Stephen Spencer Pittman was charged Monday with maliciously damaging or destroying a building by means of fire or an explosive. In an affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Mississippi on Monday, the FBI said the suspect confessed to lighting a fire inside the building “due to the building’s Jewish ties."
The weekend fire ripped through the Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson shortly after 3 a.m. on Saturday. No congregants or firefighters were injured in the blaze. Security camera footage released Monday by the synagogue showed a masked and hooded person using a gas can to pour a liquid on the floor and a couch in the building’s lobby.
In an interview with law officers, Pittman referred to the synagogue as the “synagogue of Satan,” according to an affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Mississippi.
During that interview with representatives of the Jackson Fire Department and Hinds County Sheriff’s Office, Pittman “admitted to starting a fire inside the Beth Israel Congregation/ISJL building,” the affidavit states.
During his interview with investigators, Pittman said he stopped at a gas station on his way to the synagogue to purchase the gas used in the fire. He also took the license plate off of his vehicle at the gas station. He then used an ax to break out a window of the building, poured gas inside and used a torch lighter to start the fire, the affidavit states.
The FBI later recovered a burned cell phone believed to be Pittman’s, and recovered a hand torch a member of the congregation found and turned over to authorities.
With just a few hundred people in the community, it was never particularly easy being Jewish in Mississippi's capital city, but members of Beth Israel took a special pride in keeping their traditions alive in the heart of the Deep South.
But the fire badly damaged the historic synagogue's library and administrative offices, making it much harder and harkened back to an era more than a half-century earlier when the Ku Klux Klan bombed the synagogue because of its rabbi's support for civil rights.
One Torah that survived the Holocaust was behind glass and was not damaged in the fire, according to the congregation. Five Torahs — the sacred scrolls with the text of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible — located inside the sanctuary were being assessed for smoke damage. Two Torahs inside the library, where the most severe damage was done, were destroyed, according to a synagogue representative.
The suspect’s father contacted the FBI and said that his son confessed to setting the building on fire, the affidavit states. Data on the suspect’s cell phone corroborated that information, the agent wrote.
Yellow police tape on Monday blocked off the entrances to the synagogue building, which was surrounded by broken glass and soot. Bouquets of flowers were laid on the ground at the building's entrance — including one with a note that said, “I'm so very sorry.”
Security camera footage released Monday by the synagogue showed a masked and hooded person using a gas can to pour a liquid on the floor and a couch in the building’s lobby.
The congregation's president, Zach Shemper, vowed to rebuild the synagogue and said several churches had offered their spaces for worship during the rebuilding process.
“As Jackson’s only synagogue, Beth Israel is a beloved institution, and it is the fellowship of our neighbors and extended community that will see us through,” Shemper said.
