The Seattle Times
SEATTLE — The state Court of Appeals on Monday ruled that arsonist Martin Pang, who is serving a 20-year sentence for setting a warehouse fire that killed four Seattle firefighters in 1995, must pay nearly $1 million in restitution and fines.
Pang, 59, sought to forgo paying the legal financial obligations imposed by a judge after he pleaded guilty to four counts of manslaughter and was sentenced in 1998.
Pang contended, in his appeal, that an initial 10-year collection period expired when King County Superior Court didn’t formally give notice that the period would be extended, according to an appellate- court opinion.
Both the appellate court and the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office agree that the 10-year span Pang has to pay the restitution and other obligations will not begin until he is released from prison.
State Department of Corrections spokesman Andrew Garber said Monday that Pang is scheduled to be released from the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla in December 2018.
On Jan. 5,1995, Pang torched a Chinatown International District building owned by his parents in a fire that prosecutors contend was set so Pang could collect insurance money.
Lt. Walter Kilgore, Lt. Gregory Shoemaker and firefighters Randall Terlicker and James Brown were killed in what remains the Seattle Fire Department’s deadliest fire.
When Pang was sentenced in 1998, then-Superior Court Judge Larry A. Jordan ordered that he pay relatives of the four firefighters, as well as other people, businesses and city agencies impacted by the blaze, slightly more than $956,000 in restitution.
Jordan also ordered Pang to pay the King County Sheriff’s Office and the city of Seattle more than $28,000 to compensate them for the cost of extraditing him from Brazil, where he had fled shortly after the blaze.
While in prison, Pang became the focus of a Seattle police investigation.
Authorities said he was positioning himself for an after-prison “life of luxury” through two schemes — one to steal the identities of witnesses against him, and a second to siphon millions of dollars from the Tulalip Resort Casino.
Seattle police, in 2013, said that Pang engineered an elaborate identity-fraud scheme with an alleged accomplice on the outside, looking to steal the identities of firefighters, police officers and witnesses who played a role in his criminal case. Pang, police said, planned to use the money upon his release to flee to Brazil and live in luxury.
Police said that Pang had birth dates and Social Security numbers of fire and police personnel from training records that were included in discovery materials turned over by prosecutors as part of the manslaughter case. State law has since changed, allowing agencies to redact Social Security numbers from such records.
KING-TV reported that Pang lost 76 days of “good time” credit and wound up in a harsher prison environment as a result of the investigation.
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