For about half the day Friday, Kurt Steidley testified in his own trial - as a prosecution witness.
Steidley, 55, of Knob Noster, appeared in a video deposition taken in 2013, before his first trial on a second-degree arson charge that, if he's convicted, could result in a sentence of up to seven years in prison.
Judge Dan Green made a mistake in that trial involving the handling of some evidence, so a second trial was scheduled - and it began Tuesday.
A Cole County grand jury indicted Steidley in October 2012 for the New Year's Day 2011 fire that damaged part of the warehouse behind Everhart's Sporting Goods, 2436 Missouri Blvd.
The building long since has been repaired, sold and renovated, and now houses Missouri Valley Mercantile and Archery.
Jurors only saw part of the four-hour video deposition - the rest will be shown when the trial resumes at 9 a.m. Monday.
So far, the eight-woman, six-man jury has heard about many of Steidley's business interests, his classic car collection - including several vintage Corvettes and Ford racing cars - and some of his actions before and after the fire that was reported at 7:45 p.m. Jan. 1, 2011.
That was eight days after the business had been closed because of slumping sales over the previous couple of years - and more than a year after he'd closed the Everhart's store in Clinton, a business founded by the Everhart family in 1942, that he'd helped buy in 1993 and became sole owner of in 2001.
He opened the Jefferson City store in 2004, Steidley said in the video deposition.
"The Clinton store made, roughly, $150,000 a year," he testified. "The Jefferson City store opened at very high volume - we made money very well those first few years.
"Then the economic downturn came, and Bass Pro opened in Columbia - the store was breaking even or maybe losing some money, and showed a loss in 2010."
Steidley said in the deposition that he last had been inside the building on Dec. 30, when he and store manager Jim Lister moved three bronze statues inside the warehouse and did some general checking around the then-closed building.
That checking included making sure an overhead space heater was working, to keep water lines from freezing when the weather got too cold.
"It did not function properly the first time," he said. "We tested it a second time, and it came on."
That heater later would become one focus of the fire investigation, because its "drip-leg" - a piece of pipe designed to collect moisture in a natural gas line - apparently had been removed before the fire.
Steidley said in the deposition he knew nothing about that, and didn't really know what a drip-leg was until the fire investigation.
When asked in the 2013 deposition if he knew if the fire had been set, Steidley said, "I have no knowledge - I have been given no reports."
When asked if he had any suspicions about who might have set the fire, he said, "I have suspicions about Drew Buersmeyer, yes," referring to a customer who had purchased thousands of dollars in merchandise from Everhart's, but who also had trouble paying for some of those purchases because some of his credit cards had been declined.
At the time of the fire, Buersmeyer owed Everhart's about $15,000 or $16,000.
But he testified Thursday that he was at a family Christmas party on New Year's Day.
Craig Holloway, a Jefferson City-based federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives special agent who helped with the Everhart's investigation, testified Friday that Buersmeyer appeared to have been released from the Callaway County Jail on New Year's Day - but the records also were somewhat confusing.
"It shows his arrest date as Dec. 30, his booking date as Jan. 1 and his release date as Jan. 1," Holloway told defense attorney Chris Slusher.
When Slusher asked if "documents don't always tell us what's right?" Holloway answered, "In my experience, they're usually pretty accurate."
Holloway also testified he interviewed Steidley on March 1, 2011 - two months after the fire.
He said Steidley was cooperative, but already felt as though officials "were making him out to be a suspect."
Steidley had told people he was not at the business on New Year's Day 2011, which was a Saturday.
Holloway said cellular telephone records obtained from AT&T and T-Mobile showed Steidley's phone connecting with towers "in the Warrensburg area all the way over to Jefferson City and back" on that day.
He also telephoned Max Parsons, a plumber friend in Warrensburg, on that day.
Parsons is expected to testify Monday.