Provincetown pays former arson suspect $80K

Aug. 10--PROVINCETOWN -- The town has paid an $80,000 settlement to the man formerly charged in a string of arson fires that terrified residents 10 years ago.

James Kevin Stinson, 58, was arrested in November 2013 and charged with setting six of the 20 fires or attempted fires that plagued the town in 2007 and 2008.

A month after his arrest, however, the case began to fall apart. An Orleans District Court judge dismissed five counts of arson of a dwelling because they were lodged after the six-year statute of limitations had expired. Eight months later, another judge in that court dismissed the final count, arson of a building, because he found no probable cause.

Stinson and his husband, William Anthony Johnson, who both still live in Provincetown, filed a lawsuit in October in Barnstable Superior Court accusing town officials and the police of negligence in their duties to oversee and investigate the arson case.

"He (Stinson) was disparaged in a small town," Stinson's attorney, Peter Aspesi, of Dennis, said at the time. "He went through hell for almost a year."

The couple sued the town manager, the Board of Selectmen and the Police Department for slander, malicious prosecution, inflicting emotional distress, negligence, false imprisonment, civil rights violations and loss of consortium. The settlement, reached in July in U.S. District Court in Boston, also covers Johnson.

The case was moved to federal court because Aspesi included U.S. civil rights violations in the complaint, the town's attorney, Bradford Louison, said.

Stinson's arrest was based on a confession he allegedly made in 2008 when he came to an acquaintance's door drunk and despondent, repeatedly saying he "was the arsonist," according to the police report.

That placed Stinson on the police's radar as a suspect. But his arrest came five years later, after police interviewed Stinson's husband in October 2013.

At that time, police showed Johnson an FBI photograph of the sole of a shoe that matched a footprint found on the beach after an Oct. 26, 2007, fire at the West End Racing Club. "Johnson stared at the photograph and then exclaimed, 'That's Kevin's shoe,'" the police report states.

In the lawsuit, Aspesi said Provincetown Detective Meredith Lobur and another investigator, Chester Johnson, withheld evidence from defense counsel that would have been favorable to Stinson's case. Johnson was assigned to the case despite being employed only as an on-call dispatcher for the Provincetown police, the complaint stated. Johnson formerly worked as a police officer in Shrewsbury.

"The defendants ... owed a duty to the plaintiff to have only qualified sworn police officers or licensed private investigators investigate the crimes he was alleged to have committed," the complaint said.

After arresting Stinson, the police returned to the couple's apartment and took Johnson into protective custody. That was done, the suit alleged, so officers could search the apartment without him present.

The complaint also charged Police Chief James Golden, Lobur and the town with slander because "Golden and Lobur falsely made statements that Stinson was responsible for the fires."

The lawsuit originally sought $1 million in damages. Because of a confidentiality agreement between the parties, Aspesi would not comment on the case or the settlement amount.

"My client is happy with the outcome, and he's happy it's over and he can move on with his life," Aspesi said.

Although the town agreed to the confidentiality agreement, the amount of the settlement is public because it is a municipal case, Louison said.

Provincetown's liability insurance company paid the $80,000 settlement. The town paid a $5,000 deductible, which covered the attorney fees, Town Manager David Panagore said.

Neither Panagore nor Golden would comment on whether the lawsuit led to staff or policy changes in town.

Both parties agreed to go through mediation to settle the case, Louison said.

"I agree mediation was the way to go in this case," Aspesi said. "We solved the case a lot faster, and it saved everybody a lot of money."

The arson spree started with a nighttime grass fire Oct. 17, 2007, in the West End. Most of the fires during the next several months occurred at night and in unoccupied buildings.

The most significant blaze, Nov. 2 on Oppen Lane, gutted a $2.3 million ranch house and endangered a firefighter's life when a piano fell through a floor.

A fire March 4, 2008, at a shed owned by artist Arthur Cohen, who has since died, destroyed 13 large paintings.

-- Follow K.C. Myers on Twitter: @kcmyerscct.

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