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Chapter 1: What happened on the morning of April 20th, 2001?
I couldn't believe it.
We were all so flabbergasted.
The neighborhood thought the arson spree was the work of CSP, the Coalition to Save the Preserves, a group of radical eco-terrorists. Now, Mark Sands has been arrested and questioned by the police. Could their friendly neighbor be a serial arsonist?
My first reaction was, you got the wrong guy. That's not Mark.
No one thought he would be capable of doing that.
You know, he's Mr. Bible Study. He's a very talkative, very friendly guy. I'd see him walk. I'd wave, and he'd wave back. Mark and I would carpool our kids.
What did he seem like to you?
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Chapter 2: Who is Mark Sands and why was he arrested?
Normal.
Chapter 3: What was the community's initial reaction to Mark's arrest?
The folks whose houses burned down learn about the arrest from the news.
They said his name was Mark Sands, and they showed a little news clip of him.
That's Danielle Sink, the woman whose house was torched right around Christmastime, leaving behind nothing but a tiny Santa Claus figurine.
That's the guy who did all this stuff. He looked like such a little mediocre, you'd never look at him twice guy.
And Lee Benson, the owner of the house that burned twice, he feels vindicated. I remember just thinking, oh, so it is somebody in the neighborhood. Lee believed from the jump that CSP was one of his neighbors. But for Mark's closest friends, their reaction is total disbelief.
We were all shocked, just shocked. I couldn't be Mark.
This is Vicki Deworth. I tracked her down to get a sense of the reaction in Mark's inner circle. She'd known him for years before the arrest.
We had Sunday activities. We had picnics. We had children's activities and things. We just did life together.
They're even part of the same Bible study group. When Mark is arrested, at first, Vicki just cannot accept the fact that her close friend could be behind all those fires, evading the police for a whole year. So instead, she goes into support mode.
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Chapter 4: What evidence did investigators find in Mark's home?
There was a book in the house, Helping Your Loved One Overcome a Pornography Addiction, something like that.
Of course, there's nothing criminal about viewing pornography. But Rob suspects there might be something more serious tied up in Mark's porn obsession.
There was a theory that developed during the search that somehow there was a connection.
A connection between the arson spree and the pornography.
One of the things with just generic profiles of arsonists is oftentimes they do get a sexual gratification from the act of starting the fires.
We very well might be looking at an excitement-based arsonist.
It's not unheard of that arson attacks might have a sexual component. And judging by the fact that Mark was in his underpants on the night of the arrest, it's not much of a stretch for investigators to suspect that this might be part of the story too. On top of that, Mark has an extensive VHS collection, including a bunch of home movies.
The investigators think maybe they contain something related to the fires. Could he have filmed his targets beforehand? Or taken trophy footage of the burned homes? They confiscate every single tape and bring them back to the station. Trent Crump assigns a couple of investigators a new task.
I told him, hey, grab some popcorn, go down to the basement, pull up some TVs, I want you to go through frame by frame, and there's no fast-forwarding.
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Chapter 5: How did the investigation shift toward Warren Jeroms?
I had no choice but to say yes. I mean, I couldn't say no.
It didn't take long for the investigators to figure out that Warren is Mark's closest friend. Now, they're hoping he will give them the information they need. But Warren has his own ideas about Mark's character.
He was a nice man. I liked Mark a lot. He was outgoing and easy to be around and sincerely interested in spreading the word of the Lord.
Mark's daughter and Warren's daughter are close friends. They hang out together, sing in the church choir together.
He kept talking about what a great guy Mark was, like a second dad to his daughter, that kind of stuff.
Warren tells the investigators that he doesn't believe his friend set those fires. He answers all their questions as best he can.
At the end of that, they asked me if I would cooperate with them and provide any information to them about Mark. And I said, no, I would not participate in anything like that.
But this won't be the last time Warren hears from the task force. They keep trying to reach out to him. They speak to his wife, Mia. And even though Warren still believes that Mark is innocent, Mark is growing distrustful of Warren. At one point, he confronts Warren.
Are you talking to Mia? No, I'm not. Hell no, I'm not talking to Mia.
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Chapter 6: What disturbing evidence was shown to Warren?
It suggests something sinister about Mark, a side of him that's extremely upsetting to Warren, who just spent weeks defending his character.
He was emotional and upset.
When I ask Warren about this moment, he struggles to remember this part of the story. He doesn't deny that it happened, but it's almost as if he's blocked out the details.
I could have very easily said, I don't want to see anymore. I've seen enough.
Rob and Trent admit they feel guilty about the position they've put Warren in. We kind of felt like villains. But from their perspective, the ends justify the means.
We decided we were kind of running out of room, and let's see what we can get.
I came to realize there were two sides to Mark Sands, one that everybody saw, and then there was another side that was much deeper.
I haven't seen the video myself, but the investigators described it to me in detail. It's shocking and upsetting. I can understand Warren's reaction. all this sexual stuff is hard to wrap my head around. Is it related to the arsons? Or just some kind of twisted sideshow? For Warren, after all the pressure he's been under, this is the final straw. He agreed to help us.
From that point forward, he worked with us as diligently as he could. It's worth noting that even at this moment, Warren is still wrestling with feelings of loyalty to his friend Mark. He tells the investigators that'll help them to find out whether Mark is truly the arsonist. But he's hoping they'll leave the porn and home videos out of the case.
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Chapter 7: How did Warren's perspective on Mark change?
Every time it seems like Mark might be on the verge of telling Warren the truth, their hike comes to an end.
Mark and I were kind of playing a strange game of he wouldn't tell me anything about his secret, and I wouldn't tell him anything about my secret.
The task force want Mark to feel like he can really trust Warren. They know that Mark is a marketing professional, but he's struggling to find a stable job. So they give Warren some money to hire Mark at the small startup he owns, developing software for nursing homes.
My two IT guys were going, what the heck are we hiring him for? And I'm going, oh, we're trying to market our stuff, so...
Mark now has a job, or he thinks he does. But for Warren, his full-time job is now hanging out with Mark Sands.
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Chapter 8: What role does Warren play in the ongoing investigation?
There wasn't a minute in the day when I wasn't thinking about Mark and what was going on. It was all-consuming.
Six weeks go by since Mark's arrest at the fake construction site. By June 2001, Warren realizes that if he's going to get a confession out of Mark, he'll need to shake things up.
That's when I came up with the idea of going to the Grand Canyon.
Warren knew that hiking the Grand Canyon was always on Mark's bucket list. So he tells the task force he has an idea.
I said, I think if we're in a very remote place, I may be able to ask him something that I may not be able to ask him if we're just in the backyard of some of these houses on the preserve back here.
The plan is to hike the South Rim Trail, which goes all the way to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. And they want to do it by the light of the full moon, which means they'll be setting off that evening at sunset.
Basically, we had the one day to put it together. It was a scramble.
the task force rushes to prepare. This operation is gonna be expensive, but the police and the FBI bigwigs are anxious to finally nail this arsonist. Rob heads into his boss's office.
Five minutes later, I'm leaving with a $10,000 check made out to me, and my boss is like, just bring me back receipts.
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