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Lawless gets 10 years in arson case
Despite his defense attorney’s arguments for home detention in the case, a 33-year-old Bainbridge man will spend the majority of the next 10 years behind bars for setting fire to the home of his estranged wife last summer.
In Putnam Circuit Court last Thursday, Adam David Lawless was sentenced to a 10-year term by Judge Matt Headley, with nine years to be executed with the Department of Correction.
At the time of the fire, his estranged wife Kylie Lawless was asleep inside the home that the couple had formerly shared on Summit Street in Bainbridge.
Lawless was originally charged with two counts of arson, but could only be convicted of one. The count on which he was convicted was tied to endangering human life, while the other was specific to knowingly endangering property with a value of at least $5,000.
Having initially pled not guilty in the case, Lawless was in court on Thursday first of all to change his plea to guilty.
Headley accepted the agreement entered by defense attorney Darrell Felling and Prosecutor Tim Bookwalter before moving on to the sentencing portion of the hearing.
With a sentencing range of 2-12 years available to Headley, Felling requested only home detention in the case, while Bookwalter sought a much lengthier sentence.
In the end, Headley weighed the aggravating circumstance of Kylie’s presence in the home in deciding the sentence.
The 10-year sentence for Lawless includes nine years at the Department of Correction. Under the current state sentencing scheme, he will have to serve at least six years and nine months with the DOC.
Lawless was given credit for the 182 days he has served in the Putnam County Jail since his July 1 arrest.
Following his release from DOC, Lawless will spend time as a direct commitment to Community Corrections followed by one year of probation.
According to court documents, Lawless told Indiana State Fire Marshal investigator Jeffrey Ramey II that he started the blaze by lighting a wadded-up piece of paper with his cigarette lighter and placing it on the charcoal grill that was on the back porch of the residence of estranged wife Kylie Lawless.
He told Ramey that the grill then somehow fell over and caught the deck on fire.
Ramey then asked Lawless why he started the fire, and Lawless confided that he was “trying to get Kylie’s attention.”
He also told the fire investigator that he knocked on the door several time but Kylie would not come to the door. He said he was “not trying to hurt or kill Kylie, just trying to get her attention,” according to the incident report.
The June 19 fire at the one-story Bainbridge home was reported at 3:14 a.m. The first unit on the scene reported “black smoke venting the entire structure with heavy flames coming from the northwest side of the structure,” the Indiana State Fire Marshal’s incident report noted.
The deck sustained major fire damage, including damage to a plastic doghouse filled with straw. The occupant advised that the charcoal grill had not been used in more than two weeks and said she did not even know how to light it.
The roof collapsed in the northwest bedroom, kitchen and living room.
Investigator Ramey asked Kylie Lawless what she was doing at the time of the fire, and according to his report, she replied that she was in bed asleep. She said she woke up when she became too warm and then observed smoke coming from the bedroom closet.
Seeing that, she got up quickly and went out the front door, where she observed the northwest corner of the house and the deck on fire.
She told investigators she was in the middle of a divorce and that her husband “had threatened to kill her when she told him that she wanted a divorce,” the report noted.
For two weeks thereafter her father stayed with her because she did not feel safe alone. He had only left the home a few hours prior to the fire.
She also reported that the her estrranged husband showed up at the house prior to the fire department leaving the scene that morning and was visibly upset because their dogs had died in the fire.