Victor Clegg Jr. is now an arsonist in two states
43-year-old Victor Clegg Jr. was found guilty Friday of second-degree arson.
/ Des Moines County Correctional Center
BURLINGTON, IOWA -- A Des Moines County jury has found a Burlington man guilty of setting a fire that gutted a local church.
The Burlington Hawk Eye reports that 43-year-old Victor Clegg Jr. was found guilty Friday of second-degree arson for setting fire to Union Baptist Church last April. Clegg had also been charged with burglary in the case, but the jury instead found him guilty of trespassing.
Des Moines County prosecutor Tyron Rogers said Clegg started three fires inside. The Hawk Eye reports one was in the church's office in the southeast corner of the sanctuary of the new portion of the building; the other in the kitchen in the northeast corner of the old part of the structure; and at a window. When interviewed by police, he gave investigators the location of the infernos, a knowledge only the perpetrator would have known.
Clegg, who was also convicted of arson in 2009 for setting a Michigan restaurant on fire, is set to be sentenced May 14.
He has been held in the Des Moines County jail since his arrest last April.
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