Woman labeled ‘danger to others’ gets state term for arson

WEST CHESTER >> Declaring that her unpredictable emotional swings — from intense love to passionate anger — left her a threat to the community, a Common Pleas Court judge on Wednesday sentenced a Devon woman to state prison for setting her inlaws’ basement on fire in a twisted attempt to reunite her broken family.

“You clearly are in need of intensive mental health treatment,” Judge Jeffrey Sommer told Olivia Gardenhour Chiles at the conclusion of her sentencing hearing, at which she tearfully apologized to her inlaws, seated in the courtroom. “And I do not want to warehouse you in state prison. I don’t think that is to anyone’s benefit.”

But Sommer noted that those who have interviewed her for psychological treatment had spoken of her manipulative behavior, intentional dishonesty, and a tendency to “blame others so you can get your way.” At times she will express affection for someone, only later to lash out at them, he said they reported. “You seem to swing from one to another,” the judge said.

The judge said he needed to assure Chiles’ in-laws and other family members that they “could sleep safely at night” by keeping her at bay. “You are clearly a danger to others, including your family.”

Sommer sentenced Chiles to 2½ to five years in state prison, followed by five years of probation and mental health treatment. He also ordered that she have no contact with her inlaws, Stephen Sr. and Deborah Chiles, for the length of her sentence.

Chiles admitted to setting fire to a gas can she brought to the basement of her in-laws’ carriage house on Piqua Circle in the Berwyn section of Easttown, but contended at the trial in August before Sommer that she had no intention of harming anyone. Instead, she said she had waited until she thought her in-laws, as well as her estranged husband and son who lived in the house at the time, were not at home before setting the blaze.

“I am so sorry,” Chiles told her in-laws, who were seated a few feet away in the front row of Sommer’s courtroom with other family members and friends during the sentencing proceeding. “I love you both so very, very much. I really do. You are my family.”

In a letter she wrote to the judge which he read from the bench, Chiles referenced her plan to set the fire so that her husband, Stephen Chiles Jr., and son, would be forced to move back to her house, as well as making her in-laws need shelter.

“I thought that if I could just do a little damage to (her in-laws) home, they would come live with Steve and I and we would be a family again,” she said at her trial. “That was my state of mind at the time. Now, it sounds so stupid.”

In her letter, Chiles said she had stopped taking her medications at the time and had become “completely unstable. I made an irrational and impulsive decision.

“There is nothing I would like more than to take back this crime,” Chiles wrote in the letter. “But unfortunately, I cannot.”

Chiles, 47, was convicted on two counts of arson endangering persons, a single count of arson endangering property, and two counts of burglary in the non-jury trial prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Christopher Miller.

Chiles started the fire in a basement utility room of the house on Piqua Circle around 1:30 p.m. on Aug. 24, 2018. She had lighted the gas container and placed several rolls of paper towels above a work bench she thought would. catch fire.

But the fire, which consumed about one quarter of the 5-gallon gas container, was extinguished when it melted the solder on copper water pipes above the workbench, opening the pipes up and draining water on the container. There was no sprinkler system in place at the time.

A wall near the bench was damaged by flames, and smoke billowed upwards from the fire into a space between the firewall that separated the carriage house from an adjoining unit. Neighbor Richard Bunn testified that he, his wife and sister in law were on their back porch that day when smoke alarms started going off, and he noticed heavy smoke in the house. He called 9-1-1.

It was clear from the start that the fire had been intentionally set, according to fire investigators. County Fire Marshall W. Latta White testified that anyone confronting smoke from a fire could be overcome by it and suffer serious injury or death.

Stephen Chiles Jr., the defendant’s husband, told investigators from Easttown police that he had watched security footage of the house and seen his estranged wife entering on Aug. 23, and then on Aug. 24 before the fire was called in.

When questioned by Easttown Detective Andrew J. Tritz the day of the fire, Olivia Chiles first said she had gone to the home to drop off divorce papers to her husband, but had never gone inside. When confronted with a photo of her inside the house taken that day, she said she had gone into the house to steal a shirt of her husband’s. She said that even though she had gone to the basement, she had not started the fire.

On Wednesday, Stephen Chiles Sr., who owned the home, read a statement about the impact that the arson had had on he, his wife, and their family. In addition to causing them a great deal of inconvenience and forcing them to move to an apartment while the house was being repair, he said that valuable family treasures and heirlooms had been destroyed in the fire.

He accused his daughter-in-law of having a “malevolent, evil mindset,” and showing no remorse for the

“You clearly are in need of intensive mental health treatment.”

— Judge Jeffrey Sommer

consequences of her behavior. Noting the “pain and anguish” the couple had suffered, he said, “This entire experience had been very difficult for our entire family.” In addressing Sommer, Miller said that he would not ask for a specific sentence for Chiles, but noted that the state’s sentencing guidelines began with a minimum of 30 months behind bars for crimes like Chiles’.

“This was plain and simply an arson, and only by the grace of God was the fire extinguished,” he said, before the entire house was engulfed and the neighbors harmed. “This could have gone extremely badly. She endangered a lot of people. She harmed a lot of people.”

Chiles’ attorney, Joseph P. Green Jr. of West Chester, acknowledged that his client would serve time behind bars for her actions, and could not ask for a sentence of simple probation. But he urged Sommer to sentence her to a maximum term in county prison, rather than sending her to a state institution. What she needed most, Green said, was treatment for her mental health issues that had gone unresolved.

“She should not be warehoused,” Green said. “She needs treatment.”

Chiles was led from the courtroom to return for the moment to the Montgomery County Corrections Center, where she faces the possibility of being given additional time in prison for violating the terms of her sentence there on drug offenses. She has a history of addiction to prescription drugs, and was caught trying to secure pills using a false prescription.