Eco-Terrorist Caught
Secret confession led to guilty plea by arsonist
Judi Villa:The Arizona Republic
Nov. 08, 2001 12:00:00
For a few moments on a bridge over the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, Warren Jerrems wasn't sure he could betray his best friend.
He considered ripping the recorder out of his backpack and tossing it into the water. He considered telling Mark Sands that he had just secretly
tape-recorded Sands confessing to a notorious string of arson-caused fires near mountain preserves. He considered telling Sands to run for the North Rim and disappear.
But he didn't. He couldn't. What if, next time, somebody died?
And in the end, the taped confession, coupled with one of the most intense investigations ever conducted in Phoenix, solved a series of fires that seared fear throughout the Valley for nearly a year.
Sands, 50, changed his plea to guilty Wednesday, admitting extortion and the use of fire to commit a federal felony. He faces 15 to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced Feb. 11 and may have to pay up to $3.1 million in restitution.
"There are parts of me that are very ashamed of what I did. I turned in a friend," Jerrems said in his first extensive interview since Sands was indicted in June. "It's not easy turning in somebody you like, and I like Mark. I like his wife, and I like his family. But what Mark did was wrong."
Sands admitted "regretfully" burning eight luxury homes under construction near mountain preserves in Phoenix and Scottsdale from April 9, 2000 to Jan. 18. He intended to prevent encroachment on the preserves and didn't realize until later the fear he caused. "I regret that," he said.
Authorities say Sands played a cat-and-mouse game with a task force of investigators, leaving a trail of anti-development communiques about saving the environment.
By the third fire, on Oct. 20, 2000, investigators were scrambling to identify future targets. Police warned homeowners and met with hiking groups, homeowners associations, Block Watch leaders, everybody they could think of.
They sat in partially constructed homes seven nights a week for nearly six months. They blanketed the preserves on bikes, horses and all-terrain vehicles, and they scouted environmental group meetings and land preservation hearings.
Phoenix fire Capt. Ray Wilson scoured the Internet trying to link CSP, the arsonist's moniker, to any known environmental group. Nothing.
"We had no idea if it was going to be a mutant jackrabbit or three teenagers in black hoods or an old lady down the street whose view is going to be blocked," Wilson said. "It could have been anyone."
Mark Sands was aware of all the surveillance, but investigators weren't yet aware of himor of his obsession with the fires.
Sands talked about the fires so much that a couple from his church took bets that he would bring them up at their monthly meetings. He kept newspaper clips about the fires and recorded TV segments.
Jerrems said Sands showed him an interview with the arsonist in a local newspaper in January and remarked that the arsonist was "a marketing genius." He speculated about motives and how the fires might have been started.
Still, it never occurred to his friends that Sands might be the arsonist. And all the investigators knew was that the arsonist seemed to react to media coverage and surveillance, changing his patterns to avoid detection. Several times, officers staked out one construction site only to have another burn.
On Dec. 14, investigators drew up a surveillance plan for two homes under construction on North 16th Street. Less than 45 minutes after they left, a fire was ignited.
"We got sucker-punched every time we felt we were doing something," Phoenix police Sgt. Trent Crump said.
Dream home on fire
Tim Onofryton's cellphone rang around 8:30 p.m. Dec. 10. His dream house was burning. Onofryton and his wife, Peggy Myers, had worked on the home for two years, picking out the lot and persuading the owner to sell it to them.
When construction began, Onofryton was there every day at 4 a.m. He did his own stonework, took care of the details and shopped with Myers for unique pieces. They were four weeks from moving in when the home burned down.
A couple of days after the blaze, investigators logged Sands' vehicle driving by the burned-out home. But without a suspect, it was just another number among thousands.
Even an $85,000 reward turned up nothing.
The big break didn't come until April 20 when Sands walked into a trap, a fake construction site created to draw out the arsonist.
The construction fence went up before the cameras were working, and the next day there was a letter: "Construction alert: Notify your insurance company."
Officers posted a sign pledging to live in harmony with nature. They left lots of white space for the arsonist to mark.
From sundown to sunup, officers watched the site. By the third week, they were frustrated. By Week 6, they were making plans to pull the plug, Crump said.
Then early that Friday morning, a man appeared on the video monitor for less than 90 seconds. "OK. Thx. CSP," the man wrote on the sign.
"Are you guys from the arson task force?" Sands asked when officers stopped him on a trail leading back to his home.
'Nobody saw it'
Jerrems bailed his friend out of jail and brought him to his Scottsdale home. Sands insisted he had tagged the sign on impulse.
"I thought that his infatuation with the case had somehow led him to write on that sign. I thought he had made a mistake," Jerrems said.
Jerrems thought he knew Sands well. They had been friends since the fall of 1997, attending church together, hiking in the preserves and sharing holidays. Sands, an unemployed marketing consultant, led meetings to help married couples strengthen their relationships and refereed soccer.
"I've spoken to other people who know Mark because I wanted to know if I was just so dumb or so blind," Jerrems said. "There were a lot of people who knew Mark well, and nobody saw it." With a suspect in hand, investigators started piecing together a case. They matched Sands' DNA to letters mailed to media and persuaded a reluctant Jerrems to help them.
By then, Jerrems was having suspicions of his own. He'd ask questions and Sands would say, "Warren, I can't talk to you about that. That's privileged information." After police searched his home, Sands brought over a folder with clips about the fires and said, "Hmmm, they missed this."
Still, Jerrems couldn't see Sands lighting fires. He wanted to prove his friend's innocence.
"In my heart," Jerrems said, "I didn't want to believe he was involved at all."
Jerrems tears up even now when he talks about the decision to turn the tables on Sands.
"Everybody else says, 'I don't know why you feel so guilty,' " Jerrems said. "But damn it, he was my friend."
Getting the confession
Jerrems spent seven weeks luring Sands. He gave him a job in his accounting business, confided his shortcomings to Sands and kept the conversation going when Sands brought up the fires.
Six times, Jerrems wore a wire, tucked into the pocket of his running shorts or sewn into the bottom of his water pouch.
The confession came in June at the Grand Canyon.
Jerrems asked questions and Sands dropped rocks to signify a "yes" answer. That way, if anybody asked Jerrems if Sands had told him anything, he could say, "No."
Three rocks fell. Sands had written letters, given the newspaper interview and started the fires. The two men hiked arm-in-arm for about 100 yards. Sitting underneath the stars, Jerrems asked why.
"How confident are you in your ability to lie for me in the future?" Sands asked. "And do you really want to go there?"
Jerrems hemmed and hawed. He had a tape recorder in his backpack, and police were around. He knew he was going to put Sands away. But he also knew that more people would be helped than hurt by what he was about to do.
"Yes," Jerrems said, "I will lie for you."
Sands spoke of "troubling dreams" that drove him to burn the first house. He said the homeowner was stupid to rebuild, so he burned the house again. The third fire was to throw off investigators, and then he had a campaign.
Investigators say Sands created CSP, Coalition to Save the Preserves, to rationalize the fires, and then marketed it to the public for excitement.
That was his downfall.
"Without the notes, we could still be out there putting out arson fires with no clue at all," Wilson said. "He went out of his way to make sure the community heard his threats. . . . Thank God, he was obsessive."
In the end, the fires stopped. Onofryton and his wife rebuilt their home, this time with six surveillance cameras and a security system. But Jerrems hasn't found peace yet. He believes it was God's will that Sands got caught, believes that his friend had an addiction he couldn't control, believes Sands is sorry for what he did. He plans to visit Sands in prison, and he'll be there to pick him up when he gets out.
Sands, after all, is his friend.
"I believe this was not the last time we will hike the Grand Canyon together," Sands said. "We will do it again."
azcentral.com
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