February 12, 2002
Trumped-Up Eco-Terrorism: An Arsonist's Tale
By JAMES HIBBERD
HOENIX, Feb. 11 — At first, Mark Warren Sands says, it was a matter of pique. Someone was building a house in his upscale Phoenix suburb where Mr. Sands did not want it. So, he says, he burned it down.
But as one arson grew to eight, and as fear spread that Phoenix was under attack by eco-terrorists fighting residential sprawl, Mr. Sands, a laid- off public relations and marketing executive, began lighting fires seemingly to prove something to himself: that he still knew how to run a campaign.
"I knew what a good news story was; I knew how to sell it," he said in a recent prison interview as his sentencing approached. "My drug was the news media coverage. There was the excitement of waiting for the media coverage to come out. There was a sense of power."
Mr. Sands gained national attention by setting fires at construction sites adjoining two mountain preserves here from April 2000 to January 2001 and claiming, in notes at the crime scenes and in taunting letters to the press, that they were the work of a group he called the Coalition to Save the Preserves.
But one night last April he was arrested after defacing a sign at a construction site under surveillance. The police found saliva DNA linking him to letters sent to news organizations, and he confessed the arson to a friend who had been wired by investigators. In a plea agreement that called for a recommended prison term of 15 to 20 years, he admitted eight counts of extortion affecting interstate commerce and one count of use of fire to commit a felony.
Today the 50-year-old Mr. Sands, who is married and the father of two grown sons and a teenage daughter, was sentenced here to 18 years in prison by a federal district judge, Susan R. Bolton, who also ordered him to pay $2.8 million in restitution. Relatives and friends at the hearing read statements citing his history of community service, while victims articulated their loss and fear. Joseph C. Welty, a prosecutor in the case, said Mr. Sands's victims numbered many more than those who lost their houses.
"What he did was target a community at large," Mr. Welty said. "And what did he get out of it? Ego gratification. The ability to manipulate what would be on the news. The ability to play cat and mouse with law enforcement."
Mr. Sands had agreed to the prison interview on the condition that nothing he said be published until after his sentencing. He said he did not want to risk making any remark that might adversely affect his standing with the judge.
Sitting behind a glass partition at the Central Arizona Detention Center in nearby Florence, he recalled, "At first, it was a small, personal, limited-to-the-neighborhood environmental protest." He set that first fire on April 9, 2000, at a large home under construction near the Phoenix Mountain Preserve, because, he said, the house was spoiling his favorite jogging trail. As he saw it, "that was my land — that was my entrance to the preserve."
"The house was a direct affront to me personally," said Mr. Sands, himself the owner of a modest house bordering the preserve.
When the owner of the destroyed home announced that he would rebuild, Mr. Sands scrawled a message on a construction sign at the site. "U Build — We Burn Agin," he wrote, using the "we" and a misspelling in hopes the police would believe that the fire had been set by a youthful environmental group. On Oct. 1, 2000, he found the site unguarded and again set the home ablaze.
The local press pounced on the story of a mysterious arsonist with an anti-development agenda. The attention, Mr. Sands said, thrilled and inspired him.
"A light went on: `I've got a campaign,' " he said. "I thought I could say something about the uncontrolled development. I didn't think that this was private land and I was being a hypocrite."
Local investigators brought in the Federal Bureau of Investigation for assistance and placed the Phoenix Mountain Preserve, a 26,000-acre recreation park, under surveillance. Homeowners and developers raised a $76,200 reward and encircled their properties adjacent to the preserve with barbed wire and floodlights.
Mr. Sands came to view his arson as a risky, criminal substitute for his derailed marketing career. (He had lost his job as director of marketing for a Phoenix health care organization in June 2000.) In messages to the news media, he identified the Coalition to Save the Preserves as an eclectic foursome of mountain bikers. The point of the deception, he said, was "to make it a bigger story, more exciting."
He became increasingly at ease with his crimes. Once, he said, he set a fire after refereeing a high school soccer match. Another time, he went to a holiday party, set a fire, then did some Christmas shopping at a mall.
But by early last year, the fires, which had initially attracted some sympathy from people who felt that too much development had infringed on Arizona's virgin desert, were drawing decidedly negative publicity. News accounts about his distraught victims, and the death of a Phoenix fireman in an unrelated blaze, persuaded him to end his campaign, Mr. Sands said.
Yet he could not resist leaving one last message. On April 20, three months after his last attack, he was arrested for writing on a property sign that pledged an environmentally sensitive residential development.
Press coverage has long since lost its appeal, particularly now that his family knows of his crimes.
"I feel for the fire victims," Mr. Sands said, "but the real victims are my wife, my daughter, my sons. The hell that I've created for people who care about me is almost unimaginable."
