By Linda Cicoira
November 3, 2013
Arsonist Charles Robert Smith III told police he deliberately set dozens of fires in Accomack County because he has problems with impotency and feared his fiancée would break off their relationship if he didn’t do as she directed.
“I love the fire service,” the former fire company captain continued. “It’s just a problem I had and it’s my way of dealing with it … I wish I was back on drugs. That way, I’d have an excuse.”
“I think this was a stress reliever the way it came about,” Smith, also known as Charlie Applegate, 38, said. “I thought it was a joke at first (when she mentioned setting fires). We were just out riding … she just came out of her mouth with it … I just started laughing and then I figured out she was for real.”
Smith was referring to 40-year-old Tonya Susan Bundick. The two lived together on Matthews Road in Hopeton when they were arrested on April 1 just after a fire was started on Airport Drive near Melfa. Smith pleaded guilty to 67 arsons and a count of conspiracy to commit arson at a trial on Oct. 31. Bundick is charged with one count each of arson and conspiracy and has yet to be tried.
The auto body shop owner said he never used a flashlight when he went through woods and fields or while in the houses. “That would be a dead giveaway,” Smith noted. “In the fire academy they taught you how to just feel … I wore a black mask every time.” He said Bundick did use a flashlight for the fires she set.
“I know I was wrong in the beginning for driving but … after she did that first one, it just seemed like some of her problems went away. I’d basically do anything for her … I’ve had a lot of sleepless nights over this,” Smith continued.
“We’ve been right there with ya,” Accomack Sheriff Todd Godwin couldn’t help replying to Smith’s last comment.
Godwin and Special Agent Robert F. Barnes Jr. of the State Police interrogated Smith just after his arrest. In recordings included in evidence at Smith’s arson trial last week, the defendant said the spree started with revenge graffiti that he and Bundick spray-painted across roads, signs and buildings in the area.
Those scrawls escalated to arsons, with Bundick setting the first of nearly six-dozen fires and him taking over the job because she almost got caught, Smith disclosed.
Smith said the only night he enjoyed committing arson was when he lit up the former Whispering Pines Motel in Tasley, which was not far from his shop. “That was only because I’d always wanted to see that place burn.” He said he went in a door that was open in the back of the building and set “probably 40 or 50 mattresses” and “some old chairs” ablaze.
Smith said the fire-starting excursions always included a trip to Walmart in Onley.
“I don’t know why people have to paint” over the graffiti that seemed to cover every available spot from the Maryland state line to Northampton County in the summer of 2012, Smith said. “I just used some cheap paint … it was spray paint but it costs like 80 cent … you can take a scrub brush and soap and water and it comes right off.”
The graffiti described Jay Floyd of the Parksley area as a “narc,” and was done because Floyd and his girlfriend, Danielle, “were constantly talking … behind my back,” said Smith. “Putting me down and telling how no count I was” to Bundick.
Ironically, “they’re the ones who set me up with her,” he said. “When I got with her I thought we were just a booty call,” Smith recalled. “I tried not to (fall in love with her) for about eight months … I was doing everything wrong just to try to get her to get the hell away from me because the ones I love the most are the ones I always end up hurting and they’re the ones who hurt me the worst.”
The couple hasn’t been charged with graffiti-related offenses.
Smith may be sentenced as early as December and could face up to 584 years in prison and fines of more than $5.6 million. His lawyer noted that even if he got a year for each offense he wouldn’t outlive his terms.
Evidence involved four DVDs of his confession and a list of incidents that were compiled by Commonwealth’s Attorney Gary Agar and Smith’s lawyer. The discs and documents were available the next day.
“Nobody else has been with us,” Smith said. “I stay on the phone with her the whole time. Basically when I got to them (the sites), I’d call her or she’d call me unless we got stuck where we couldn’t get a signal.” Then he would wait for a horn to blow.
“Never once did we ride around and look” for houses to burn, Smith told police. “We rode around looking for where the cops were.” However, later in the videos, he confessed that on the last night, he wanted to catch fire to an old building near the State Police barracks. Bundick chose the place on Airport Drive, which was fire number 67 in the list of charges.
“I knew we were busted before we did it,” Smith said of the last arson. “Too many cars. It was a dead giveaway. I even told her that. I said, ‘This place is a setup.’ She’s a lot smarter than me and she said that it wasn’t … that I was imagining things.”
In all, there were more than 80 suspicious fires reported in about five months. Smith said he and Bundick were not responsible for fires in chicken houses, Exmore, Horntown, Greenbackville or New Church. “I think some … was (for the) insurance,” he said of those incidents.
Bundick drove and he ignited the structures after a close call they had with the 14th fire on Drummond Lane in Tasley, Smith said. “I was going nuts that night waiting at Colleen’s” (the dentist’s office on nearby Lankford Highway). The incident was near the Department of Forestry where Arson Investigator Glen Neal has an office. Local folks speculated the fire was set to ridicule police.
In that case, Smith reported, Bundick was unable to get back to the vehicle before officers arrived, but she eventually did manage to leave undetected.
“I was hoping after that night it was the end,” Smith added. “She don’t express herself very well … whenever she was out there doing that stuff she would talk about her problems. It would actually mellow her out.”
Smith told Godwin and Barnes that the fires were not because of issues with police or fire companies. However, he noted that he quit the Tasley Fire Company after serving for 8½ years as an officer because of the chief. “Outside the fire company I can get along with him great … either I was going to catch an assault and battery against him … or just stop running” calls. So Smith quit.
There were no fires from Dec. 24, 2012, to Jan. 20, 2013. We “stopped because of the kids. You know what this is going to do to them,” Smith said.
The first fire in the arson series was on Nov. 12. However, Smith admitted the “real” beginning involved a house in Lee Mont where Bundick’s father grew up.
Smith said delinquent taxes caused the property to be sold. Bundick owned it with two other family members and wanted it torched if she couldn’t have it. “I just couldn’t come up with the money,” he said.
Smith said he tried to burn down a house in Tasley because he was mad about the way the owner, who was supposed to be his friend, talked to Bundick on Facebook. “I made sure he wasn’t home.”
Smith said he set another fire at the home of a former boyfriend of Bundick’s. “I pondered on that one for months … she was just dead set.”
“I never wanted to hurt nobody,” Smith said. Even at the boyfriend’s house, Smith said they made sure no one was home. “We rode by his house I don’t know how many times and then we watched them leave … we were actually on our way home and (he) had to walk out … and leave.” Smith said sometimes when his fiancée wanted him to burn a place, he would “make up some kind of an excuse why I couldn’t do it.”
He said neither he nor Bundick was involved with the fire at Ah’s Kitchen near Pungoteague. “Were weren’t trying to take someone’s business.” And “we stayed away from Sanford and Saxis because Bundick contended, ‘It’s such a tight-knit community.’ ”
Smith gave details of a fire at the “old Belote house” on Lankford Highway beside Blue Crow Antique Mall near Painter. “I hiked in from the pond … oh God I cut myself that night.” He confessed to going to an opening at the back of the house and reaching in and stuffing rags on top of the ductwork.
When he burned an abandoned structure on Holland Road, “it took me 15 minutes” to get to the house. “I thought I could just walk down the railroad tracks … I had to climb up trees and over branches to get over the ditches.” Another time, he said, he got lost in the woods when he went to set a fire near Withams.
For the blaze in a shed on Nelsonia Road, “I hiked in quite a ways,” Smith said, explaining that Bundick dropped him off at the intersection of Fletcher Road “all the way on the other side of that field.” He “just lit some cardboard.” On the way in and out, “I just kept laying down when I saw a car.”
Smith said Bundick dropped him off on the highway so he could burn a house on Ticktown Road. “I almost broke my leg … there was a fence or something I tripped over … I dropped a lighter. You can go look for it,” he told the officers.
To burn down a house on Redwood Road, Bundick dropped him off in front. “I thought I got busted that night … I accidentally ran out in front of a car.”
One of the first fires was in a neighbor’s two-car garage with chicken coops on Matthews Road. He repeatedly hit the building with a plastic pipe to make sure there weren’t any chickens inside. “I went back there five times to get that lit.” Smith said Bundick was angry because the owner made negative comments about her children.
“More than likely she’s going to pin this all on me and I’m fine with that,” he said. “I could have stopped from day one,” he laughed.
A big house that served as Hungar Haven restaurant in the 1980s and later as Mallard’s was lit with empty beer boxes in the pump house. This act was also for revenge. Smith said he thought Johnnie Mo still owned the building and he had a grievance with him.
Smith also admitted setting fire to a house Anita Johnson was renovating on Front Street in Accomac. Smith said Bundick dropped him off on Back Street. “There were three rows of shelves … I just threw a (lit) rag on that.” Smith said he remembered fighting a fire near there.
For a building on Whites Crossing Road, Smith used leaves to set the fire.
Agent Barnes said police thought a woman lit the large two-story house fire on Church Road behind the former BaySys mansion. But Smith insisted he did it. “It’s God’s honest truth. I went in the back door … she dropped me off.”
He blamed the fire at Leatherbury United Methodist Church in Deep Creek on Bundick.
Asked why a church was chosen, Smith replied, “Your guess is as good as mine. I honestly do not know … I wasn’t the mastermind of this… trust me I would have been busted” sooner.
Smith said he did not get sexual gratification from setting the fires. “I did it all for the wrong reasons. I never got a thrill out of this.”
He also swore that he never used an accelerant but toward the end of the confession he admitted to using a mixture of motor oil and citronella fuel at a house on Drummondtown Road near Wachapreague. “I did bring a rag for every one of them, but I just didn’t always use it.”
The former grader shed that belongs to Winter Cullen in Mappsburg went up after Smith lit the contents of a bushel basket. Bundick dropped him off on Seaside Road, he said.
During the interrogation, Smith repeatedly asked if he could see Bundick. He also was concerned about more than $300 of his that was left in their van. “It’s actually mine but I just wondered if we could split it,” he said. Smith deferred questions about where her children would go to Bundick.
Asked by 1st Sgt. J.P. Koushel what police could have done differently, Smith replied, “I think you all did a great job, to be honest.” Smith said if his firefighter brother had gotten hurt because of one of the fires, he probably would have shot himself.
Smith said he didn’t keep notes or newspaper articles of the fires. He got kicked off an arson site on Facebook for getting mad at someone who said Bundick “was nothing but a joke.” Smith said, “She watched the news … most of the time when a special news bulletin came on. … I’d go make a snack.”
Smith used cars that belonged to his customers during the spree, but did not elaborate about it in the interview.
“Are you glad that we caught you?” Godwin asked Smith
“No, I’m not because I was supposed to get married” in May, Smith answered. “I know where I’m going” now, he said. Smith is not a stranger to prison. Between lockups and drug rehabilitation when he was in his 20s, he served about eight years for forgery, burglary and bad-check offenses.
Smith fidgeted, shook his legs and often laughed loudly while being questioned. He also smoked cigarettes continuously and while handcuffed got a lighter out of his pocket to light up.
“I just have a bad feeling when I go in there (Accomack Jail) if I set any of (their) houses on fire,” Smith said. Godwin offered to send him to Eastern Shore Regional Jail in Eastville, but Smith didn’t want to go there either.
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