper Luke Nelson, a deputy state police fire marshal, said Tuesday after spending hours at the scene.

The “undetermined” listing will remain unless other, unexpected evidence emerges.

Nelson said that there is nothing to suggest the blaze was anything but accidental.

The Walters, who worked together for years at St. John Specialty Care in Mars, died of smoke inhalation according to Butler County Coroner William Young III. No autopsies were performed.

The Walters were also described as a loving husband and wife and solid citizens.

“They were called 'good people,” Nelson said, “and 'friendly people.' Nothing bad was said of either and they did not have any problems with anyone.”

The couple was likely sleeping in their second-story bedroom when the fire erupted, but any escape route would have been impossible, investigators speculated, due to the couple's lifestyle as “extreme hoarders.”

Nelson called it the “worst case of hoarding” he's ever seen.

A full story will appear in Wednesday's Butler Eagle.