Natasha Marie O’Dell pleaded guilty to three charges after officials said the arson caused $3.2 million in damages
A Texas native will spend six years behind bars for burning down a church in an act of arson that a judge described as “devastating and dangerous.”
In August 2024, Natasha Marie O’Dell was arrested for setting fire to Seattle Laestadian Lutheran Church — a church in Maltby, a suburb of Seattle — 12 months earlier.
On Thursday, Sept. 4, about two years after the devastating blaze, O’Dell, 38, was sentenced to six years in prison for three federal felonies, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington.
The sentencing comes months after O’Dell, a Temple native, pleaded guilty to three charges — arson, damage to religious property and obstruction of persons in the free exercise of religious beliefs — in April.
“This offense was devastating and dangerous,” U.S. District Judge Jamal N. Whitehead said of the blaze at the sentencing. “Ms. O’Dell deliberately set fire to a church causing complete destruction. … The scope of the destruction is staggering.”
“You burned down the spiritual home of a congregation,” Whitehead continued. “The wounds you have inflicted deepen for each day they are away from their home.”
Texas Woman Sentenced to 6 Years in Prison for Setting Washington State Church on Fire
The aftermath of the August 2023 fire that destroyed Seattle Laestadian Lutheran Church.
U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Washington
According to the news release, one person — a firefighter — was injured in the blaze in 2023. The Washington church building, however, was “burned beyond repair” after 40 years, the church’s website states. Google now lists the Seattle-area church as “permanently closed.”
“Ms. O’Dell acted with extreme disregard for community safety when she poured more than a gallon of gasoline on the church building and used a lighter to start the blaze,” U.S. Attorney Teal Luthy Miller said in the news release. “This conduct put anyone inside the church, the neighbors around the church, and the firefighters who responded in extreme danger.”
“It is fortunate that only one firefighter suffered injuries,” Miller added.
