Woman gets 5 years in arson: Melissa Combow pleaded guilty in the Vinton fire that took place in 2008. [The Roanoke Times, Va.]
Apr. 6--Melissa Michelle Combow, who pleaded guilty to helping burn down her mother-in-law's house, was sentenced Monday to five years imprisonment, completing the federal prosecution of a Vinton arson.
Combow, 41, pleaded guilty in January in U.S. District Court in Roanoke to conspiring to commit arson. The crime carries a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence, but Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennie Waering asked the judge for leniency because of Combow's help in building the case against the two other arsonists, including her husband.
Combow's husband, Shawn Thomas Combow, 46, was sentenced to nine years in prison last month and the Combows' friend, Aaron Eugene Woods, 49, was sentenced to 10 years.
The three defendants also were ordered to pay a total of $167,832 to Allstate Insurance Co. and the Vinton and Roanoke County fire departments.
The Combows and Woods faced financial difficulties and plotted to burn Shawn Combow's mother's house on Hardy Road, where Shawn and Melissa Combow lived, Waering said earlier. They hoped the December 2008 blaze, which Woods set while the Combows were on a trip to Virginia Beach, would bring hundreds of thousands of dollars in insurance money. Instead, investigators swiftly determined the fire had been set. Both Combows confessed.
U.S. District Court Judge Glen Conrad said Monday that discrepancies in the three defendants' accounts of who instigated the plan likely can never be resolved.
Melissa Combow's father, James Mauck, testified that his daughter struggled with drug and alcohol problems for about 15 years. He said her family, including two children from her first marriage who now attend college, hopes the unraveling of the arson plan and the prison sentence will spur her recovery.
Conrad said he would recommend the highest-level rehabilitation program for which Combow qualified. He ordered that she be monitored by the federal probation office for three years after her release.
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