BURLINGTON — A man who authorities said with the “inadvertent flick” of his lighter set a blaze that killed a woman and seriously injured another person has been sentenced to nearly two decades behind bars.
Jonathan Zampieri, 36, wearing a green prison uniform, stood up in court Tuesday and apologized for his actions leading to the death of 22-year-old Brittany Burt and leaving her boyfriend, Efren Serrano, 26, with life-altering injuries.
He asked for forgiveness from the families of both victims, though he added he knew that may not possible.
“Please,” Zampieri said, “just know that I am very sorry.”
U.S. District Court Judge Christina Reiss then handed down her sentence as the hearing came to a close, ordering Zampieri to serve 230 months in federal prison, or a little more than 19 years.
That’s far less than the 360 months to life called for in the advisory sentencing guidelines.
He received the significant break due to the “substantial assistance” prosecutors said he provided to their investigation, leading to the guilty pleas and prison terms of his co-defendants.
Zampieri’s sentencing wraps up a series of cases that stemmed from a string of violent, drug-fueled crimes in central Vermont almost three years ago that culminated in the fatal fire in Northfield in December 2015.
Cristina Burt, Brittany Burt’s mother, said after the hearing Tuesday that she looked forward to not having to come to court again.
“I’m happy this part is done so we can start healing and moving on,” she said
Katie Parker, Brittany Burt’s sister, also speaking following the hearing, said she wasn’t satisfied with any of the sentences handed down in the cases.
“Frankly,’ she said,” “I’m not impressed.”
Among Zampieri’s co-defendants previously sentenced are Tammy Wilder, described by prosecutors as the “mastermind” behind the spree and the getaway driver in the fatal fire, and Howard Hoisington Jr. termed the group’s “ringleader.”
Wilder received 15 years in prison while Hoisington, who prosecutors say doused both Burt and Serrano in gasoline before Zampieri “flicked” his lighter igniting the blaze, received a 24-year jail sentence.
On Tuesday, it was Zampieri, referred to by his own attorney as the “muscle” of the group, standing before the judge to learn his fate.
Zampieri had earlier pleaded guilty to two felony offenses. One of those charges was for his role in four robberies in late 2015, including the one that led to the fatal fire, while the other was for arson with death resulting.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Van de Graaf, the prosecutor, told the judge of the cooperation Zampieri provided to investigators, terming it “prompt,” “whole” and “complete.”
Van de Graaf added that Zampieri’s statements have been “consistent” throughout several debriefings with authorities, including providing details that do not cast him in a positive light.
Asked by the judge to quantify Zampieri’s cooperation, the prosecutor called it “one of the most important ones we had.”
Attorney Robert Katims, representing Zampieri, said his client’s decision to cooperate was made with the understand that he knew he might get something out, and he might not, knowing it would be the judge who would make the final decision on his sentence.
Katims said his client was “trying to set things right” for people who has suffered an “enormous loss.”
According to court records and testimony, in the late fall of 2015, Wilder, Hoisington, Zampieri, Kevin Atwood and Kim Hoisington committed a series of robberies of drug dealers in the Washington County area.
The robberies began at knifepoint, then gunpoint, before the group devised a scheme of dousing drug dealers with gasoline and threatening them with a lighter to rob them of their drugs.
It was the last of those robberies, according to prosecutors, that led to the fatal Northfield blaze on the night of Dec. 13, 2015, and into the early morning hours of the next day.
According to prosecutors, they all drove to Cumberland Farms in Northfield where Zampieri filled two mason jars with gasoline.
From there, prosecutors say, the group headed to Serrano’s apartment on Union Street in Northfield, after earlier arranging to buy crack cocaine from him.
Zampieri, Howard Hoisington and Atwood went to Serrano’s apartment and kicked in the front door. They found Serrano and his girlfriend, Brittany Burt, in the bedroom.
Serrano and Burt were doused with gasoline and the men demanded Serrano’s drugs.
“When Serrano did not respond, Zampieri pulled out a lighter,” according to prosecutors. “The lighter went off, igniting the gasoline vapors and causing the room to burst into flames.”
Everyone made it out except Burt, described by prosecutors as an “innocent bystander,” who died on the bedroom floor as the blaze consumed the building.
In addition to the sentences handed out to Howard Hoisington, Wilder and Zampieri, Kim Hoisington was recently ordered to serve seven years in jail for her role in the crimes.
Atwood died of an apparent suicide while incarcerated in 2016.
Both the prosecution and defense on Tuesday said repeatedly that Zampieri’s “flick” of the lighter that set of the blaze was not an intentional act, but something he did inadvertently.
Van de Graaf said that Serrano had already agreed to turn over the drugs that he had in his backpack. It was as Zampieri was reaching down to grab that backpack that he “flicked” the lighter, Van de Graaf said, igniting the gasoline vapors in the room and setting off the blaze.
In a sentencing memorandum, prosecutors wrote that Zampieri “subconsciously flicked” the lighter.
Seconds earlier, Hoisington had told Zampieri specifically to not do that, a detail that Zampieri himself revealed to investigators.
Katims, in his sentencing document, wrote that his client “did not act with any actual intent to cause death or bodily harm” to Burt and Serrano.
“Looking back, he is not, to this day, sure exactly why he flicked the lighter when he did,” Katims wrote of Zampieri.
“To the best of his reflective estimation,” Katims added, “he did so inadvertently, out of a combination of factors: extreme stress, drug-dulled faculties and the unfortunate prompting of an automatic internal response to the presence of a lighter in his hand.”
Neither Katims nor Van de Graaf recommended the judge impose a specific sentence. Instead, they both said that whatever sentence is handed down it should be less than the 24-year prison term received by Howard Hoisington.
Judge Reiss agreed, saying that she believed Zampieri had shown “real remorse,” and “didn’t minimize his role.”
However, she also said that Zampieri had a more violent criminal past than Hoisington, with convictions for robbery and assaults.
In handing down her 230-month sentence, the judge told Zampieri that while she believed his action in flicking the lighter was inadvertent, and not intentional, it was still extremely “reckless.”
“You did set the blaze,” Reiss said to him. “It was you with the lighter.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: ‘Muscle’ in fatal crime spree gets almost 20 years.
