A Missouri man was sentenced Tuesday to 111 months in prison by U.S. District Judge Matthew T. Schelp for the Eastern District of Missouri for burning down a Cape Girardeau, Missouri house of worship in 2021.
He was also ordered to pay $6,968,223.36 in restitution for damages incurred by the church.
Christopher Scott Pritchard, 49, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri in Cape Girardeau on December 19, 2024, to one count of arson and one count of violating the Church Arson Prevention Act.
Pritchard admitted setting fire to the house of worship owned and used by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, during the evening of April 28, 2021.
Pritchard was spotted watching the fire and was arrested about 1.5 miles away by the Cape Girardeau County Sheriff’s Office.
Pritchard smelled like smoke and had a backpack containing a laptop computer, a projector, speakers and 21 apples that he’d stolen from the church.
Pritchard told deputies that he’d gotten into a verbal altercation with the Bishop of the church a few days before the fire and had threatened to assault the Bishop and burn the church down.
The fire destroyed the building and prevented the congregants in the free exercise of their religious beliefs.
No one was injured.
“There is no place in America for criminal acts against houses of worship,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “The Civil Rights Division thanks its law enforcement partners for prosecuting this matter.”
