Criminal - On Fire

Episode Date: June 4, 2021

On November 12th, 2012, the Accomack County volunteer fire departments got a call. An abandoned house had suddenly gone up in flames. And then, just hours later, a second fire was reported. Then a third. Over the next few months, there would be a lot more fires—nearly 90 in all. It was all anyone could talk about in Accomack. Someone was burning down the entire county. Monica Hesse's book is American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's BotoxCosmetic.com. That's BotoxCosmetic.com. This episode contains adult language. Please use discretion. So there's this app that you could download in 2012 that would broadcast police scanner activity around you. And there was a period of time in late 2012 and early 2013 where the third busiest community where people were listening to police activity was New York. And the second busiest was Los Angeles. And the first busiest place where people were listening to find out what crimes were happening was Ackermack County, Virginia, because everybody was listening for the arsonist. This is stuff that movies are made of. These, you know, these Hallmark

made-for-TV movies. I mean, it was, you know, we got lots of stuff. People offered, volunteer firefighters from Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, offered to come here and help us. And we're like, nah, stay home, dude. Just don't get in this mess. We had offers for fuel, equipment, and I'm stunned. I'm actually stunned that out of those fires, no fire truck ever rolled over and any firefighters were hurt. This is Jeff Bell. In 2012, he was the fire chief of a small volunteer fire department in Tassley, Virginia.

He says for most of that year, it was business as usual. He and his crew handled about two fires a week. Here's author and journalist Monica Hesse. On November 12th, the volunteer fire departments of Ackmack County got a call for a fire that at first seemed pretty routine. It was an abandoned house that had suddenly gone up in flames and nobody knew why it had gone up in flames. It didn't have electricity. It didn't have, it wasn't occupied, but it was a dry night. A lot of kids or teens were out maybe lighting bonfires. So at the time, it just seemed like this is an abandoned house that's caught on fire. We'll put it out and go on with the rest of

our lives. They put out the fire. They all get back to their fire departments. They all start putting away their hoses and taking off their equipment and they're tired and they're sooty. And just as they're beginning to wrap up, they get another alert for another fire. The second fire that night was reported 12 miles away from the first. A woman had stepped outside to let her dog out and seen flames. Two abandoned farm buildings on her property were burning down. The firefighters headed back out. And then, less than ten minutes after that, a third call came in.

And then they have three in a row in one night, and what first had seemed like a routine call suddenly starts to feel like a very odd evening. You know, as one of the firefighters described it to me, after the third fire, she just looked at her colleagues and sort of said, oh, so it's one of those nights. But they thought one of those nights meant it's some kids acting up, it's some, you know, drunk high school students getting into trouble. At that point, they knew it was weird, but they really didn't know what they were getting into. The very next night, a fourth fire was reported, then a fifth and a sixth. One of the fire department officials describes coming home from his fourth or fifth and thinking, what is going on in my neck of the county?

So he starts calling around. He starts calling around to his chiefs who work for other departments and saying, I had a fire tonight. Did you have a fire tonight? And when everybody says, yeah, we did. What's going on? At that point, he calls the fire marshal and he calls the Virginia State Police and he says, I don't know if you know what's going on, but I think we got an arsonist. Over the next few months, there would be even more fires. A lot more fires.

Nearly 90 in all. It was all anyone could talk about in Acomac. A lot more fires. Nearly 90 in all. It was all anyone could talk about in Acomac. Someone was burning down the entire county. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Tell me about the part of the country that you live in, Tassley, Virginia. This is a unique, kind of a special part of the country. We're unique to the fact that we are one hour from a metropolitan area known as Virginia Beach,

and north of there, and then one hour south of one in Maryland, in Salisbury, Maryland, and we're all volunteer here because we're just an hour outside of these metropolitan areas, and we are, at this station, solely volunteer. Acomac County is on Virginia's eastern shore, the narrow piece of land between the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic. Acomac is just south of Maryland. It's best known for Chincoteague, an island that's home to wild horses. The county border is marked by a gas station, called Dixieland, that sells fireworks and souvenirs and has a sign that reads, The South Starts Here.

In 1884, a big multi-state railroad was built, and it went directly through Ackmack County. By 1910, it was one of the wealthiest rural counties in the U.S. But by the middle of the 20th century, the economic boom was long over. People had cars and trucks and didn't have to rely on the railroad. They started taking more direct routes up and down the East Coast, like I-95. Over the decades, people moved away and local businesses closed. By 2012, there were hundreds of abandoned buildings in Acomac County. And it was quickly becoming clear someone was picking them off, by one and burning them to the ground. All of the houses that were burning down were uninhabited and had been uninhabited for years,

even decades. But what was really interesting is that they were sort of local landmarks. So someone just driving down Route 13 might not know that these houses were abandoned, but they were the sort of houses where someone might say, you know, it's that house where there's always a goat tied up out front, or it's that house where the turn is, where the road always gets muddy. The arsonists set fire to an old airplane hangar, an old restaurant. No one was hurt in any of the fires. But people were worried, especially if they thought someone could mistake their house for an abandoned

house. People put up signs saying, someone lives here, please don't burn it down. Two state fire investigators were brought in. They inspected each scene looking for footprints, tire marks, burn patterns, any evidence at all. Acomac County is the perfect place for someone to light a fire and disappear. The houses are far apart, on isolated back roads without many lights. So sometimes the fires would burn unnoticed for hours. By the time the police would be alerted, the arsonist would be long gone. They realized all they could really do was wait for the next fire to be reported and hope that they might catch someone in the act.

The county sheriff, Todd Godwin, came up with a plan. He put together a list of buildings he thought the arsonist might target next. There were hundreds of options. Then he sent a deputy to a Bass pro shop to buy all the camouflage tents they had in stock. So you would have basically nightly campouts, two men per pup tent, sitting behind these abandoned properties

with night vision goggles and walkie-talkies, just watching these empty places to see if anyone stopped by. There weren't fires every night, but there were fires pretty darn close to it. And it got to the point where the fire departments just anticipated they were going to be called out. So the way that the fire departments in Acomac would typically work is that you would sleep at home with your pager on. And if your pager went off, you would get in your car, drive to the fire department and go out for the fire. But they started realizing that their pagers were going off every night. So these young men and older men, and it was mostly men, would bring laundry baskets full of clothes and basically move into the fire department because they knew that they were going to get called out anyway. And because this was a volunteer, they're running on no sleep and they're having to get up and go to their day jobs the next day.

Facebook groups popped up with names like Who's Trying to Burn Down Acomac County? and Arson in Acomac. The groups were mostly just full of gossip. It was clear no one really knew anything. But most people thought that the arsonist must be someone local. Investigators agreed. Acomac was so remote. Why would anyone go there, night after night, just to set all these fires?

One man told a reporter, it's not just a plain old Joe doing it. It's somebody that we all know, and probably kind of a prominent part of people here on the shore. We're going to know who he is. Four months had passed since the first fire. So the law enforcement had placed these cameras all over the county in spots that they thought were likely to be targeted. And they were set up so that if one of the cameras caught movement, it would ping the phones of the law enforcement who was connected.

So you'd get like a beep or a tremor if the phone on North Side Road went off or Bay Side Road or Seaside Road went off. And one night, someone's camera had gotten something. And so they raced to the scene to take down this camera and to try to preserve it for evidence to see what the camera had recorded. And they look at it, and they can't really make out what it is, except it's a shadowy figure walking away from the camera. And they look at it, and they look at it,

and finally, one of the fire marshals said, Gentlemen, I've seen enough ass to know that there's a woman. Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. Thank you. journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums and leads him to a dark secret

about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. Subtle results. Still you, but with fewer lines.

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A photo. A motion-detecting security camera, one of the many placed throughout the county by the police, had captured an image of a person standing by an abandoned house. By the time the investigators arrived on the scene, the person was gone, and the house was consumed with flames. The photo was blurry, and the person had their back to the camera. It looked like they were wearing a sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over their head. It was very hard to tell, but the investigators thought it might be a woman.

For a long time, the investigators had been working with this theory that it might be two arsonists. And that was for a couple of reasons. One, because the houses were so far out of the way that you would have needed a car to get to them. But the county was so swarming with police that if someone had left their car by the side of the road to go light a fire, the police would have seen it. So they thought, well, maybe this is a two-person job. One guy stays in the car. One guy gets out to go light the fire. And they assumed that if this was happening, it would have to be two people with a really close-knit bond, like a father-son or maybe two brothers. They never imagined that one of them would be a woman. Tanya Bundick was born and raised in Acomac County.

Her family had been in the county for generations, since the 1600s. She was 40 and lived in a small ranch house. She had two kids and was a really devoted mom, a really good mom. And so people knew her from seeing her around school functions where she would bake cupcakes or she would always make sure her kids were dressed in clean and tidy clothes. She worked as a nursing assistant, and in the evening, people in town said she hung out at a bar called Shucker's. She was said to have a lot of friends. People wanted to wear what she was wearing and to hang around her to buy her drinks.

Someone said she was the queen of her own little world. She was there one night in 2011 when she met a man in his late 30s named Charlie Smith. So Charlie Smith was, he was known to a lot of folks in the community as a sort of bashful, shy screw-up who ran a body shop and did good work for fair prices on your car. He had grown up in Acomac. He had struggled with a drug problem. He had gone to jail for a few times for things to support that drug problem, but he seemed to want to do well. And people kind of liked Charlie. People kind of liked how self-effacing he was and how honest he was about his own mistakes and how he would say, yeah, I messed up that time. So he was someone that was known in the community. And he also,

like a lot of men in Acomac, had volunteered with the fire department since a very young age. He was a dutiful and really passionate volunteer for the fire department. He was a, and I've said this the whole time, he was a simple man. And he was a magician at doing body work. And he was good to have on a call if you were doing, we cover a busy highway as well, and we had multiple car accidents where we had to extricate people, and he was pretty amazing with the jaws of life and everything because he knew where to cut, how to cut, where would be the hard points to the body

and the pliable points of where to get people out. He was a valuable asset, and then he disappeared. Jeff Bell says he sees that a lot. If there's any kind of change in someone's life, a new job, a new baby, they might have to give firefighting up. For Charlie, it was a new relationship with Tanya Bundick. When they first met at Shucker's, Charlie thought Tanya was way out of his league. According to Monica Hesse, a mutual

friend told Charlie, Tanya wants to have your number in her phone. Shortly after, she invited him over. Her sons, from a previous relationship, had a new PlayStation, and she said she wanted him to help them set it up. They spent more and more time together. Eventually, Charlie was the first to say I love you, and Tanya teased him about how nervous he was to say it. But then, a few days later, Charlie got a series of text messages from Tanya. Eight messages in total, each containing just one letter, spelling out I love you. Soon after that, Charlie moved in with Tanya and her two sons. They got a chihuahua and painted their bedroom pink and purple. They created a joint Facebook

page under the name Tea Char and wrote messages back and forth for everyone to see. Once Tanya posted, having teriyaki chicken and vegetables straight from the oven for dinner. And then, from the same account, Charlie responded, It's char. You make the best teriyaki chicken. Yum. A few months into their relationship, Charlie started his own auto body shop in an old post office building. There was more room than he needed, so he suggested Tanya could start her own business. That way, they could be together all the time. She agreed and decided to open a small boutique. As Tanya put it, she wanted to sell going-out clothes at inexpensive prices.

Charlie put a sign outside the building that read,'s Auto Body And beneath that was the name of Tanya's clothing store A tiny taste of Toot Toot was her nickname It was what her father had called her when she was little Near the end of 2011, Charlie bought a ring He took Tanya out to lunch to propose He was so nervous, he kept having to leave the table to try and collect himself in the parking lot. He ended up passing her the ring underneath the table, instead of getting down on one knee, like he'd planned.

Tanya said yes, but she wanted a different proposal. They decided Charlie would propose on her birthday, at Shucker's, in front of everyone. They coordinated their outfits. They both wore yellow to match the cake. It was a Barbie cake. Tanya liked when Charlie said she looked like Barbie. This time, he got down on one knee. They started planning a wedding.

Tanya told everyone it was going to be big, more than 300 guests, with a reception at Shuckers. Even though the details hadn't been finalized, she told people to RSVP as soon as possible. She said, security will be tight. Tanya told friends the wedding theme would be November rain, after a Guns N' Roses music video she liked. People thought that was strange because in the video, a couple gets married, but a storm interrupts the reception, and the bride dies in the end. Jeff Bell says Charlie was looking for any extra work he could get to afford the wedding Tanya wanted.

Jeff, who knew Charlie well, told him it all seemed too expensive. He worried Tanya was asking too much of him. Charlie got mad, and he and Jeff didn't really speak after that. I can't comment on the relationship because I saw Tanya at his shop. I didn't communicate with her. The first two times I saw her there, I was getting like something painted or something like this, you know. I'd be like, Charlie, can you paint the roof of my old Explorer for me to paint the building off and I want to sell it. You go, sure.

She would sit there wearing a hoodie with the hood pulled down and she'd be looking at the ground. But I never communicated with her or nothing, you know, and that was it. Once the fires began, Jeff Bell had other things to worry about. One evening he got a call that Whispering Pines was burning down. Whispering Pines had once been a popular resort. It was built in 1931 and was a well-known vacation spot for people traveling from New York to Florida. This was by far the biggest fire yet. A man who drove by the scene later said,

it looked like hell was coming up through the ground. by far the biggest fire yet. A man who drove by the scene later said, it looked like hell was coming up through the ground. It took the firefighters nearly six hours to put it out. Jeff Bell remembers telling the neighbors across the street to get out their garden hoses, just in case. When it was finally over, he was interviewed on television. The reporter, Cleo Green, asked him if he had a message for the arsonist. I said, yeah, take a break. We need one. The very next night, his pager went off again. What software do you use at work?

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Hey, it's Scott Galloway, and on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence. We're answering all your questions. What should Thank you. So tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. It was starting to feel like the fires would never end. And then, on April 1st, someone finally saw something. men who had come from other parts of Virginia and had been up kind of freezing their butts off in this pup tent behind an abandoned property on Airport Road. It's their last night there. They're ready to go home. They've been out in Acomac for a couple of weeks. It's cold. And they're about to give up. They're about to go back and be reassigned. But instead, late at night, they look up and they see this van pull up to the house that they're watching. And someone gets out of the van.

The figure runs toward the house that they're watching. And the officers know that something is going on but they also know they can't go after the guy because getting out of a van in front of an abandoned property is not a crime they're trying to catch an arsonist they have to wait till this figure tries to light something on fire and that's exactly what happens the figure gets gets out some kind of rag and a lighter, and he lights the rag on fire and sort of stuffs it under the sideboards of this house and takes a while to get it lit. But finally he does. Finally the rag is blazing, and then the figure turns and runs back away from the house. The minivan pulls up again.

It drives away, and that's when they radio in that they've got something. And the van starts barreling down Airport Road, and a half mile down, the police pull it over. We heard on the radio, we think they got him. The police have him pulled over, you know, half a quarter to half a mile from the scene. And our truck saw it when they were going up to supply water. And we heard him say on the radio, we think they got him. Nobody knew.

I was so tired. I came home and sent a message to the guys on the tanker. Let me know if you need anything. I'm going home and going to bed. And I never heard back from them. And then the following morning, I had the day off, so I was sleeping in. I was dog tired. And my wife came in and she had been preparing. She was a teacher and she was preparing to go to school. And she turned on the news and it gave his name and showed his picture. And she came in

the room and just screamed at me, it's Charlie. And I woke up out of a dead sleep. And I'm like, well, what the hell does he want? I thought he was knocking at the door. And I said, well, what does he want? And she goes, he's the effing arsonist. And I was like, no way. No one suspected him. No one, none of us, none of us suspected him. I mean, he worked at a body shop. That was it. You know, you just didn't.

It caught pretty much everyone off guard. By that point, how many fires had been set in Acomac? By the time the police pulled Charlie and Tanya over, more than 80 fires, close to 90, had been set in a four-month period. Police questioned Charlie Smith and Tanya Bundick separately. Tanya said she and Charlie had been out for a drive, something they did often together. And Tanya says he asked her to stop the van and let him out so that he could pee by the side of the road.

And she did that, and then she went back and picked him up again, and that she had no idea that he had used that time to go light a fire. She had no idea that he'd lit any of the other fires. She couldn't account for her time that night. But then again, most of the fires happened late at night when she would have been sleeping anyway. So how could she account for her time? Charlie was questioned by Sheriff Todd Godwin and Virginia State Police Investigator Robert Barnes.

And he knows both of these guys. They go way back. He's known them for a long time. And he comes clean pretty quickly to say that, yeah, he lit the fires. It was him. But what he doesn't say is that he had any help. He keeps trying to take all the blame. And the sheriff and the police investigator keep going after him and saying, you know, I think it's really going to be best for you if you just come really clean with what happened. And they keep asking him if there was something, if there was something going on in his life, if there was something that caused him

to do this. Charlie, we've known you for a long time. What would make you do something like this? And finally, after hours and it's two o'clock in the morning, Charlie just says, fuck it, I'll come clean. And he decides that he's going to tell it all. And what does he say? What he launches into is this weird, sad love story. What he starts talking about is how much he loves Tanya and how she's the best thing that happened to him and he knows she's too good for him and how he was always afraid of losing her. But he knew he was going to lose her

because of this problem that he was having. And that problem was a bedroom problem. He couldn't satisfy her because he couldn't perform. And that was killing him. And so they end up lighting all of these fires because he thinks it's the only way to keep her happy. Charlie told Sheriff Godwin, I really fell in love with this girl, and most people that I've been with in the past, they were just there.

I settled for all of them, even the ones I was with for years. I was never happy with them, and I was happy with this one. He told police that they hadn't had sex in almost 18 months, and that he was very afraid of losing her. They were just in a really low spot. And Charlie says that he told Tanya he'll do whatever it takes to keep her happy. And they're driving past this abandoned house and Tanya says, get out and let that house on fire. And Charlie, in Charlie's recollection, Charlie sort of laughs like he thinks it's a joke. But then Tanya pulls over

because she's the one who's driving and says, get out and set that house on fire. And he still thinks it's a joke, but decides to just kind of play along and go pretend to set the house on fire. And when he returns, Tanya seems lighter somehow. She seems happier. She seems like setting up something in flames really helped let go of whatever was weighing on her. So they drive around and they drive around and Tanya keeps wanting to drive by the house again and saying, well, why isn't it burning? And finally, Charlie admits that it's not burning because he didn't actually light it on fire. He thought that it was a joke. And at that point, he realizes that it's not a joke. So they do go set it on fire and they do burn it down. And then they burn down 80 houses after that.

So what Charlie says is basically, he's nervous that he's not satisfying Tanya. He is not sleeping with her. He's worried. I mean, it seems like he's kind of madly in love with her and he's terrified that she's going to leave him. And so if this is what she wants, he'll light the fires. Yeah. He thinks that Tanya is this beautiful, smart, lovely woman who he doesn't even know why she's with him, and he doesn't even fully understand how her mind works. But if this is what she wants, then he'll do what it takes. And what it takes, he decides, is lighting up half the county.

Charlie walked Sheriff Godwin through the fires. There had been 86. He said in the beginning, Tanya was the one who lit most of them. Because she was the one who, he said, got the most out of lighting the fires. But he said that after a while, there was one spell where she came too close to getting caught. And then he couldn't stand the thought of her getting into trouble when she had kids who depended on her and who needed her. So he said that he would light the others. So in his recollection, Tanya

lit the first handful of them, the first dozen or so, and then they settled into a pattern where she would drop him off and he would go do the deed. At one point, an arson investigator asked Charlie, quote, was it like a relief for her? Charlie answered, I think so. The investigator asked Charlie if there were any fires he liked more than others. Charlie said, I hate it every night. So for a while, Charlie and Tanya were both held at the Acomac Jail, which is a tiny little place because it doesn't really need to be much bigger. It's the kind of place where the visitor's room is also the janitor's closet. So if you visit an

inmate there, you'll probably do so in a room with a bucket and a mop. So for a while, both of them were held at the Acomac Jail, one on the women's side, one on the men's side. And Charlie says they would communicate. They would communicate by this form of leaving each other notes in the prison yard for the other to find when they were walking around for their scheduled exercise time. Charlie and Tanya would conceal their notes back and forth in chapstick tubes. In one, Charlie wrote, I'm already scared if I get too much time. I'll lose you. Sometimes I don't think you really know

just how much I love you. Eventually, Tanya was released on bail while Charlie stayed in, and then they communicated by a letter, and Tanya would write Charlie frequently, and he would write her frequently. And the content of the letters was that they, they still planned to get married. They were going to get married while Charlie was in jail. They were going to, they were going to come somehow salvage all of

this and stay together at the end. Was she trying to get him to take the blame? Did you get the sense that she was trying to manipulate Charlie? You got the sense that maybe she wanted them to be married because then they wouldn't have to testify against each other, that they would have some sort of spousal protection. You got the sense that, yeah, she wanted Charlie to take the blame, whether that was because that's what they had agreed on before or that's what she thought was fair now or she thought he really was at fault.

But she wanted him to say he had lied and that it wasn't, she didn't have anything to do with it, it was all him. Around this time, Sheriff Godwin visited Charlie in jail. He told Charlie there was something he should know. He said, if she really loved you, why is she out on bond seeing another guy? The sheriff showed him photocopies of letters Tanya had written from jail, addressed to another man. The letters were graphic. Charlie was devastated.

He reluctantly agreed to testify against Tanya. On December 2, 2013, Tanya was arrested for the second time, and this time she was charged with 61 additional counts of arson. Her trial would take place across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in Norfolk, Virginia. It couldn't take place in Acomac.

There was just no way they would have been able to get a jury of 12 people who weren't impacted by the fires. Everybody, everybody either owned a burning property or knew somebody who did. The first trial took place on January 13, 2014. Tanya's lawyer had asked to try each charge one by one. 62 separate trials. They started with the most recent count of arson from the night Tanya and Charlie were arrested. Charlie was brought in to testify. And what did Charlie say at the trial?

So at the trial, Charlie said what he'd sort of been saying all along, which was that he hadn't wanted to light these fires. Tanya had. He was doing what it took to keep her. He still loved her. He was sorry, but that they had done this together. Was it clear that he was emotionally distraught at having to testify against Tanya, include her? Charlie seemed, and the journalists who were watching the trial commented amongst themselves that Charlie seemed really broken.

A few times, Tanya's attorneys said things that seemed designed to make him really angry. And everybody said, you know, they were just waiting to see Charlie explode. And he never really did. He never seemed angry. He mostly just seemed sad. Tanya's lawyer tried to argue that Charlie's testimony against her was unreliable, that Charlie loved Tanya so much he would say anything to keep her from going free while he spent time in prison. He asked Charlie, you know if you're in here and she's out there, she's not going to wait around, don't you? Charlie replied, Well, yes, I'm concerned about that.

Tanya testified the next day. She said on the night of April 1st, she and Charlie went to Walmart to buy birthday presents for her sons. Charlie wanted to buy steak, and Tanya told him no. They were on a budget. They started fighting. They got back in the car. Tanya said she told Charlie, if things are too hard to deal with, all you got to do is walk. Tanya said Charlie asked her to stop the car and let him out. Tanya said he called her a

little while later to come pick him up, and she did. And then, she said, the cops just came out of nowhere. Monica Hesse was at the trial. She reported that Tanya's lawyers were worried. They thought Charlie had come across in his testimony as honest and kind of dumb. The prosecution had characterized Tanya as the one who was in control and very capable of manipulating. So Tanya's lawyers recommended that she enter an Alford plea, a plea that acknowledges that there is sufficient evidence to find her guilty without her actually admitting guilt.

It's a legal mechanism that allows you to formally enter a guilty plea while asserting that you did not commit a crime. The hope is that you may get a lighter sentence. In the second trial, there was a new character witness for Tanya, a man named Frank Dickerson. He testified that Tanya was brutally honest and that it wouldn't be in her nature to commit arson. When the prosecution questioned Frank, they revealed that he was Tanya's new boyfriend. She did not enter an Alford plea in the second trial,

and the jury found her guilty, and she still had 60 trials ahead of her. Tanya fired her lawyer and found a new one. Her third trial was scheduled to begin in April of 2015, but the morning before it began, the prosecutor got a phone call. Tanya wanted to arrange a deal. She had decided to enter another Alford plea, but not just for this trial. This time, the plea was for all remaining counts.

She was sentenced to 17 and a half years in total. Two days later, Charlie, who had pled guilty from the start, was sentenced to 15 years. The two he'd already served in the Acomac jail counted. One of the things that after Charlie and Tanya were caught that made this story so popular was that it became a story about sex. The way the media would describe it is that they would go, they would go light something on fire and it would really turn them on.

And then they would have like a night of passionate lovemaking. And that's not really what happened because the fire didn't help Charlie perform in bed. They still weren't having sex. The fire wasn't stoking their sexual passion. It was more of an emotional bomb. So it wasn't like a sexy arson story.

It was like a sad arson love story, which I always thought was much more nuanced and kind of much more painful. Right, that this was a type of grand gesture that was the fill-in for the ways in which he might not have felt like he was being adequate to Tanya. He could at least do this. Right, right. And this is what she was asking him to do. Right. Tanya Bundick and Charlie Smith

are both currently incarcerated. Jeff Bell is still the fire chief for the Tassley Volunteer Fire Department. You're still a firefighter. Yes. Why do you keep doing it? What do you love about the job?

I find it a challenge. It's more of a challenge today than it was Keep doing it. What do you love about the job? I find it a challenge. It's more of a challenge today than it was in the 70s when I started out as a kid doing it. And I just do it because I still do it, and I can do it. I'm only 63. Come on, give me a break. He hopes he'll never see another year like 2012 ever again. It was very disheartening. It was a giant slap in the face for us, but neighbors and the community was very supportive of us. Nothing has changed as far as our standing in the community. Matter of fact, I'm sitting right here now talking to you in our new

firehouse that people, you know, the community gave money towards and everything, and you know, we're still going on. We're still operating. The new firehouse was built right across the street from the site of Charlie and Tanya's largest fire, the old hotel, Whispering Pines. Thank you. buyers of Final Final V2. Julian Alexander creates original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. Monica Hesse's book is called American Fire,

Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land. You can follow us online and let us know what you think about the story, or if you have another story you'd like to hear us cover. We're on Twitter at Criminal Show, Instagram at Criminal underscore Podcast, and on Facebook at This is Criminal. Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collection of the best podcasts around.

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