Louisiana man sentenced to 25 years in prison for setting fire to 3 Baptist churches
A Louisiana man who admitted to burning down three predominantly African American churches to promote himself as a "Black metal" musician was sentenced Monday to twenty-five years in prison and ordered to pay the churches $2.6 million.
U.S. District Judge Robert Summerhays of Lafayette sentenced Holden Matthews, giving the twenty-three-year-old man credit for eighteen months he already spent in jail, U.S. Attorney Alexander Van Hook said in a news release.
“Matthews admitted to setting the fires because of the religious character of these buildings, in an effort to raise his profile as a ‘Black Metal’ musician by copying similar crimes committed in Norway in the 1990s,” the statement said.
Matthews pleaded guilty in federal court to three counts of violating the Church Arson Prevention Act and to one of using fire to commit a federal felony.
Summerhays ordered him to pay $1.1 million in restitution to Mt. Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church and $970,213.30 to Greater Union Baptist Church, both in Opelousas, and $590,246 to St. Mary Missionary Baptist Church in Port Barre.
“These churches trace their origins to the post-Civil War Reconstruction period and, for generations, were a place for predominantly African American Christians to gather, pray, worship, and celebrate their faith,” Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband of the Civil Rights Division said in the news release. “The churches survived for nearly hundred and fifty years but did not survive this defendant’s warped act of hatred.”
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