A Jefferson City woman has been charged with second-degree arson for allegedly starting a fire at a church in May.
Anna-Marie Mullins, 21, is also charged with felony counts of second-degree burglary, stealing, first-degree property damage and tampering with physical evidence, along with one count of misdemeanor tampering with computer equipment.
A Jefferson City Police Department probable cause statement states the incident occurred at Christian Fellowship Church on St. Mary’s Boulevard.
Officers found a door open to the building and inside they found a large wooden cross inside the sanctuary had been burned.
A witness told police a laptop was found to be missing from the church along with a mandolin and a glass vase containing parishioners’ money to be donated to charity.
Video surveillance reportedly showed a white female inside the church and then captured her face as she re-positioned the security cameras so they pointed at walls and ceilings. The wooden cross was also seen, engulfed in flames.
Fingerprints were collected at the crime scene and sent to the Missouri Highway Patrol Crime Lab for testing. On Monday, lab officials informed JCPD seven latent prints were found and a search through the patrol’s database matched the fingerprints to Mullins.
Later, investigators matched Mullins face on her driver’s license to the face of the woman seen on the church security camera. Detectives then did an online search and were able to find Mullins had sold a laptop and mandolin, like the ones stolen from the church, at a pawn shop in Columbia in June.
On Thursday, police contacted Mullins via phone and asked she come to the police department for an interview. She said she would not and eventually police went and arrested her.