WINDHAM – Donato Corsetti, the well-known Windham business owner indicted on arson charges last week, will next appear in court at a dispositional conference May 9, when he will either enter a plea deal or head to trial.

Corsetti, the former publisher of the Windham Independent newspaper as well as the owner of Corsetti’s Market since 1978, was arrested without incident outside his store on Thursday, March 7, exactly three months after the Dec. 7 fire at the apartment building he owned on Gray Road. Lead investigator Chris Stanford of the State Fire Marshal’s Office and Windham police Detective Paul Cox made the arrest.

Corsetti, who is facing two criminal charges of class A arson, each punishable by up to 30 years in prison, posted $25,000 cash bail late Friday night.

Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Ackerman, who is prosecuting the case, said that Corsetti’s claim that organized crime figures tied him up and set the fire was not substantiated by the three-month investigation. She would not go into details of how the fire started or other details of the investigation, saying publication could contaminate a potential jury pool should the case go to trial.

“I’m not going to get into the details of what the investigation showed, but we were pretty confident there was no concern about anyone coming here and starting the fire, that it was obviously Mr. Corsetti, and that’s what the investigation and evidence that they gathered shows,” Ackerman said.

Corsetti is being represented by attorneys David Hirshon and Marshall Tinkle of the Portland-based Hirshon Law Group, both of whom didn’t return phone calls seeking comment.

Corsetti’s mortgage lender Green Tree Servicing foreclosed on the three-unit apartment building at 447 Gray Road as well as Corsetti’s private home to the rear of the building on Nov. 28, and Corsetti was served a notice of foreclosure in person Dec. 4.

In a search warrant application dated Dec. 12, Stanford wrote that Corsetti burned the building in an attempt to recoup insurance money. He also wrote that Corsetti made an attempt to cover up his actions by saying he was the victim of an organized crime hit stemming from gambling debts. Stanford wrote that Corsetti told investigators the night of the fire that two men with ties to the Rhode Island mafia pretended to be interested in renting the middle unit, then bound Corsetti in lamp cord and left him to die in the fire when Corsetti showed them the unit Dec. 7.

Corsetti has had two major fires occur at buildings he owned, one in 1998 at his store and another in 2007 at his home, located directly behind the 447 Gray Road apartment building. Both did substantial damage, but Corsetti hasn’t been charged with arson in the previous fires.

Both charges against Corsetti relate to the Dec. 7 fire. Ackerman said one charge relates to setting the building on fire and the second charge is related to endangering the lives and property of the tenants and responding firefighters.

‘Not fair’

The tenants at 447 Gray Road – who included Courtney DeWitt, her baby Dominik, and her boyfriend Nick Coffin, as well as Angela Owens and her fiance? Andre Lacey – were made homeless by the fire and hope Corsetti faces justice.

“It’s definitely not fair by any means, especially if it was him,” DeWitt said in an interview days before the indictment was announced. “If his place was in foreclosure, then he shouldn’t have been renting it in the first place.”

DeWitt said she believes Corsetti knew there were occupants in the adjacent unit when the fire ignited in the middle unit.

“He knew we were all there that day. He saw the baby and me that morning when he was walking into Corsetti’s [Market], and to think he took everything away without thinking what other people are going to lose from him doing it,” DeWitt said.

DeWitt, who is 22 and originally from Westbrook, said she, the baby and Coffin are still homeless and spending nights on sofas at friends’ and family’s homes in several communities around Portland.

“My son doesn’t have any of his own toys anymore, he doesn’t have is own bed anymore. We never have any of our own stuff, and Corsetti took that away,” she said. “I just can’t believe someone would not take into consideration somebody else’s life.”

Lacey is similarly upset with his former landlord.

“I’m thinking Donato should be sued for this,” he said, “because we were the only occupants in those units and he was well aware that someone was living in that unit and he was also well aware that someone was home because cars were in the driveway and there’s no way he wouldn’t have known someone was there.

“Our unit was the only unit with a firewall, which made it pretty convenient for him to go ahead and light the others up with the security of knowing there was a firewall in the unit that was occupied,” Lacey said.

DeWitt said she consulted with a lawyer about Corsetti possibly facing an attempted manslaughter charge. But Ackerman, the prosecuting attorney, said Maine doesn’t have that statute. Ackerman said Maine only has a manslaughter charge, which is defined as causing the death of another recklessly or through negligence.

Plus, if Corsetti did set the fire as Ackerman believes he did, it would follow logically, she said, that Corsetti thought he would get out alive, and that others would get out as well.

“I can’t get into the investigation but what I can tell you is that we didn’t have any evidence to suggest that he intended or even thought that his actions could result in the death of somebody else,” Ackerman said. “There was no clear evidence about that. I understand what it may look like from a bystander’s point of view, but in terms of what the evidence showed – and obviously he was in the building when it was set on fire – it kind of cuts against any argument that he actually thought anybody could die as a result.”

However, Ackerman said the tenants, along with the responding firefighters, are factored into the second charge of arson since their lives and property were endangered.

“He was charged with two counts of arson, the second one being that he recklessly endangered the life or property of another person,” Ackerman said. “So that second count really covers the idea that there were people in the building that were recklessly endangered including the tenants there but also firefighters that were responding.”

Donato Corsetti