Frosted Fingers Gets Minnesota Man Busted For 1st Degree Arson

Sometimes it's the dumbest stuff that gets a person busted. In this case it was a failure to wash the frosting off his fingers after eating a dessert bar from the fridge before torching the place.

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According to DL-Online, Gary John Bogatz, Jr of Elk River was sentenced to five and a half years in the St Cloud Prison after being convicted of starting a fire at a Detroit Lakes religious facility, The Refuge. In addition to his prison sentence, he must also pay $567,000 in restitution.

Here's the puzzling part, he must pay the restitution to the Refuge's insurance company and the money will come out of his prison pay. I'm not sure what prison pay is nowadays but it seems like an impossible task to pay off $567K. My guess is the insurance company will see very little, if any, of the money owed to them.

Bogatz was tracked down and arrested after the authorities match fingerprints left on a doorknob at the Refuge matched his fingerprints. Bogatz had helped himself to a dessert bar from the kitchen at The Refuge. He, without cleaning the frosting from the dessert bar off his fingers, left a glob of frosting with his fingerprint on the doorknob when leaving the burning building.

Bogatz claimed 2 individuals from The Refuge had asked him to torch the building because they needed the insurance money to keep the place operating. He also claimed that they had told him they were heavily insured against fire.

There was no mention of what, if anything, has happened to the 2 mystery individuals that allegedly asked Bogatz to start the fire.