By Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 28, 2005
A man suspected of setting fires to 46 houses and apartments in the Washington area was arrested yesterday, ending a two-year campaign of terror that left an elderly woman dead and put many communities on edge in the hours before dawn, authorities said.
Thomas A. Sweatt, who helped manage a fast-food restaurant near a half-dozen of the fires, was arrested about 9 a.m. in Prince George's County after leaving a work-related meeting in District Heights, authorities said. He lived in an apartment in Southeast Washington that was near several other fires, they said.
Law enforcement officials said they tied Sweatt to the crimes through DNA taken from items found at several crime scenes, including cloth from a pair of pants left near a house fire in Arlington in December and a sock that apparently was used as a wick in a September house fire in Northeast Washington.
Under questioning yesterday, Sweatt, 50, implicated himself in the fires, investigators said. No motive has emerged for the random attacks, although one law enforcement official said Sweatt spoke of demons and voices.
Prosecutors charged Sweatt with 11 federal offenses stemming from four fires and an attempted arson in Maryland and the District. He was ordered held without bond after appearing in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt. A follow-up hearing was scheduled for tomorrow.
The fires began in March 2003 and affected many neighborhoods. The fires were set by lighting plastic jugs filled with gasoline, often on porches or just outside doors. Authorities believe it took up to 25 minutes before the fire bombs exploded, enabling the arsonist to escape unnoticed.
"In a sense, all of us were victims of the serial arsonist," said D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) during a news conference to announce the arrest. "All of us were on edge, not knowing when this person would strike next."
The worst blaze occurred in June 2003 and killed 86-year-old Lou Edna Jones, who had lived for a half-century in her home in Northeast Washington. Her body was found in an upstairs bedroom. More than a dozen people were injured or suffered smoke inhalation in the other fires, which caused millions of dollars in damage.
D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey and other authorities said they felt fortunate that more people weren't killed or hurt. Many of those driven from their homes were elderly people or young children.
The victims told of being awakened by flames flickering through windows or the faint crackle and hiss of fire. Some fought the fires with garden hoses until firefighters arrived. Several have described enduring constant fear since the attacks.
A few months after the fires started, local police, firefighters and federal agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives established a task force to investigate and track the blazes.
Despite offering a $100,000 reward, canvassing neighborhoods repeatedly and publishing composite drawings and a psychological profile, investigators were stymied and resorted to making public appeals for the arsonist to contact them. In early 2004, investigators arrested a Riverdale Heights man who some thought might be the arsonist. He was quickly ruled out.
But investigators' persistence in combing crime scenes generated evidence that yielded a DNA profile that could be used once they had identified a suspect.
At the site of an attempted arson in Northeast Washington in September 2003, investigators recovered the fire-setting device and a single human hair, the first step in developing the DNA evidence. They also recovered DNA from cloth -- the sock and the piece of pants -- found in two other devices left at fire scenes.
But the biggest break came Dec. 5, when Arlington County firefighters recovered Marine Corps dress pants and a Marine hat near a small deck fire in the 300 block of North Bryan Street.
Capt. Tom Polera of the Arlington Fire Department said the items were found near the scene. The blaze was never reported to the news media, Polera said, because of the little damage it caused and because of the evidence left behind.
ATF officials said they learned about the Arlington fire two days after it occurred. They said they were not convinced it was connected to the serial arsonist but decided to submit the pants to the agency's crime lab for tests.
It wasn't until April 1 that they got the results: DNA from the pants matched DNA recovered from the two earlier fires and attempted arson in Maryland and the District, authorities said.
Investigators then approached the Naval Criminal Investigative Service in hopes of identifying the owner of the clothing -- yielding the tip that led them to Sweatt.
Naval authorities told task force members that they had investigated several suspicious car fires set near the Marine Barracks at Eighth and I streets SE about 30 months ago, before the serial arsons began. They said they questioned Sweatt as a suspect in the car blazes.
Agents kept Sweatt under surveillance for several days, learning his routine. They questioned him April 19 and took a voluntary sample of his DNA. The Montgomery County police crime laboratory reported on Monday that technicians had matched Sweatt's DNA to the samples recovered from the three fires and one attempted arson, authorities said.
Authorities said Sweatt borrowed the Marine Corps pants from an acquaintance but it remains unclear why he left them at the scene of the Arlington fire.
Federal agents and other investigators yesterday searched Sweatt's apartment and his workplace, a KFC/Pizza Hut restaurant at New York Avenue and Bladensburg Road NE. They arrested him on Marlboro Pike after he left a regional meeting of managers at a KFC in District Heights.
Sweatt said little in court yesterday. His financial affidavit states that he makes $1,700 a month at the restaurant and has no other income.
His apartment is in a two-story building, owned by his sister, in the 500 block of Lebaum Street SE, a quiet neighborhood just off Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue and a block from St. Elizabeths Hospital.
Residents said they were shocked to learn that their neighbor, whom they described as a quiet man who often cut grass and picked up trash along the street, had been charged.
"He doesn't seem like the type," said Donald Langley, 55. "He kept to himself and was a nice guy."
The arrest brought relief to residents in neighborhoods hit by the arsonist.
"If he is the person, I'm really glad, because it's really dangerous to not know when they might strike next," said Neelie Thomas, whose home in the Hybla Valley area of Fairfax County was struck last May.
On a brick wall outside Reggie Weems's Bladensburg apartment, he can still see the silhouette of flames from a fire in January 2004. "Every time that I come out, I think about it," Weems said. "I'm happy they caught" a suspect.
Keith Haskins, who lives across from where Jones died in the fire at 2800 of Evarts Street NE, said some questions may finally be answered.
"Mrs. Jones was the neighborhood mama," Haskins said. "It was awful looking at her house all burned up like that, instead of seeing her planting her flowers or going to church and waving at folks."
A couple of blocks away on Yost Street NE, another street with neatly trimmed hedges and shady porches, Thomas Randolph also welcomed the arrest.
"It's some good news, at last," said Randolph, who lives next door to a home that was hit several months ago. "Whenever there's a breeze, you can still smell the burning wood. See, smell that?" he said, as an afternoon breeze skimmed across his porch and carried the acrid odor his way.
Staff writers Ruben Castaneda, D'Vera Cohn, Petula Dvorak, Manny Fernandez, Maria Glod, Hamil R. Harris, Tom Jackman, Allan Lengel, Sudarsan Raghavan, Katherine Shaver and Jamie Stockwell and staff researcher Bobbye Pratt contributed to this report.