David Michael Crawford already was serving life terms for other revenge-driven fires across the state.

ROCKVILLE, Md. — Former Laurel police chief David Michael Crawford was sentenced Feb. 13 to 55 years in prison after pleading guilty in Montgomery County to setting three fires at homes tied to his stepson in Clarksburg over a four-year span.

The sentence adds another major chapter to a case that prosecutors said exposed a long pattern of revenge-fueled arson by a onetime law enforcement leader. Crawford, 74, had already been convicted in Howard County and was serving two life sentences plus 75 years in executable time for other fires. Montgomery County prosecutors said the latest case mattered because it showed the same method, the same grudge-centered motive and the same danger to families whose homes were turned into targets.

Crawford entered guilty pleas to two counts of first-degree arson and one count of second-degree arson in Circuit Court for Montgomery County before Judge James Bonifant. The charges centered on fires at family-owned homes in Clarksburg in 2016, 2017 and 2020. Investigators said one of the earliest Montgomery County fires came on Sept. 5, 2016, when crews were called to a townhouse after flames were set along the base of a garage door. Surveillance video from a neighbor captured the sound of liquid being poured and what investigators described as three distinct clicks from a lighter. Prosecutors said the home belonged to Crawford’s stepson, Justin Scherstrom, making it the first of three attacks on properties linked to him. By the time Crawford was sentenced, prosecutors were describing the crimes not as isolated acts, but as part of a yearslong campaign against people he believed had wronged him. Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy put it bluntly after the hearing, saying that if someone fired Crawford or crossed him in some other dispute, “you’d be a target.”

Officials said the Montgomery County fires fit a much wider pattern that stretched across Maryland for nearly a decade. News reports and prior court proceedings said investigators tied Crawford to at least a dozen arsons, and one local television report put the total at 13, in multiple counties before his arrest in 2021. The targets, according to court records and prosecutors, included relatives, former colleagues in policing, a former Laurel city official, a retired Prince George’s County deputy chief, two chiropractors and a neighbor. WTOP reported that charging documents said Crawford kept a note on his phone labeled as a “target list” and tried to hide names with symbols and letters. Howard County prosecutors earlier said a January 2021 search of Crawford’s residence turned up evidence that included a list of targets who matched known victims. Investigators also said surveillance video in several cases showed a similar method involving gasoline and fires set in the dark. In some homes, people were asleep inside and escaped. In Howard County, prosecutors said one family of three adults and two juveniles got out of a burning house in Elkridge in 2017, while another family in Ellicott City escaped a separate fire later that year.

The broader record helped explain why Crawford already faced life terms before the Montgomery County sentence was imposed. In March 2023, a Howard County jury found him guilty of eight counts of attempted first-degree murder, three counts of first-degree arson and one count of first-degree malicious burning. Howard County State’s Attorney Richard Gibson later said the case involved fires from 2011 to 2020 across several Maryland jurisdictions and that the destruction went far beyond property loss. He said arson shattered victims’ peace of mind and left families waiting years for justice. A June 2023 sentencing release said Crawford received eight life sentences plus 75 years, though the executable portion was two life sentences plus 75 years because some counts ran concurrently. That case also sketched out the chronology behind several Howard County fires: a vehicle fire in Ellicott City in March 2017, a house fire in Elkridge in June 2017, another house fire in Ellicott City in December 2017 and a repeat attack at the same Ellicott City address in September 2018 after renovations had been completed from the earlier blaze. Prosecutors said that history showed repeated targeting, not impulse.

What made the case especially striking was Crawford’s background. He had served as police chief in Laurel until his resignation in 2010, after earlier work as chief in District Heights and as a major with the Prince George’s County Police Department. Prosecutors and investigators said that background gave him insight into how fires are investigated and may have helped him avoid detection for years. McCarthy said after the Montgomery County hearing that the case was shocking because Crawford came from law enforcement. Lt. Chris Moe of Montgomery County Fire and Rescue, who helped lead the investigation, said it was disappointing to learn that someone in the same profession had been behind the crimes. Moe also said the outcome finally brought some measure of closure after 10 years of work. That sense of professional betrayal has remained central to the case: the person who once held public authority and was expected to protect residents instead was accused and then convicted of terrorizing them. Prosecutors did not describe a political cause or financial scheme. Their explanation was narrower and more personal — grievance, retaliation and a list of perceived slights.

The personal toll came through most clearly in the remarks of Scherstrom, Crawford’s stepson, whose homes were struck more than once. Speaking after the sentencing, Scherstrom said the case was deeply personal and caused his family years of stress. He said the revelation was devastating because Crawford was someone he had known intimately for more than 30 years. In another interview, he said the family’s arguments over the years had once seemed like ordinary bickering, not warning signs of something far darker. He added that once he began to consider Crawford as a suspect, that realization was difficult to absorb. Those comments underscored a point prosecutors made repeatedly: many of the targets were not strangers, but people from Crawford’s own personal and professional circles. The fires also appear to have followed victims even when they moved. WTOP reported that Scherstrom was victimized three times, first twice at one house and then again after moving to another home. That detail, along with the repeated attacks at the same Howard County address, gave the case the feel of pursuit rather than random destruction.

Legally, the Montgomery County case is resolved, but it closes only one part of the record. Crawford’s 55-year sentence in Montgomery County was reported as running concurrently with the punishment he was already serving from Howard County, meaning it does not replace the life terms that already placed him in prison for the rest of his life. Prosecutors said the plea agreement covered the three Clarksburg fires and spared victims another trial. Public reporting has not shown any new pending trial dates in Montgomery County after the Feb. 13 sentencing. What remains significant is the final shape of the state’s case: a former police chief convicted in one county after trial, then pleading guilty in another county to additional fires involving family members. Investigators have said for years that the pattern reached across county lines and involved homes, garages and vehicles. The known record now includes convictions, guilty pleas, detailed fire chronologies, victim statements and official findings that the blazes were intentionally set. Together, those steps leave little uncertainty about where the criminal case stands, even if some early investigative details from every jurisdiction have never been aired in open court.

Crawford’s attorney said he had apologized to the victims and acknowledged committing the arsons. Even so, the public comments after sentencing showed how uneven any sense of closure can be in a case built on fear and personal betrayal. Investigators described years of painstaking work linking separate fires through method, timing and victim history. Victims described the strain of sleeping in homes that had already been attacked, rebuilding and then seeing flames return. Prosecutors framed the case not simply as a property crime spree, but as a campaign that put lives at risk. In Howard County alone, court records said some families were asleep when fires broke out, leading to attempted murder convictions. In Montgomery County, the repeated targeting of a stepson’s homes gave the case an intimate and chilling center. By the time Crawford stood for sentencing at age 74, officials were no longer arguing over identity or intent. The courtroom question had narrowed to punishment, public accounting and whether the victims had finally reached the end of a case that had stretched from the early 2010s into 2026.

For now, Crawford remains in prison under the earlier Howard County life terms and the newer Montgomery County sentence. The next milestone is administrative rather than dramatic: completion of the sentencing record across the connected arson cases and any remaining post-conviction filings that may follow in Maryland courts.