A man has been charged with setting fire to a historic Brooklyn church, and newly revealed court documents have added a disturbing dimension to the case. John Jones is accused of arson in connection with a June fire at the South Bushwick Reformed Church, a 175-year-old city landmark, and he was expected to appear before a judge as the case moved forward.
According to investigators, Jones set the fire at the church back in June. Police say surveillance video captured him buying a lighter at a nearby store before returning to the building to start the blaze. New photographs have since shown the extensive damage inside the historic house of worship, underscoring how much of the landmark was lost in the fire.
The South Bushwick Reformed Church had stood for 175 years, a longtime fixture in the Brooklyn community and one of the city's designated landmarks. The loss of a building with that much history has weighed heavily on those connected to the congregation, turning a criminal case into a moment of mourning for the neighborhood.
The most alarming details have come from a detention letter filed by federal prosecutors in the case. The letter includes a photograph of a notebook that police say they recovered when Jones was arrested, a document investigators describe as containing highly concerning references to planned acts of violence that went beyond the church fire itself.
Investigators say one page of the notebook was laid out as a chart with several handwritten categories. According to the detention letter, those categories included phrases such as "murder them," "kill them" and "stab them," language that prosecutors have pointed to as they argue for keeping Jones in custody while the case proceeds.
For the community tied to the church, the arrest has brought a complicated mix of emotions. One person connected to the congregation said they were pleased that there had been an arrest and that an investigation had brought them to this point, while also describing another layer of sadness, grief and anger in the midst of the trauma.
The criminal case now moves ahead against Jones on the arson charge. If he is convicted, he faces a sentence of five to 20 years in prison, an outcome that will be determined as the prosecution presents its evidence and the court weighs the material laid out in the filings against him.