A 61-year-old man was sentenced Monday by a federal judge to 2.5years in prison for a March 2003 arson-for-hire that gutted an adult video store under construction in Vancouver.
Mark D. “Mau Mau” Fuston of Vancouver pleaded guilty in October in U.S. District Court in Tacoma to conspiracy to commit arson on Desire Video store, 4811 N.E. 94th Ave. He said a competitor of the store paid him to commit the crime. The store was later rebuilt and renamed Taboo Video.
Fuston said a porn dealer paid him and a man named Ken Courtney to torch the nearly completed Desire Video just a few weeks before its debut to the public, according to federal court documents.
Courtney died before charges could be brought against him. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that Courtney committed suicide. The alleged backer of the plot, who is not named in court documents, hasn’t been charged because the statute of limitations has expired, the website reported.
Court records state that after dark on March 27, 2003, Courtney drove Fuston to Desire Video and dropped him off outside the store. Fuston piped propane into the building through a hole in the wall and placed a remote-control bomb at the corner of the building.
When the remote-control bomb malfunctioned, Fuston poured a
fuel trail to the building and lit it on fire. The fire caused propane trapped inside the building to explode. The explosion rattled windows some 100 yards away.
The fire caused more than $850,000 in damage to the 7,000-square-foot building.
Fuston was convicted in 1977 of first-degree attempted arson of an adult bookstore in Spokane, according to a sentencing memorandum by U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan. He was arrested in 1981 on accusations that he fatally shot a man over a $180 drug debt and was later acquitted at trial, court documents say.
Connections?
In the memorandum giving Fuston’s background, Durkan noted that Fuston also fit the description of a suspect in an April 1991 pipe bombing of Hart’s Movie Arcade in Portland.
“The Hart’s store had just recently opened for business, and the owner had placed advertisements on the walls and windows of competing businesses, including Cindy’s Bookstore located only four blocks away,” Durkan wrote. “This scenario is eerily similar to the … fire bombing of the about-to-open Desire Video store, which itself was located less than a mile from a competing business, Adult Video Only.”
The former Cindy’s Bookstore and Adult Video Only had the same owners, court documents say.
The property where Cindy’s Bookstore was at, 8 N.W. Fourth Ave., Portland, is owned by Daniel and Donna Cossette and Michael and Linda Wright, according to Multnomah County property records.
Fuston knew the owners of Cindy’s Bookstore, Durkan said.
Daniel and Donna Cossette also own the property where Vancouver’s Adult Video Only was located, 10620 N.E. Fourth Plain Road, according to Clark County property records. Property records indicate Michael and Linda Wright were or still are co-owners.
Judge’s words
In addition to Fuston’s prison sentence, U.S. District Judge Benjamin H. Settle imposed three years of supervised release. The judge said Fuston was “an outlaw” and had been for “way too much of (his) life,” according to a press release by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
A hearing will be held in February to determine how much restitution Fuston will be required to pay for the crime.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, the Vancouver Police Department and the Vancouver Fire Department investigated the case. U.S. Assistant Attorney Gregory Gruber was the prosecutor.
