By Jamie Satterfield
The Knoxville News-Sentinel
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — A firebug who vexed U.S. Forest Service agents for decades is training them on fire-setting tricks. Testimony at a hearing Thursday revealed that John Wesley Irons, who has confessed to setting dozens of fires in the Cherokee National Forest, was allowed to leave his jail cell twice to demonstrate — on camera — his arsonist skills.
Irons, 64, will in fact be the star of the Forest Service’s newest training video.
Now, Irons could go free for good.
Citing his “somewhat unique” level of cooperation, U.S. District Judge Tom Varlan cut Irons’ sentence from a mandatory minimum of seven years to five for his guilty plea earlier this year to setting two fires in the Black Mountain area of the Cherokee National Forest in March 2007 that claimed a total of 26 acres of timber.
“He spent hours with government agents,” Varlan noted. “The defendant’s assistance to law enforcement has been somewhat unique and helpful to the government. The benefit will be immediate and valuable to arson investigators.”
Defense attorney Gregory P. Isaacs said Irons has already served the lion’s share of his prison term while awaiting sentencing. U.S. Forest Service agent Kevin Bishop testified that a training video featuring a convicted firebug is a first for the agency. Irons also provided agents with tips on bear poachers, guides for illegal hunting trips on federal land and an agent who was helping thieves steal timber from the Cherokee National Forest, Bishop said.
Irons’ plea to just two fires was the product of pretrial victories by Isaacs and negotiations with Assistant U.S. Attorney Ed Schmutzer. Just how many fires Irons may have lit remains a mystery. At one time, he confessed to setting fires since he was a teenager, torching not only forest timber but houses, buildings and even the occupied home of a Forest Service agent.
For more than a decade, the Forest Service suspected Irons was a dangerous arsonist.
Desperate to prove it, the agency in 2007 set in motion a controversial ruse in which Forest Service agent Jane Wright befriended Irons. Fellow agents then arrested both Irons and Wright, getting a confession from Irons by encouraging him to “save Jane” from prosecution. They took the handcuffed pair to a grassy riverbank, where Irons whispered sweet nothings to Wright and, at one point, rolled his body between Wright and a fellow agent to protect her.
The agents also used Irons’ love for his estranged wife against him, threatening to arrest her, too, although she was already working as an informant for them.
In a rare pretrial victory, Isaacs persuaded U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Guyton to toss out the confession. Although Schmutzer still had a statement from Irons made a day after the “save Jane” ruse, the blow forced him to the bargaining table.
Isaacs argued Thursday that Irons’ role as firebug instructor deserved a bigger break than Schmutzer was offering, though. Schmutzer had urged a 68-month sentence.
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