By Aaron Falk
The Salt Lake Tribune
SALT LAKE CITY — Wilbert Edward Fike Jr. should be released from the Salt Lake County jail sometime in early 2014. When that day comes, the 54-year-old man hopes he has reformed.
Each time Fike has walked free from the jail in recent years, he has made his way back to Memory Grove park, to a dry patch of weeds, with a lighter in hand.
“I’m not entirely sure why I commit these crimes,” said Fike, who is serving a 1½-year sentence for misdemeanor arson convictions after starting a fire in the Salt Lake City park in July. “That’s part of what I get to figure out here.”
In all, Fike said he’s started about a dozen fires in Memory Grove and near the Capitol since 2006.
“It doesn’t make me feel better,” the man told The Salt Lake Tribune in a jailhouse interview Friday. “It’s not my idea of a perfect day. It’s not my passion in life.”
He had been out of jail for a month (after serving a sentence for starting a fire in the park the previous summer) and could not find work. He was staying in a homeless shelter and living on food stamps.
On the morning of July 5, he bought chocolate milk from a Salt Lake City convenience store and by the time he had finished drinking it, Fike said he had decided to start a fire. He went to another convenience store and bought a lighter.
He had a copy of a City Weekly newspaper and he went to Memory Grove.
The park is around the corner from the apartment building he once lived in on South Temple.
“I like to walk through that area,” he said. “It’s beautiful.”
As firefighters extinguished the half-acre blaze near East Capitol Boulevard, Fike was having breakfast at a downtown JB’s Restaurant. Afterward, he bought a coffee at McDonald’s and went to the police station to confess.
“I have questions myself [about why I did it] and I was there,” he said.
Bespectacled and dressed in a yellow jail uniform, Fike could only say that the fires were expressions of frustration and anger.
“I tried to work my way back into society, and it didn’t really happen too well,” he said. “Sometimes I make unwise choices when I get frustrated.”
He said he doesn’t want to damage buildings or hurt anyone with his fires, and he apologized for setting the fires.
“I apologize to anyone that uses that area,” he said.
Fike likened his pattern to an a relapsing alcoholic.
“That’s not really me,” he said. “I want to be a Christian kind of guy. Do unto others as I’d want them to do. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to put that into practice. But there’s still time. ... I know what I did. I’ve got a year and a half to figure out an alternative. I’m not going to be a serial arsonist forever.”
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