Rio Rancho arsonist charged in church fire
Suspect pleaded guilty in 2016 fires
Authorities believe the Rio Rancho arsonist has struck again.
According to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court, Gordon Schuler, 23, the man charged in connection with a fire set at a Rio Rancho church Monday morning, was a suspect in “multiple arsons from the summer of 2016.” He had pleaded guilty in that case and had recently been released from jail and was on probation, according to court records.
About 5 a.m. Monday, a fire department crew leaving Presbyterian Rust Medical Center spotted the smoke and flames nearby. They alerted firefighters who responded to the blaze at the Peace Lutheran Church on the 2800 block of Cabezon SE.
Firefighters extinguished the blaze but said the church had extensive fire and smoke damage. Agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were called to assist with the investigation.
Suspicions immediately fell upon Schuler, who had been a suspect in multiple arsons last year.
Investigators talked to nearby businesses that had reported break-ins earlier in the morning and had video surveillance of Schuler walking back and forth in their courtyard wearing a backpack and carrying a hammer, according to the complaint. When the officers searched the burned church they found a backpack and a hammer that appeared to be the same ones seen in the video.
Rio Rancho police picked up Schuler on a probation violation Tuesday.
He faces federal charges because the church donates 2 percent of its monthly income to an evangelical Lutheran group out of Wisconsin, so the fire affected interstate commerce, according to the complaint.
Court records show that Schuler pleaded guilty to arson, residential burglary and criminal damage to property in March for setting fire to at least one abandoned house in a Rio Rancho neighborhood in August 2016.
Although the Rio Rancho Police Department had been investigating several suspicious fires that broke out within a quarter mile of each other around that time, Schuler admitted to being at the scene of only one of the fires, according to court documents.
When they served a search warrant on his phone for the 2016 case, they found he had been searching the internet for television news stories about the “Rio Rancho arsonist.”
No motive was given for any of the fires.