Assistant Iowa Attorney General Israel Kodiaga pointed toward defendant Mindy Jones during last week’s trial. Jones was later found guilty of burning down her own Waukon business, destroying it and damaging nearby buildings. (Photo by Denise Lana)
A former Allamakee store owner was found guilty Tuesday, Nov. 19 of starting the blaze which consumed her Waukon business as well as an adjacent building — a dog also died after being rescued from a stairwell during the fire.
The week-long trial for 44-year-old Mindy Jones wrapped up midday Tuesday at the Allamakee County Courthouse. Jurors deliberated for less than an hour before returning their decision.
Jones showed no emotion as the decision was read and she was found guilty of first-degree arson and animal abuse.
In his closing arguments, Assistant Iowa Attorney General Israel Kodiaga called the situation a CSC —a common sense case.
“From her own mouth — ‘I’ve got good insurance,’ ‘I’m way over-insured,’” he said to the jury. “‘If this building burns, I’m insured.’”
Jones purchased a building located at 9 Allamakee St. in Waukon during December of 2021, and she remodeled the space as a home design and t-shirt business called Tin Rust and Harmony. She purchased insurance coverage for the building the same month, but two subsequent premium payments were returned for non-sufficient funds, and the payments weren’t made current until two days before the store burned.
The prosecution pointed to the timing of the payments as evidence of Jones’ intentions, but Jones’ defense attorney Aaron Hawbaker argued Jones had little motive to destroy her business for financial gain.
“None of this was a sign of desperation,” Hawbaker said. “Her biggest debt was $460,000, and she had been living with that debt for seven years, no arsons in-between. She knew how to live with debt.”
A destructive fire
At approximately 6:30 p.m. Feb. 13, 2022 — Super Bowl Sunday — the Waukon Fire Department was dispatched to the building after Jones’ teenage cousin Jese Lewey discovered a fire inside Jones’ store and called 911.
Jones had let Lewey into the building a few minutes earlier to store a number of his items in the building’s basement. Lewey said Jones was nowhere to be found when he came up the stairs a short time later, but he saw a flicker along the wall next to the sales counter and discovered a fire behind the counter where the paper shopping bags were kept.
According to testimony given during the trial, more than 30 Waukon Fire Department firefighters initially arrived on scene, and four other area fire departments offered mutual aid due to the intensity of the blaze and the height of adjacent structures. Body cam footage taken within minutes of the call showed the fire had grown so hot panes of glass in all of the windows had blown outwards, jettisoning fragments across the sidewalk and into the street.
The fire rapidly spread to a neighboring building, and residents of the upper-floor apartments were able to evacuate — a 13-year-old dog named Molly became trapped in a stairwell for an extended period and was eventually rescued before succumbing to the effects of smoke inhalation the next morning. Jones’ business and building, as well as the adjacent building — home to PawsUp Pet Supply — were destroyed, and numerous nearby structures suffered extensive smoke and water damage.
It took a full day to quell flare ups on scene, and Waukon’s water supply was depleted in the process. A directive was issued for city residents to boil their water, and school was canceled the next day due to lack of water.
Sifting through the debris
Ross Dillavou, a house fire and explosives expert with the Iowa Department of Public Safety, was one of several investigators who looked into the Waukon fire. He said body camera footage from responding police showed the fire had grown exponentially, and he said the exploding windows indicated the conditions were intense.
“It would have to be a significant amount of heat and pressure — more than just a fire caused by pieces of paper,” he said.
Investigators were unable to enter the collapsed building for nearly two months due to layers of ice which had built up as firefighters battled the flames in subzero temperatures. Officials were able to conduct an on-site inspection in early April of 2022. There were no video or surveillance cameras inside the building, nor were any fire alarms or detectors located. It took three full days to sift through the layers of debris, and each of the electrical components and appliances found in the debris were tested and deemed competent, ruling them out as sources of the fire.
It was determined there were two separate fire sources in the building, based on the patterns investigators observed — one near the sales counter and a second area on the wall next to the floor vent which fed the building’s basement furnace unit.
Witnesses testified that Jones repeatedly told investigators she heard a buzzing noise coming from the furnace area and she claimed the store was often cold when the furnace should have been running — the furnace was replaced about three weeks before the fire took place.
Dillavou and his team found the exterior of the furnace had been damaged by the collapsed ceiling, but it showed no visible signs of fire damage. However, a small piece of fabric was found on the coils inside the furnace — the material matched a type of shirt sold in Jones’ store. Dillavou added that even if the cloth did catch fire, the small piece of material would have burned up and the fire would have put itself out with nothing else in the compartment to fuel the flame.
“Because the ducting is attached by screws, at some point it was done by someone thinking it could start a fire,” Dillavou told the court. “This piece of cloth material in there did not cause the fire — but it is my belief that someone thought it would cause a fire.”
Mark Dooley, a forensic fire investigator retained by State Farm Insurance, testified the fire in the duct “was intentionally
ignited in an area where a fire should not be intended.”
“We had a fire that originated in the duct work, but there was no combustible material inside the duct work,” Dooley said.
Investigators see possible financial motive
Patrick Yates, a fraud specialist with State Farm Insurance, sifted through Jones’ finances and business records, and discovered she owed $250,000 for the mortgage and repairs on a building which she had purchased in Harmony, Minnesota, in 2019. She had received an offer of $160,000 for the Harmony building at one point, but closed the Harmony store in January of 2022, citing the continued cost of building repairs at her Waukon store. Jones was also allegedly unable to pay at least two of her employees, nor could she afford rent on the building. Bank records entered as evidence showed Jones had accrued more than 30 returned check penalties in a single month at one point.
Jones had also at one point received a $75,000 offer for her Waukon building — less than half the amount of the mortgage on the building — and bank officials declined to release the mortgage for an offer of that size. Yates testified that Jones had claimed all her payments — both personal and business — were current on everything prior to the fire, but he discovered Jones owed more than $460,000 from a 2015 judgement brought against her.
“All the debts Jones was facing were adding up, and the walls were closing around her,” Koriago told the jury.
Kodiaga claimed Jones planned to burn the building down, and he argued her cousin’s arrival that February evening presented her an opportunity to do so while placing the blame on someone else.
“She had about $890,000 in debt, and this was her only way out,” Kodiaga said. “On this day, Super Bowl Sunday, opportunity knocks. Jese shows up and she is by herself and opens the door for him and, when he is down in the basement, she sets the fire, and it’s the perfect opportunity.”
Kodiaga argued Jones didn’t care about Lewey’s fate, nor that of the families living above her business, when she set fire to the building.
“She didn’t care about those young children upstairs who were pulled from their bath and wrapped in blankets and rushed out of their burning home,” Kodiaga said. “She didn’t care for the dog who died after being trapped in the stairwell …She cared about only one person — Mindy Jones.”
The 12 jurors who heard Jones’ case convicted her on both charges in less than an hour — including the time allotted for a brief lunch. The court and attorneys in the case are still discussing specifics of the animal abuse conviction — it was argued the fire may not have directly caused the dog’s death given the age of the animal.
Jones faces 25 years in prison for the arson charge, and is expected to serve at least 17.5 years in prison before she becomes eligible for parole, according to Kodiaga.
Jones is currently a prisoner at Minnesota Correctional Facility in Shakopee, Minnesota, where she is serving time for two separate cases decided earlier this year in Fillmore County, Minnesota. She is set to complete her current sentence by the fall of 2025, at which point she is expected to begin the sentence for her arson conviction in Iowa. Officials have yet to determine where Jones will serve that sentence.
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