By Laura Zuckerman
Idaho Falls Post Register (Idaho)
Copyright 2006 The Post Register
All Rights Reserved
SALMON, Idaho — A federal firefighter recently convicted of arson confessed in a court hearing Thursday to starting two additional fires.
As part of a plea deal, Levi Miller said he used homemade ignition devices to start blazes on public land north of Salmon in August 2003, one in a popular recreation area and another along a federal highway.
In exchange for guilty pleas for the two counts of arson and for Miller pledging to pay an undetermined amount in restitution, Lemhi County Prosecutor Bruce Withers dropped an additional arson charge against Miller connected to a third wildfire in 2003.
The former firefighter with the Bureau of Land Management faces up to 10 years in prison and a maximum fine of $50,000 for each of the felonies.
Miller, 22, has been the target of local and federal arson investigations since August, when authorities overheard a taped telephone conversation in which he persuaded a teenage girl to set aflame a half-acre of brush near a subdivision outside Salmon.
Miller, who was paid hourly by the BLM to fight fires, told authorities he wanted to make money extinguishing the fire near the Smedley subdivision. He pleaded guilty in September to solicitation of arson for financial gain, a crime that carries a maximum prison sentence of 121/2 years.
Miller told Lemhi County Deputy Terry Stratton, a U.S. Forest Service investigator and other law enforcement officials that he set the 2003 blazes because he was “bored and wanted to fight fires.”
At his arraignment Thursday, 7th District Judge James Herndon asked Miller to describe his criminal actions.
“I started the fire at Wagonhammer Gulch,” Miller said of the Aug. 15, 2003, fire that he ignited with the aid of charcoal briquettes. “That was about it.”
Describing a second fire 13 days later off U.S. Highway 93 North, about 20 miles from Salmon, Miller said, “It was the same type of deal.”
Miller and two other firefighters with the 10-member BLM crew in Salmon were fired shortly after investigators launched a probe of the subdivision fire.