Plainfield Man Sentenced for 5 Years in Yorkville Double Arson

A local man who set fire to the same house twice in 2007 has been sentenced to five years in prison, according to the State’s Attorney’s Office.

Keenan W. Slagel, 29, of the 24500 block of Caton Farm Road, Plainfield, pled guilty to two separate counts of arson at a residence on Winding Creek Drive in unincorporated Yorkville.

The first incident occurred on March 30, 2007 in which a then unknown person broke into the Winding Creek Drive residence and stacked furniture and other items in a pile, ignited the fire and left. The home was in the process of being prepared for new occupants at the time.

Fortunately the fire was quickly extinguished when a fish tank ruptured and suppressed the flames.

The second incident occurred on April 21, 2007 when a still unknown person poured gasoline in the interior of the home, lit a fire and fled. Members of the Oswego Fire Protection District and Bristol-Kendall Fire Protection Ditrict spent several hours fighting the fire until it was extinguished, and the cause was revealed to be arson after the Illinois State Fire Marshall investigated.

The case remained unsolved until an individual approached investigators in 2012 and said Slagel had admitted to setting the fires.

Slagel admitted to setting the fires in both instances, believing the home to have belonged to an ex-girlfriend. He was charged with two counts of arson, a class 2 felony.

Slagel was sentenced to five half years in the Illinois Department of Corrections for the Arson committed on March 30, 2007, concurrent with a five year sentence for Arson committed on April 21, 2007.  Additionally, he will have to serve two years of Mandatory Supervised Release and will have to register under the Illinois State Arson Registration Act.  He will also have to pay nearly $40,000 in restitution to the victim for damages to personal objects in the home. 

A third fire at the same residence, which occurred during the reconstruction of the home after the second fire, remains open.

As a result of the cases, Kendall County State’s Attorney Eric Weis said he worked with State Rep. Tom Cross to include crimes like this in the extended statute of limitations.

“Due to what appears to have been an oversight by the General Assembly, Residential Arson was never included in the list of offenses which qualify for extended statute of limitations,” wrote Weis in the release. “Therefore, instead of a maximum sentence of 15 years, Slagel faced only a 7 years maximum sentence.”