Firesetters in Pennsylvania Fit Classic Profiles

Nov. 27--As firetrucks raced for the glow rising from Jonal's Lawn and Garden Center in the early morning darkness, Benjamin Christensen pulled his Chevrolet Blazer up to Marian Community Hospital.

Minutes earlier, he had been driving around aimlessly, feeling "angry at the world" when he came upon the Greenfield Twp. business that morning in July 2007, he would later say.

He parked his truck, walked over to Jonal's and found a log.

He wrapped it in newspaper and put a match to it, tossed the incendiary into the building and waited for the flames to catch.

As he watched the fire stake its claim on the business, he felt himself getting closer to doing it -- ending his 24-year-old life, the better part of which he had spent grappling with mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

After 10 minutes, he got back in the Blazer and turned toward the hospital to check himself in for a psychiatric evaluation, leaving the business burning in his rearview mirror.

"If you were privy to the entire mental health evaluation, the records that were submitted -- I mean they just don't lie," said attorney Corey J. Kolcharno, the former Lackawanna County assistant district attorney who, nine months after the Jonal's fire, started the prosecution that would put Mr. Christensen in prison for 10 to 20 years for the seven fires he set during his 14-month spree.

"He lived a tortured life. --He just couldn't find his way. That's my personal assessment of it and I think it rings true. It came out in his actions," he said.

Mr. Christensen, himself a volunteer firefighter for the Whites Crossing Fire Department, fit one of the less-common profiles of arsonists -- the mentally ill repeat fire-setter.

Male; not past his young adult years; working as an unskilled laborer; and suffering from a mental illness -- schizophrenia -- that is 20 times more common among arsonists than it is among the general population.

All of these characteristics describe both arsonists in general, according to The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, and Mr. Christensen specifically.

But, while he is responsible for a disproportionate amount of the arson fires that have burned in Lackawanna County since 2007, Mr. Christensen represents a relatively uncommon type of arsonist.

"The pyromaniac is a type of arsonist, but different because there doesn't seem to be any type of motive but an impulse control problem," said Jerry Solfanelli, a licensed psychologist who practices in Dunmore.

There is little known about what leads a mentally ill person to firesetting, Mr. Solfanelli said. But what seems to be true, he said, is that pyromaniacs, who very often suffer from other illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, go to firesetting as a means of releasing some kind of tension or anxiety.

"It is an anti-social behavior, but it seems to somehow bring on almost a euphoria in some people," Mr. Solfanelli said.

As opposed to that relatively rare type of arsonist, what may be the most typical profile of arsonists in the area is the vengeful firesetter -- a motivation that fueled perhaps the most tragic arson in recent Northeast Pennsylvania history.

Then there is the arsonist who sets fires for financial gain through fraudulent insurance claims -- a motivation that authorities believe accounts for one of the more high-profile, non-fatal arsons in the area in the last few years.

But though the "why" may vary from one firesetter to the next, the one constant in arson cases is the "what" -- unmitigated destruction.

"Fire doesn't discriminate at all. It doesn't care if you're a woman. It doesn't care if you're black. It doesn't care if you're Asian. It doesn't care about anything. Rich, poor -- it doesn't matter. --It'll destroy anything in its path," Mr. Kolcharno said.

Vengeance

"For every action there's a reaction," said Scranton police Fire Marshal Martin Monahan in explaining his investigative method.

"So was there a fight before the fire? Was there a breakup before the fire? Was there a violation of the (protection from abuse order)? Was there terroristic threats? What is it?"

As she stood outside of her home at 166-168 S. Hyde Park Ave. in the early morning hours of July 21, 2009, Tyaisha Leary watched the fire that would claim the lives of two of her three children and told a first-responder "I know who did this."

"It was William Robert Woods," Ms. Leary said that morning and later repeated on the witness stand at Mr. Woods' homicide trial earlier this year.

She knew because he told her.

"I'll burn the (expletive) house down," Mr. Woods threatened Ms. Leary about three weeks before the blaze, not long after Ms. Leary ended her four-year relationship with him, she later testified during a preliminary hearing on charges against him stemming from those threats.

The threats came after Ms. Leary filed a protection-from-abuse order against Mr. Woods, who also took a knife to her three different times, cut the cords to her kitchen appliances and slashed the tires on her P.T. Cruiser, as their relationship unraveled.

Soon after the fire, witness statements putting Mr. Woods in the area just before the blaze and his recent history with Ms. Leary quickly made it apparent that investigators may need to focus on him.

Hours after the fire, he was in police custody for the threats he made to burn the house down and was publicly identified as a suspect in the case.

A year later, when the arson and homicide charges were filed against him, one of the most crucial pieces of evidence in the Woods case was the handful of carnations found laying on the porch of the home beneath a layer of soot, indicating they were placed there before the fire.

"In criminal investigations, very often you find that one piece that you feel like somebody above you is saying 'You're on the right track' and in the Woods case it was the carnations that were left on the porch " said attorney Maryann J. Grippo, a former Lackawanna County Deputy District Attorney who, along with Mr. Kolcharno, began the prosecution against Mr. Woods.

On his way to set the fire that killed 9-year-old Taevon and 10-year-old Michael Miles, Mr. Woods stole the flowers from outside of the Carl J. Savino Jr. Funeral Home on South Main Avenue, a block away from the Leary home. A witness later told investigators she saw Mr. Woods near the home with the flowers just before the fire.

"It's that little kind of stuff that when somebody's contriving a story to get out of something, they're not going to contemplate that," Ms. Grippo said. "The devil's always in the details."

Though Ms. Grippo and Mr. Kolcharno left the district attorney's office before the Woods case went to trial, he was ultimately found guilty by Lackawanna County President Judge Thomas J. Munley after a non-jury trial in October. Mr. Woods was found guilty of all 19 charges against him, including first- and second-degree murder and arson. He faces a potential sentence of life in state prison without parole. No sentencing date has been set.

Insurance fraud

Another common type of arsonist is the firesetter seeking financial gain by setting fire to property with the intention of filing a fraudulent insurance claim.

Wracked with credit card debt, unable to make the monthly payments of $350 in his Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection case, retired Scranton firefighter Thomas S. Gervasi turned his back on a career spent fighting fires when he torched a property he owned at 1021 Mark Ave. on June 17, 2008.

The math was simple, as investigators and prosecutors would later make clear in the case that put Mr. Gervasi in prison for five to 10 years. The red ink in Mr. Gervasi's financial portfolio amounted to over $160,000. The apartment building in East Scranton had $215,000 worth of insurance on it.

"We felt that was financial motive," said Mr. Kolcharno, who prosecuted the case against Mr. Gervasi along with Ms. Grippo until both left the office prior to the trial that ended with his conviction.

After parking a Cadillac Escalade he had been trying to sell in the dilapidated garage attached to 1021 Mark Ave., Mr. Gervasi set fire to the structure -- a blaze that left 14 residents homeless, two of whom -- including an infant -- were hospitalized.

Not long after, Mr. Gervasi filed a claim with Ohio Casualty Insurance for the $215,000 policy on the Mark Avenue building as well as $12,300 for fair rental value and $1,000 for personal property.

"Normally, people think that they can up their insurance on their house or they see how much their house is worth and by burning it they can get all that money and get out of debt," said Detective Sgt. Monahan, the Scranton fire marshal, speaking generally on insurance fraud arsons. He declined to comment specifically on the case against Mr. Gervasi, who has since appealed his conviction on seven counts of arson, one count of insurance fraud and related charges.

"A lot of times it doesn't work that way, because we have our investigative tools to find out that it's actually indeed arson," Detective Sgt. Monahan said.

Mental illness

By the time Carbondale police detectives got Mr. Christensen into their station for an interview in April 2008, he had set seven fires since February 2007 that accounted for more than $3 million in damages.

He had spent 14 months not just setting fires, but razing landmark businesses in the Midvalley and Upvalley.

Jonal's; Maiolatesi Winery and the six other businesses at Mermelstein's Marketplace in Carbondale Twp.; Fortuner's Moving and Storage in Mayfield; Highway Auto Parts in Archbald -- all of them burned by fires Mr. Christensen set and then, more often than not, returned to battle with the Whites Crossing Fire Department.

Ever since Mr. Christensen -- who declined an interview request for this story -- had been removed from his biological family as a young boy due to abuse he suffered in the home, he had been in and out of mental health treatment facilities his entire life.

By the time he reached his late teens and early 20s, the medication became too much.

One made him vomit repeatedly over the course of the day, the next would make him gain weight rapidly.

When he decided to join the Whites Crossing Volunteer Fire Department, he gave the latter up to slim down and, as Lackawanna County Judge Vito P. Geroulo put it at the time of his sentencing years later, "he lost weight but he also lost the control."

To Mr. Kolcharno, who was the lead arson prosecutor for the district attorney's office at the time of the Christensen case, "Ben suffered from a lot of mental health issues, schizophrenia being one of them. --He carried a burden through his life, and I think he lost his way along the way."

The Whites Crossing Volunteer Fire Department seemed to give him a purpose in his life.

No longer was he just a gas station clerk, a schizophrenic, a young man suffering from bipolar disorder, chronic paranoia, psychosis and intermittent explosive disorder.

When the smoke drifted into his nostrils and the glow of a burning building shone in his eyes, he was a hero, if only in his own mind.

"(The Whites Crossing Fire Department) was like his family. Somebody finally took him in," Mr. Kolcharno said. "I think for him to set the fires and then go back and hop on the truck and be a part of it --was, 'Wow, look what I'm doing. Now I'm the hero. --I'm here. I'm Ben.' "

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