Thursday, February 25, 1999
Indiana man arrested in church fires
He says he set up to 50 blazes, officials say
BY MARK CURNUTTE and BEN L. KAUFMAN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Jay Scott Ballinger
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MUNCIE, Ind. — Federal authorities think an Indiana man who they say made a statement that he set as many as 50 church fires in 11 states may become the most prolific arsonist in the history of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF).
Jay Scott Ballinger, 36, was arrested Tuesday at his father's Yorktown, Ind., mobile home.
He is in federal custody in Indianapolis, charged with setting seven church fires in Indiana. He allegedly told federal agents he set fires in 11 states, including Ohio and Kentucky, between 1994 and 1998.
“We're pretty certain he's involved in up to 50 fires,” said Chris Tardio, resident-agent-in-charge of the Cincinnati-based Southern Ohio ATF office. “No one is as big as this guy if the allegations ring true.”
Authorities think he set fire to a church in Brookville, Ohio, near Dayton, on Feb. 6 and suffered burns that required treatment and led to his arrest.
The statement was credible, Mr. Tardio said, because so little media attention had been paid to most of the 50 arsons for which Mr. Ballinger is taking credit.
“Other evidence ... substantiated” his involvement in the Indiana fires for which he was charged, he said.
Within hours of Mr. Ballinger's claims, Mr. Tardio said, the National Church Arson Task Force was convening in Indianapolis to investigate. The group probably will involve federal agents and authorities from at least 11 states, Mr. Tardio said.
A tip that came late last year during an unrelated Indiana
State Police investigation was not the first linking Mr. Ballinger to church fires, Mr. Tardio said.
“People were talking,” he said.
When Mr. Ballinger was confronted in the hospital where he was being treated for burns, Mr. Tardio said, “He just gave it up.”
Since 1996, the Indiana Fire Marshal's Office routinely called in the ATF on church arsons because of the national task-force effort.
In 1993, Indiana had three church arsons; in 1998, 17.
Nationwide, 670 churches were victims of arsons or bombings between Jan. 1, 1995, and Sept. 8, 1998, according to the a report by the ATF.
Of those bombings, 355 of the churches were in the South. In the South, about 46 percent — 163 — of the churches had primarily African-American congregations.
Mr. Ballinger allegedly set the church fires as part of a satanic ritual, police records show. Neighbors and police say that in 1993, he tried to recruit youths into a satanic cult.
What Mr. Tardio called “an outstanding piece of police work” by a Ball State University police officer led to Mr. Ballinger's arrest.
University Police Sgt. Steve Hiatt was driving his vehicle Feb. 9 when he heard emergency radio traffic between an ambulance driver and police dispatchers.
Mr. Ballinger's name, and the suspicious nature of his burns, prompted Sgt. Hiatt to contact federal agents in Indianapolis.
Sgt. Hiatt went to Ball Memorial Hospital in Muncie and talked to Mr. Ballinger and Mr. Ballinger's father, who had called 911 and said his son had come home early Feb. 7 with serious burns.
“Most people who have burns like that get them treated right away,” Sgt. Hiatt said Wednesday. “They don't wait two days. He had bandages on his hands all the way to his toes.”
“We're very excited about them catching this guy. That doesn't take care of all (the fires), but it's a start,” said Linda C. Cholak, risk manager for the General Council on Finance and Administration for the United Methodist Church (UMC).
Ms. Cholak manages the UMC's insurance program. She refused to disclose total arson loss figures for the organization.
The UMC sent arson-prevention posters to all of its affiliated churches in 1996. The posters included tips such as requesting an arson risk assessment from the area fire marshal and installing motion-activated lighting around the church grounds.
“We saw it as a very important issue,” Ms. Cholak said.
The Brookville fire involved flammable liquid and an explosion. The ATF's Mr. Tardio said evidence at the scene showed “it was obvious this guy was hurt.”
A search of the Ballinger home in Yorktown yielded a 2-gallon plastic gas container, satanic books, personal journals and credit-card statements showing purchases made on the dates of church fires and in the area of the churches that burned.
For residents of Yorktown and Dale-
ville, small towns that hug Ind. 32 west of Muncie, Mr. Ballinger's arrest reopened a troubling chapter in their towns' collective history.
Records show that Mr. Ballinger was jailed briefly in Muncie in 1993 for recruiting high school students into a satanic cult.
He spent one night in the Delaware County Jail for contributing to the delinquency of a minor, said Daleville Police Sgt. Mark Brewer. Mr. Ballinger had obtained signed contracts from 50 Daleville and Yorktown high school students pledging their bodies and souls to “Lucifer.”
Sgt. Brewer and Joe Schmitt, a Daleville parent, confronted Mr. Ballinger in 1993 in the two-car garage that sits behind the Ballinger family's mobile home.
“I told him the sergeant couldn't do anything, but I would break his legs if I heard he was still in town talking to kids,” Mr. Schmitt, 46, said Wednesday night at Daleville police headquarters, where he watched Indianapolis TV news reports with two officers.
Mr. Ballinger, who had been playing guitar at the time of the confrontation, reportedly got scared and handed Mr. Schmitt and Sgt. Brewer a briefcase containing the contracts.
The contracts read: “I promise to do all types of Evil in service to our Lord, until the end of time. I will also Recruit other Men and Women into Lucifers Kingdom for Eternity receiving added Powers for each person I bring into The Club.”
Mr. Schmitt said he confronted Mr. Ballinger a second time — alone — after Mr. Ballinger was seen talking to more young people. Mr. Ballinger was not seen regularly in the area after 1993.
No one answered at the mobile home late Wednesday afternoon. A neighbor, who declined to give her name or provide additional information, said the family was not home.
The blue-and-white mobile home is hidden from the road by several large evergreens. A U.S. flag waves from atop a white pole next to the trailer.
Three “Buy American” stickers were affixed to the glass of a back storm door. Three plastic deer rested in the yard.
Another neighbor, Bill Cassity, 56, has lived on Ind. 32, around the corner from the Ballinger home, since 1970.
“My kids were his age, and he used to throw rocks at them in our back yard,” he said. “He never played well with the other kids.”
Down the road in Daleville, a two-stoplight town of 2,500 where Mr. Ballinger attended school, the high school custodian recalled how Mr. Ballinger recruited children into the cult.
“It was really creepy,” Mary Sargent said while smoking a cigarette in the Day Lee convenience store on Main Street. “He had all these kids wearing black clothes, black lipstick and dyeing their hair dark black.
“They all had pale white faces and spent a lot of time in the graveyard.”
Perry Brothers contributed to this report.
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