ALBUQUERQUE -- A former preacher distraught when his married lover broke off their eight-year affair could be sentenced to 15 years in prison for torching the LDS ward where she was the organist.
Walter Gene Grassie, 49, was convicted Tuesday of setting a fire that caused $2.5 million in damage to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Roswell. Sentencing was set for June."Here's a man who's successful, at the top of his whole life -- and then he just loses it," prosecutor Bob Gorence said.
The prosecution said Grassie, a former Church of Christ minister, was embittered against LDS doctrine because he believed Sharlene Jensen's faith prevented her from leaving her husband.
Jensen testified Grassie seemed to suffer a breakdown after she told him she was breaking off the relationship.
The defense said prosecutors had presented evidence of Grassie's emotional response to the breakup but no real evidence that he committed the arson.
"The government wishes for you to assume Gene Grassie guilty. . . . It's like 'Help us, here -- fill in the gaps for us,' " defense attorney Michael Stout said in closing arguments.
"Somewhere along the line you have to show evidence of the crime itself," he said.
Besides burning the Roswell church, Grassie was convicted of vandalism at LDS churches in Alto, Alamogordo and Artesia and of burning a car belonging to Jensen's son. Prosecutors said Grassie harassed the Jensens, painting graffiti insulting Sharlene Jensen and writing a letter to her husband, in hopes of breaking up the marriage.