Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

ARSON • 55Of the remainder, eight fires struck Jewish synagogues while theother 14 involved predominantly white churches. Seven arrests weremade in five of the cases involving black churches. Another five fireswere cleared as caused by accident and not by arson. On 1 July 1999two brothers, James and Benjamin Williams, who were arrested forthe shotgun slayings of two gay men near Redding, California, werealso found to have evidence that connected them with the burning ofthree synagogues on 18 June in Sacramento. The two brothers hadliterature from the white supremacist World Church of the Creatorand appeared to be involved in the White Supremacy movement.Another case revealed an antireligious rather than racial motivation.On 21 April 1999 one man was indicted for 10 church burningscomprising all seven church burnings in Indiana and the three fires inGeorgia under investigation. Jay Scott Ballinger confessed to havingstarted up to 50 church fires in Indiana alone from 1994 to 1998. Onefire he set killed a firefighter on 31 December 1998 when the burningroof of the New Salem United Methodist Church collapsed on him.Ballinger was arrested in February 1998 when he had to seek treatmentfor burns he received while setting fire to a church in Brookville, Ohio,on 7 February 1998. Ballinger’s motivation appeared to be rooted in apersonal obsession with Satanism and the occult rather than race.A borderline area between simple criminal arson and terrorist arsonis the use of fire-bombs, or Molotov cocktails, by organized streetgangs to intimidate, silence, or punish rival gangs or civilians who tryto resist gang activities in their neighborhoods. A large-scale study ofurban arson conducted by the ATF in 1996 that reviewed arson firesin Chicago, Kansas City, Los Angeles, New Haven, and Philadelphiaindicated that 15 percent of all arson in those cities was related todrug trafficking and that one-quarter of these incidents were intendedto injure targeted people and not just destroy property.In 2003 four arson attacks occurred against four places of worshipin the San Fernando Valley, California. On 26 April the First PresbyterianChurch of Encino suffered $20,000 in damages. On 5 Maya synagogue on Ventura Boulevard serving a predominantly Iraniancongregation and a Baha’i Community Center on Genesta Avenuewere firebombed. On 6 May the Beth Shalom Temple on VenturaBoulevard was also struck by a Molotov cocktail. In the first threearson cases, bombs consisting of liquid accelerants with a delayedignition device were used.