Original subtitles

"I think of places I've set fire to each night.

"I will replay them in my mind.

"The ATF, media all estimate the number of fires I set

"to be over 350.

"I honestly do not know the exact amount

and really don't care." Wow.

[Carolyn] This was my house, and it was just destroyed.

But losing my mother was the biggest destruction of all,

knowing that my mother was killed there.

When he said, what punishment would you like to see happen?

I told him the truth.

I'd like to see him shot in both knees, doused in gasoline,

strike a match, and walk away.

The traumatizing part was seeing your life be burned in

front of your eyes.

So many victims.

[news broadcast] Officials have upped the reward to $20,000 in hopes of tracking

the serial arsonist down.

After we discovered multiple fatalities, we realized we're

dealing with a serial killer.

He's a murderer, and he just used fire as a weapon.

[news broadcast] DC firefighters canvassed the neighborhood near

the latest home hit by the serial arsonist.

[news broadcast #2] But as the hours pass, they're also now wondering why

someone would do this.

We tried to get into his mind.

It's like putting a puzzle together in the dark.

They're trying to outsmart us. We're trying to outsmart them.

We were banging our heads against the table every night.

What are we missing here?

This is like putting a bullet up to my mother's head.

It's just like somebody shot my mother and killed her.

This fire is like a weapon.

It didn't seem that he was literally the devil,

but he was, that's the scary part.

[Derek] We knew we had to get him off the street.

And the only way to do this is to try to think

the way he was thinking.

[slow, ticking theme music]

[sirens wailing]

[theme music intensifies]

[theme music mellows]

[Tynisa] "I always kept a device ready just in case.

"If I'm at a mall, and I see this sexy man drive up

"and park close to me,

now I want to set his car on fire."

"You asked what was fire to me. That's a good question.

"Fire became my friend.

"I knew he'd take care of all the hurt and pain

I was going through."

This is...

...sick.

He is definitely Satan's son.

He needs to be put to sleep.

It's definitely hard talking about it and remembering it.

I'm just glad that I survived because this is a sick man.

It could have been worse.

[mysterious tones playing]

[plastic rustling]

[plastic rustling]

[lighter clicks]

[whooshing]

[crackling]

[Bill] This all started with a fire on the front porch.

Prince George County is --

it borders northeast and southeast of DC.

They got a call for a house fire.

Fire investigator went to the scene.

I think he found a remnants of a one-gallon jug

filled with gasoline

and had to wick --

some kind of a piece of cloth or something like that.

And that was it.

That was the device.

We was interviewing the occupant of the house.

The occupant saying, "Look, I don't have problems

"with anybody, I don't know why anybody would want

to set my house on fire."

He gets another call on his radio saying, "Hey,

there's another fire about two miles from you."

He leaves, goes to the next fire, and it's the same thing.

Same exact remnants of a one gallon jug on the front porch.

This is, you know, too coincidental.

[Derek] This is how he put it together.

He would fill the container with gas,

take a piece of cloth, in this one, it's a sock,

tie it around.

When he was ready, he would set it here,

light the device.

When the device failed, it would turn into

a flash fire.

The vapors from the gas would flash.

Fire burns, would double size every 30 seconds.

So once that happens, it would quickly start spreading up

and out, so it would engulf the whole exterior wall,

and the door, and the porch.

He's doing this in the middle of night

while everyone's asleep.

By the time they figure it out,

it's too late.

So he's trapping the occupants in the home.

He knows that.

So he was doing this to commit murder.

Had people going through DC's logbooks, finding different

fires, seeing how far back we could trace this stuff.

We had two confirmed.

There's probably gonna be more.

[news broadcast] Four people were in this house when officials say it was set

on fire last month. Luckily all got out in time.

Authorities now believe a serial arsonist is

responsible for this, and five other fires in

the Washington area.

[Derek] As the departments were looking back through the records,

they found more and more fires that fit this MO.

We had a history of a large amount of fires.

[news broadcast] Today's fire is one of 11 cases that have plagued the district

since March, similar in nature.

[Bill] We didn't know how long he was been doing this.

We were worried that we were getting in something

that's gonna be bad.

And it turned out, it was very bad.

[news broadcast] All of the fires have been set in the middle of the night in

occupied homes, including the fire at this home

that killed 86-year-old Lou Edna Jones.

[Carolyn] My mother was loving, funny. She was hard but fair.

She never met anybody that she didn't befriend.

It was four o'clock in the morning when I got a phone call

from my niece saying the house was on fire.

I immediately ran out the door.

[news broadcast] Neighbors and passers-by talked about hearing screams

at 4:30 this morning. Some ran to try to help.

[Carolyn] The fire was out by the time I got there.

At that point, my focus was, where's my mother?

I kept on calling her name.

We could hear her saying something.

Then after about 15 seconds,

we never did hear no more.

They could not get into her bedroom because

the fire was between them and her door.

She didn't have enough strength to open the window.

[news broadcast] The grandmother, 86-year-old Lou Edna Jones, died of smoke

inhalation and burns.

I was shocked to find out that it was an arsonist.

Who did this and why?

[whooshing and crackling]

[Carolyn] This is the backyard of the house I grew up in.

-[neighbor] How are you? -Good, how are you?

[neighbor] Good, good.

The pain from losing her, the way we lost her,

is horrific.

He took the most important thing in our lives away.

She was the glue that bound us all together.

Once it was discovered that we had one fatality,

the mindset was there's probably more.

If there are more deaths, we need to find out what

he's responsible for.

We're not dealing with a guy just setting fires now.

We're dealing with a guy who's a serial killer.

Then at that point, it was decided

to put a task force together.

Our mission was to catch this guy before any other people

got hurt or killed.

But it was very frustrating that we couldn't find any

patterns in any of these fires.

You've heard the term, "the five Ws and the H" --

Who, what, when, where, and why, and how.

The only thing we had was the how.

I mean, we knew how he was setting them.

We didn't have any of the Ws to put it together.

[Derek] We don't know this guy's next step.

We knew time was against us, and we had to get him

off the street.

His body count's rising, and we don't know where

it would stop.

We're trying to figure out the motive.

But when we found out, it was like, you got to be kidding us.

This guy was a flat out freak.

He was crazier than we could ever imagine.

Wow.

"My first fire was in 1982.

"I had taken a liking to this friend

"who I'd picked up one night.

"He and I had a lover's quarrel, and he got out of bed

"and left me.

"He told me I could not be number one in his life.

"That hurt.

"He lived with his Aunt Alice, and she was his favorite aunt.

"Not long after that, I ended up setting his Aunt Alice's house

"on fire.

He lived in the basement."

I don't even know what to say. He's a sick guy.

[Bill] At one point, he was doing like one a day.

We just couldn't come up with a conclusive pattern.

My fiance ended up getting the children out of the house.

I was in basically a state of shock.

[Derek] When you do not have information to go on,

the anxiety level is very high because you are basically

looking for a needle in a haystack.

I can't imagine who would want to do something like

this, you know?

The way this guy was setting fires in the front door,

we tried to figure out motives.

But it's very difficult to figure him out.

I don't think he cared what he set on fire.

I think he just liked burning stuff.

OK.

"There were different motives for setting all the fires.

"It could be personal, sex, jealousy, revenge,

"or just to see what damage fire can do.

"House fires were mostly personal.

"I wanted to live there or someday own a house like

that, and I knew I wouldn't."

Really?

If you like the house, you don't set it on fire.

You work hard to try to see if you can maybe one day own that

house or something like it.

Like, I don't know, his way of thinking is just...

...crazy.

We would try to get into his head, basically to try to

think the way he was thinking.

We didn't know he was attracted to men.

He would follow them home, then he would set

the house on fire.

"If I saw someone I thought was sexy, the reason to burn

"is I knew they would probably reject me,

"and I would start to feel sad and lonely.

"I want to see him come out,

"and I can, by setting the house on fire.

"It really gets me aroused.

"I fantasize over different ones, good stuff to

masturbate over."

It's [bleep] up. Excuse my French, it's -- it's --

This guy need to be put to death.

[Derek] "I was driving around,

"and I came up to Miss Lou Edna Jones' home, and saw her nephew

"looking out the front door and reaching into the mailbox.

"He caught my eye, and I wanted to see him again.

"And the only way to do that

is to set the house on fire."

[ominous tones playing]

That is sick.

Phew.

This is tough.

Guy's a monster.

This is something I've never seen before, to set fires for

sexual gratification. Just never seen it before.

Haven't seen it since.

It's been 20 years.

He used fire as a weapon, and that's sick.

That's a monster.

There was another way if he wanted to see my nephew,

knock on the door.

Nobody else mattered.

He only thought of his self-gratification.

It makes me want to be in the same room with him

alone... [laughing]

...for about 15 minutes.

I can make him really sorry.

[Bill] I think he thought he was invincible.

Most serial arsonists will not stop until they either get

arrested or they die in their own fire.

The longer it goes on, it could be multiple people

dying in fires.

We need to make an arrest immediately.

[Tynisa] "I knew the ATF were looking for the person setting fires.

"I'd hang around after each fire to watch it burn.

"That was part of doing the fires,

"to see the magnitude, the size, the sound of stuff

"popping and the smell of smoke.

"That was one of the fun parts.

"Driving back to the scene and mingling with the crowds

all the time, it was me."

We always ran into citizens with cameras

at every fire scene.

While we were photographing the scene, we would also

photograph the crowds to try to see if we could see

the same people showing up.

But we never could identify the same person twice.

Knowing that he was so close to us was really

frustrating afterwards.

"When I was out at night, I see DC police

"patrolling the street.

"I didn't pay much attention to it.

"The more I kept getting away, the less I thought

of being caught."

He was getting aroused by not being caught.

This was turning him on.

We got a call on a task force about an attempt arson fire.

It was a lady,

her three sons came home at two o'clock in the morning.

They see a guy sitting on her front porch when they pull

in the driveway.

Why is this guy sitting on her front porch?

[Derek] He's sitting there to get the nerve up, but that's when

he's transitioning to that monster.

He's giving himself that time to transition.

The three boys ran the guy off.

[Bill] He left the device sitting in the front of the house.

So they opened it up, looked at it, looks like gasoline.

This is weird.

They said, "Well, let's follow him, see where he goes."

He bolted, and he hid.

[Tynisa] "I still remember that very well, because that because that

"was a close call.

"I almost got caught, had I not ducked down on the ground when

"they circled around through the alley.

"What happened was, I just stayed on

"them people's porch too long.

That was a very narrow escape."

We were very excited because we have a eyewitness.

And we had not one, but three.

This is the break we've been waiting for.

[Bill] This was the first time we had an eyewitness that actually

talked to him.

It was like a boost of adrenaline for everybody on

the task force.

They described him as a middle-aged Black male,

had a little gray spot on his hair.

So now we know exactly what we're looking for.

But this sketch was done by state police.

It would be pretty hard, if you're looking at

this photo, to get a match on anybody.

I think he felt a lot safer looking at that sketch,

thinking, they're not gonna tie me and that

sketch together.

[Tynisa] "I was definitely aware of the police trying to

"figure out who I was.

"The sketches were posted in areas I frequent the most.

"They were in gas stations where I purchased gas

"on the way to setting a fire.

"Also, some were posted at the 7-Eleven store where

"I bought a lot of gallon jugs.

"It's also where the ATF Arson Task Force hung out at night.

"I walked right in while they were standing in front,

reading the paper."

That's crazy, looking right at the pictures going, "Yeah,

they don't have me."

The sketch didn't look like him.

He knew it, so he felt emboldened by it.

Yes...

...yeah, I remember this.

I would see these in the 7-Eleven and on

the telephone poles, and I would just keep walking, it --

It wasn't concerning me,

because he wasn't doing apartments.

It's crazy, because I was following the stories.

I just didn't expect to be a victim.

[Tynisa] I lived on the second floor,

two, three o'clock in the morning.

I'm in bed, I'm asleep.

Then I start hearing my smoke detectors go off.

[shrill beeping]

So I come out my bedroom, and I'm looking, and I can see

the smoke in my apartment.

I open the door.

And when I opened the door, all the black smoke,

I could see the fire.

And then reality tuned in.

I could hear the guy running down the stairs from upstairs

saying, "The building on fire, everybody wake up!

"Get out the building, the building's on fire!"

I can remember

the kids, the kids, my neighbors coming down

the stairs screaming and crying.

I can remember those sounds.

It was panic mode, you screaming, you yelling.

Just talking about it, I'm remembering the smells and how

I can still smell the scent of burnt plastic and rubber

in my clothes for the longest time.

Someone had already called 911.

You could hear the sirens starting to come.

No one was injured.

[distant siren wailing]

We get there, and we have gallon jugs in a common area of

an apartment building.

He put the device in the stairwell between the first

and the second floor, I think it was.

He was trying to cut off people's path to get out

of the building.

That told us that he was trying to kill people.

Most people, of course, were sleeping.

So easily, it could have been 50 or 60 people get killed.

[Derek] Here we are, we're escalating.

Up to the early part of 2004, he was setting single-family

dwellings on fire. This son of a bitch.

He wants a bigger bang for his buck now.

What's making this aggression happen?

[Tynisa] "Apartment fires were easy.

"People screaming and sometimes hanging out the windows was

a feeling of hurt and pain brought upon --"

[shaky inhale] I'm sorry.

It's messed up.

"I know just how they felt. And then I'll be all right.

"Because now those people are hurting,

and we're hurting together."

They should have gave him a death sentence.

They really should have.

Because he needs, he doesn't need to be here.

This guy is, he should have never been born.

This is the writing of a sick man.

And if he was sitting around watching that, that is just

extra sick and aroused while you're watching that.

[sighs]

That's going to stick in my head the rest of the night.

[Derek] We had no idea where he was gonna strike next,

his next target.

Still chasing our tail.

And what are we gonna do to catch him?

[Bill] We're in trouble.

What's he going to do next, hospitals?

I mean, daycare centers?

I mean, it was like, where's this guy gonna stop at?

[crackling]

[Derek] At first, he was setting fires at night

between the hours of 2:00 AM and 6:00 AM.

Now, all of a sudden, he starts setting fires in

the middle of the day.

In addition, we also was getting alerted for fires that

was in a total opposite direction in a different state.

[Bill] He was all over the map,

kept changing his patterns up.

When you get a major change, like he's changing

his motive of operation,

it just shows you how complex he was,

as far as trying to figure him out.

We banged our heads against the table every day.

What is going on here?

He's on to us, first thing we're thinking.

He knows where we're at, and he's trying to

throw us off.

"The police was the last thing on my mind while setting fires.

"The media said that I tried to change my MO.

"I will watch the evening news and how the reporters would

"think I'm throwing them off by setting fires in broad day

"and not night.

"On my off days from work, I get the urge to drive out to

"Virginia or Maryland just to see what's easy to set fire,

"realizing people are at work or away, but never thought

of the investigators."

[Bill] I don't believe that one bit.

He was definitely trying to throw us off.

So we knew we were getting close because he was changing

up his game.

[siren wailing]

We get called to a fire, and when we respond to

the fire, we find Marine Corps blue pants lying in the middle

of the street. That was very odd.

After they collected the pants, one of the investigators

thought, hey, take it down to NCIS in DC

and see if they can give us anything.

They had several auto fires in or around that area

and still had, I think, a videotape of a car

leaving the scene.

[Derek] They had a suspect.

They provided us the name of Thomas Sweatt.

That was a holy [bleep] moment.

That was the first time I ever heard the name of Thomas Sweatt.

What we found out was that he was the manager of

the Kentucky Fried Chicken down on Bladensburg Road, which is

like three blocks from my mother's house.

She went down there often.

So not -- more than likely, I'm sure they at least

spoke to each other.

Their paths had to have crossed.

I used to visit that KFC on a regular basis.

So I was like, did this guy follow me home?

He wasn't a bad-looking guy.

But then again, I don't know what an arsonist

is supposed to look like.

[Derek] We weren't popping champagne yet.

He didn't seem like the guy we were looking for.

[Bill] I ran through every system I had.

We were hoping to see something like, hey, he's been arrested

for arson before.

But he had like a traffic ticket way back when.

Nothing criminal.

[Derek] The type of guy he was during the day was a nice, meek,

quiet gentleman, manager of a store.

He did not seem like the guy that would be profiled as

a fire setter.

We're following him.

One of the vehicles called out and said he went into the deli.

I was assigned to go in the deli, keep eyes on him.

[bell jingling]

I walk into the deli, and there's Thomas Sweatt.

He's standing in the center of the store, looking up

at the menu.

As soon as the door closed, I took two steps, and he turns

around and looks at me.

Oh, [bleep], I think he knows who I am.

We're face to face,

and this is the first up-close look that I had of

the serial arsonist.

And I'm thinking the monster's looking at me, but he still

seemed a normal guy.

Standing there looking at him,

it's very frightening to know who he is and what he has done.

Because he fits right in, you don't expect him to be

the monster he is.

And those are the most dangerous ones,

because we trust them.

He turned, walked right past me, and walked out.

[door creaking]

I'm thinking, I blew the cover.

And I was a mess, because he looked at me

dead in my face. And he knows who we are.

The task force decided not to take any more risks,

and the decision was made to get him off the street.

[Bill] It was definitely risky.

We made an arrest, and we needed a confession.

The biggest problem for us is, if he didn't talk,

say one word to us,

it's over.

"On that beautiful morning of April 27, 2005, I left

"my apartment to go to work.

"Little did I know, I'd never return.

"As I backed out of the parking space, this black truck with

"tinted windows blocked me so I couldn't move.

"The driver got out and walked to my car and told me to put

"my hands up and that I was under arrest.

"Someone said, 'We have Mr. Sweatt in custody.'

"I kept saying to myself, 'This is it.

My life is over.'"

He doesn't deserve life. He doesn't deserve it.

And Lord, forgive me.

That's very mean, but he doesn't deserve it.

Going into the interrogation, we want to give them

the impression that we had more information on him than we did.

Sweatt walks in, there are boxes of case files

sitting there in front of him.

A lot of the boxes were just for show.

[Bill] He's going to look and see his name on a box

and think that, "Oh my god, this is gonna be bad for me."

And it worked.

One of the things that we had was a map of all the fires.

That was blown up to put on the easel for him to see,

these is the cases that we have you linked to.

Once he saw the map, he realized that he was caught.

[Tynisa, reading] "When I sat down,

"he showed me this huge map of all the fires.

"When I saw all those names and places of fires, I broke

"down in pride, because I recognized every one of them.

"I confessed, because I couldn't lie.

I knew that was the end for me."

Sweatt admitted to doing over 350 fires, which was

totally mind-boggling.

Nobody had any idea it was going to be over 350 fires.

It was like, you gotta be kidding me.

and he had unbelievable detail.

When he started admitting to fires, it was just shocking.

Some of these fires going back as far as the '80s,

and they were fire fatalities.

So we learned about two additional people died in

a fire back in 1985.

I can't believe I'm seeing this.

I can't believe this is happening.

He committed murder 30 years ago

and was able to get away with it.

Everybody sat there with their jaw dropped.

They're thinking, you don't look like a serial

killer or a serial arsonist.

This looks like the average Joe.

That's how he got away with it for so long, because

he didn't look like that.

[Thomas Sweatt speaking]

He's not sorry. He's sorry he got caught.

If you're sorry, you only do it one time, and you don't do it

again, because you're sorry.

You don't repeatedly do it again.

He was explaining one of the fires he set,

and we couldn't see it on the screen

but we heard his attorney said,

"Stop that, put it away."

We didn't know what he was doing.

Once we had a break, we found that he was actually started

to masturbate.

When we saw that, we were like,

Jesus, look, I mean, he did what in front of --

Like, [bleep].

That was shocking.

You sitting there aroused feeling some type of --

some sense of pleasure.

I'm trying to control my anger. I'm sorry, um...

...this guy is sick. This guy is sick.

He's really sick. I just got instantly angry.

I'm sorry.

[Thomas Sweatt speaking]

You're right, there are no excuses for your demons.

He feels so sorry for her family?

Not acceptable.

He wished he couldn't have done it?

No, he knew he should not have done it,

but that was the decision that he made.

Now, I am a forgiving person,

but there's a difference between

forgiving and forgetting.

Forgiveness and justice are different.

[Derek] We found a large amount of videotapes in his home,

hundreds.

He would call military recruiters and set up

appointment for his make-believe nephew.

The reason he would do this is to lure the recruiters into

his home, and once they were in his home he would make

sexual advances at them.

[Tynisa] "I had the hatchet in the closet

"to hit him 'side the head as

"he was leaving but couldn't get the nerve.

"He was really a perfect candidate to have sex with

and then set him on fire."

I don't even know what to say. This is sick.

[Derek] He was always progressing,

and it shows that we don't know

where he'd have stopped or if he ever would have stopped.

Some of the other tapes were full of videos of

Metro bus drivers.

We didn't understand what was going on at that point.

"I had planned to step up the fires to Metro buses with

"the drivers driving.

"Whatever plan I came up with, it had to be very quick

"and I needed a way off the bus when I set him on fire.

"It would take some nerve, but when I want a fire,

"be it person, place, or thing, I won't rest until

it happens, no matter what the risk."

That's straight evil.

To set a person on fire, that's an evil,

demented person.

[Bill] He was crazier than we could ever imagine.

There's a lot of lucky Metro bus drivers walking around

to this day because we got him.

Justice was not served because my tax dollars are still going

to feed this man every day.

It's not acceptable to me.

I'd like to see him shot in both knees, doused in gasoline,

strike a match, and walk away.

I would have rather seen him had a death penalty.

I do believe he deserved it.

I don't know. That's the scary part.

"You ask if I still have urges to set fires.

"I believe those feelings will never leave me and will be with

me for the remaining days I have on this earth."

Oh, Jesus Christ.

That is crazy.

[Tynisa] "There are moments during the course of each day

"when I would like to set an inmate on fire and get a rush.

"Even inside these walls, I see handsome young men who have

"been in the military, and I spend nights fantasizing

"of what it would be like to have sex with a soldier,

"a Marine, or even a sailor

then set him on fire. Pretty crazy."

I don't really agree with the death penalty,

but he's one to deserve it.

He's a very scary person.

I knew he was a sick man.

I didn't know he was as sick as I learned today.

I didn't know that he was a predator.

He will not be satisfied until he sets a human on fire.

That's what he wants to do.

"As time continues to fly past so quickly, I often wonder,

how will I be remembered?" [laughs] He's unforgettable.

He did succeed at that.

[Bill] I consider Sweatt a serial killer, not an arsonist.

And obviously, from reading a few of the letters, that,

he's still not rehabilitated.

It's scary to think that there was people like Sweatt

in this world.

Thomas Sweatt, to me, is an individual that

was a monster.

He had no regards for anyone else but himself.

serial arsonist, serial killer,

Thomas Sweatt was a dangerous man.

♪♪

[gunfire blasts]

Shots fired! Shots fired!

If I was a good mother he wouldn't be holding a hostage.

[over radio] Officer has been hit! Officer has been hit!

I was essentiallly passing out from the blood loss.

There wasn't just a hostage situation.

Something else was going on.

[rapid gun fire]