GREENBELT – Pointing to extensive news media coverage, a federal judge ruled yesterday that the trial of one of the five men charged with setting last year’s huge fire in a Charles County residential development will be moved to Baltimore.
U.S. District Judge Roger W. Titus granted a request from Patrick Walsh to relocate court proceedings out of Greenbelt. His trial is scheduled Aug. 16. The Dec. 6 fires destroyed or damaged 35 houses in what is believed to be the largest residential arson case in state history.
Also yesterday in Greenbelt, Titus ordered unsealed the statements that another defendant, Roy McCann, made to federal investigators.
“A couple of months ago at Denny’s,” McCann wrote in the December statement, “Patrick Walsh stated that he was going to go off and just start blowing stuff up.”
McCann’s statement describes a meeting at a Denny’s restaurant in Southern Maryland in which Walsh, 20 – who police say was the ringleader – started talking about his plans.
McCann also described how others charged with the crimes prepared to set the blazes at the Hunters Brooke development and how Walsh was a member of a gang called the Unseen Cavaliers. “They are also firebugs,” McCann wrote.
Titus unsealed the documents on a motion filed by The Washington Post.
Two of the five men charged in the fires, Aaron Speed and Jeremy D. Parady, have pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit arson but have not been sentenced.
At yesterday’s hearing, Walsh’s lawyer, William Purpura, argued that his client could not get a fair trial in Greenbelt. He said a court-ordered survey of 120 potential jurors showed that news coverage of the case made it too difficult to impanel a fair and impartial jury.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office confirmed that federal prosecutors opposed the change in venue because it would be too burdensome on the victims and their families.
The unsealed documents include statements by Speed and Michael Everhart, who also is awaiting trial. The statements had been quoted in charging documents and discussed in hearings, but had not been released in their entirety.
Attorneys representing McCann, Walsh and Everhart wanted the documents suppressed, arguing that the additional publicity would make it harder to seat an impartial jury. But Titus said the “spectacular nature” of the crimes naturally drew significant news media attention.
The statements were given to federal agents between 10 and 14 days after the blaze in the upscale development that did $10 million damage to houses under construction, many of them being built for black homeowners.
The defendants are white, and prosecutors have raised racism as one of the possible motives. Speed also acknowledged in his guilty plea that he was envious of the well-to-do homebuyers and angry at his employer, a security company hired to guard the site, for refusing him bereavement leave when his baby son died.
Sun staff writer Matthew Dolan contributed to his article.