PHOENIX — When some partly built luxury houses at the desert's edge in Phoenix started going up in flames three years ago, there were twinges of sympathy for a group that claimed to be setting the fires to halt the relentless destruction of open spaces. The self-proclaimed eco-terrorists even sent letters to local news organizations warning, "If you build, we will burn."
But what had seemed a tale of would-be folk heroes now appears to be a tale of one man's psychological distress. Last week, a federal grand jury indicted not a radical environmentalist but Mark Warren Sands, a deeply religious 50-year-old marketing consultant, former Utahn, family man and soccer referee.
Federal prosecutors said Sands had burned 11 houses for his own twisted reasons and then had fabricated the secret organization, Coalition to Save the Preserves, merely to camouflage his actions.
Sands' troubles deepened in federal court here Friday when a magistrate delayed for a second time a decision on granting him bail, leaving Sands, a onetime spokesman for the state's Department of Education and a former spokesman for Salt Lake area hospitals, to shuffle out of the courtroom in a green jumpsuit, chains around his waist and ankles, the laces removed from his flopping high-top sneakers.
Sands has pleaded not guilty to the 22 felony counts of arson and extortion in the indictment. Friday's action came as one of his closest friends, who had secretly taped a startling confession to the crimes during a hike in the Grand Canyon earlier this month, said in an interview that Sands had not only acknowledged setting the fires but had also conceded that he was driven by dark inner demons and not a cause.
The friend, Warren Jerrems, an accountant who knew Sands through church activities, said he had agreed to be secretly wired by federal agents, thinking, perhaps hoping, he conceded, that it might exonerate his friend.
But Sands had confessed, he said, to terrible dreams in which he believed that he was directed to burn a house near his own and then had burned some other homes under construction farther away to distract attention from himself.
"I was initially attempting to find the truth when I agreed to do this," said Jerrems, who admitted having mixed feelings at the role he had played in putting Sands behind bars. "I didn't know what the truth was. There's obviously a Mike Sands people don't know."
He added, "I called him my friend for a couple of years, and I did not know what he was doing at all."
The seemingly well-planned fires left the homes, most of them on the rocky desert edges of prosperous suburban enclaves, in ruins but caused no injuries. This contributed to the sense among some people that the fires, which police have estimated caused $5 million in damage, were set for a worthwhile environmental cause.
After Sands was arrested and the details of his secretly taped confession were released in court, environmentalists here said his actions might have done more to undermine their cause than support it and might have even raised questions in the public mind about their motives and commitment to environmental causes.
"It seems to me that people who do this do it because they like to see things burn," said Sandy Bahr, a conservation director with the Arizona chapter of the Sierra Club. "It just detracts from the important work environmentalists in this state are engaged in."
Another activist, Carla (she uses no last name), the executive director of the McDowell Sonoran Land Trust in Scottsdale, added that the northern suburbs where the houses were burned were not even in areas environmentalists wanted to protect. All of the homes burned were on private land.
"What happened really has nothing to do with land preservation," she said. "We still have areas where there are battles to be fought, but not those areas."
Sand's former Utah co-workers were also perplexed. He worked at University Hospital from 1978 to 1982, and subsequently was spokesman for LDS Hospital from 1983 to 1984.
"I didn't see anything strange or different about him," said John Dwan, the current University Hospital spokesman, who once worked with Sands. And Sands had never expressed opinions about destruction of the environment, said Anne Brillinger, U. public affairs director.
The fires began several years ago at a construction site a short stroll from the neat beige stucco home of Sands, a part-time marriage counselor at his church and a grandfather. One street wanders a few dozen yards into the desert behind the neighborhood, alongside the Phoenix Mountain Preserve, and nestled in its rises and dips are some large homes.
One night, a house under construction burned to the ground. When the developer started to rebuild it, it was burned again. Joseph Welty, the assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the case, said in court that Sands was taped in the recording by Jerrems admitting to having set those fires.
" I've had several dreams about that house behind me,' " Welty quoted Sands as saying. " 'They were terrifying dreams. They were dreams about setting it on fire. One night I did.' "
The prosecutor said Sands went on to say he burned the house a second time out of anger that the developer had tried to rebuild it, despite the warnings. He then torched the third house, in a different neighborhood, to draw attention away from the neighborhood where he lived, and by the time he had set the fourth fire, the dark impulse had mushroomed into a "campaign," Welty said.
Welty said the letters Sands is accused of sending to news organizations taking credit for the fires also provided damning evidence. He said the letters contained DNA matching Sands'.
Some of the letters claimed a divine justification, and included biblical-sounding quotes. "Warning! Thou shalt not desecrate God's creation," one began. It added: "We won't hurt neighbors or endanger firefighters. But God's work has to be done."
Sands was initially arrested on April 20, shortly after midnight, when he was spotted writing a note, supposedly from the preservation coalition, on a sign at one of the houses that had been set on fire. The police suspected that they had the arsonist, and held him for more than 12 hours, but ultimately released him. Once they had the DNA evidence and the secret tape recording, they arrested him again.
If convicted on all the charges, Sands could be sentenced to more than 100 years in jail.
"Half of me is very ashamed that I lied to him," Jerrems said, adding, however, that the crimes had to be stopped.
One reason Sands was not released Friday was that none of his friends were able to take responsibility for him if he was released into home detention. Jerrems said that if he were offered the chance, he would have done it.
"It's still hard to believe, and I'd like to be with him for his last few days of freedom," Jerrems said.
CONTRIBUTING: Deseret News