Ruin Born of Manifold Motives

Walsh was quoted in a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives report as saying that he had worked in pyrotechnics at an amusement park. He also posted online prolifically before his arrest, sometimes composing poems that evoked themes of love and loss. In a lighter moment, using the screen name WebPhantom99, he wrote that his hobbies include "anything that will keep me occupied and entertained without putting me in a nice set of matching steel bracelets."

Parady, at the time of his arrest, was a probationary member of the Accokeek Volunteer Fire Department. Speed, whose bid to become a volunteer at another fire department was rejected, worked as a security guard for a company hired to guard Hunters Brooke. According to a law enforcement affidavit, Gilbert told investigators that, in his job at a roofing supply company, he had delivered material to the site on several occasions.

Determining motive has been among the most vexing aspects of the case for investigators. At a news conference in January, more than two weeks after the arrests, Davis offered a blunt assessment: "I have no idea what [the crime] is about," he said. "Who knows what people are thinking when they do something like this?"

Initially, attention focused on the possibility of eco-terrorism, because environmentalists had protested the development's effect on nearby wetland. That theory gave way to more personal avenues of investigation when agents learned that Speed allegedly felt mistreated by his employer after the death of his infant son, a twin who succumbed to an illness.

Prosecutors have said that some of the suspects have referred to the arsons as "Operation Payback." The ATF report quotes Walsh as first saying the "operation" was a prank involving toilet paper, then saying it involved "blowing up a vehicle."

Some Charles officials now say that understanding the fires requires knowing the county, where affluent black newcomers are fast turning what was farm country into a Washington suburb brimming with almost 137,000 residents. The number of black residents jumped 70 percent between 1990 and 2000, and was estimated in 2003 at more than 39,000.

Candice Quinn Kelly, a county commissioner, likened the arson to the church bombings and other atrocities of the civil rights era, crimes motivated by racism but even more, she said, by fear "of change that people were not ready to accept.

"That was fear of a loss of power and control and of a way of life you've held onto, and that's what makes people do things that they know are wrong and that they regret," she said, stressing that even the most anti-development segment in the county condemned the fires at Hunters Brooke.

When he pleaded guilty in April, Parady said the Hunters Brooke development was targeted because a large number of black people were buying houses there. According to a law enforcement affidavit unsealed earlier, Parady had told investigators that Walsh and Speed also set the fires for racial reasons. That affidavit quoted Parady as saying that Speed complained before the fires that the "neighborhood is going black" and that Walsh helped in the fires because he "doesn't like black people at all."

Edith J. Patterson, the county's first African American commissioner, said the suspects are "people who are afraid of change." She added: "And like many other counties, Charles is one that is going through transition."

According to the same affidavit, Gilbert offered investigators another motive: that the fires were intended to raise the profile of the Unseen Cavaliers, a group that the affidavit says is also known as the Family. Gilbert told investigators Walsh approached him with "a plan to make the Family bigger and more famous," the affidavit states.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Donna Sanger endorsed that possible motive during a court hearing in December, saying Walsh and his associates wanted "to make a name for the Family, and they wanted to do something big.