Suspect in fire has arson history
The woman accused of threatening people with a butcher knife and setting fire Monday to a South Hill group home for the mentally ill has a history of arson convictions.
Peggye Anne Brown, 48, has twice pleaded guilty to second-degree arson for setting fires at Eastern State Hospital in Medical Lake. In both cases, she had been charged with first-degree arson.
Brown, also known as Peggye Mitchell, remained in jail Wednesday night in lieu of $200,000 bail. She was being held on suspicion of first-degree arson at the Oak Hill Home, 1728 W. Ninth Ave.
Brown is to be released this afternoon if formal charges are not filed.
As in the incidents for which she was convicted, Brown is suspected of using a cigarette lighter Monday to start a fire in the three-story group home where she and 11 other patients lived. Authorities said the fire produced heavy smoke but was quickly extinguished by automatic sprinklers.
Despite her long history of mental illness, Eastern State Hospital doctors and courts found her competent to stand trial in 1991 and 1997 when she was convicted of setting fires at the state mental hospital. Doctors and judges agreed that Brown understood the charges against her and was able to participate in her defense – the legal criteria for sanity.
In fact, Eastern State Hospital doctors said in 1991 that her explanation for igniting the bedding in her room demonstrated her understanding of the law. Hospital officials said in a court document that Brown told them she wanted to go to jail because she thought she would be released from jail faster than from the hospital.
At the time, she was in the mental hospital for the 19th time. She had been diagnosed with “schizoaffective disorder” and “borderline personality disorder with antisocial features.”
Schizoaffective disorder involves components of both schizophrenia and a mood disturbance, doctors said in a written report to Brown’s trial judge.
A psychiatrist, a psychologist and a “competency therapist” nurse described Brown as a “very intelligent woman” who manipulated mental health workers with regard to her medication. They said her personality disorder caused rage, aggression and poor judgment, and wasn’t treatable with medicine.
Nevertheless, the Eastern State Hospital experts said Brown’s mental status would deteriorate in jail if she didn’t keep taking prescribed medicine. Among other things, the hospital officials predicted Brown would become aggressive and violent.Brown was sentenced to a year in prison for that arson conviction.
The next time Brown committed an arson at the mental hospital, in October 1997, she ignited bedding, clothing and trash in her room. A hospital worker, whose hand was burned, was dealing with that fire when a patient in a nearby room yelled that Brown was trying to set his bed on fire.
The hospital worker found Brown under the burning bed holding a cigarette lighter. Both fires were quickly extinguished.
Court documents say Brown may have been angry because she had been in trouble earlier that evening for smoking. She was sentenced to six months in jail.