Threatening texts sent prior to fatal Schenectady fire

In the days leading up to the May 2013 arson fire in Schenectady that killed David Terry and three of Terry’s children, Edward Leon was fixated on Terry, federal prosecutors now say.

Leon and Terry had in common a woman, according to a new court filing from prosecutors in Leon’s ongoing perjury case. The woman had once dated Leon, but by late-April 2013 planned to marry Terry.

Using an anonymous cellphone, prosecutors wrote, Leon texted Terry that those nuptials would never happen.

“You’re not going to make it to your wedding day,” Leon allegedly wrote in one text message. In another, Leon allegedly wrote, “die, Dave, die.”

A third message allegedly from Leon to Terry read, “You’re a dead man walking.”

Federal prosecutors have previously disclosed the existence of threatening text messages, but not the content.

Prosecutors also previously disclosed that they believe Leon, who lived in St. Johnsville, was in the area of the Hulett Street apartment house minutes before the blaze was reported.

Leon is not charged with the blaze itself. Instead, he faces charges of lying to the federal grand jury investigating the fire about his whereabouts and the text messages. Prosecutors wrote in the new filing that Leon has admitted to investigators that he lied about both, including admitting that he was near the scene of the fire at the time it broke out.

The prosecution filing came late last week in response to Leon’s request for a bail hearing and asking that his case be dismissed. The court last week assigned a new defense attorney to Leon. That attorney did not return calls for comment Monday.

Prosecutors revealed the new details to convince presiding Magistrate Judge Christian F. Hummel that Leon should remain in custody and the case should continue.

Among the other new details were alleged threatening text messages sent to the woman in common and “significant evidence” of Leon’s involvement in another arson fire six weeks before at the woman’s St. Johnsville apartment. The woman’s name was not included in the filing.

Prosecutors told Hummel that Leon’s threats against Terry dated back to the February before the fatal fire and extended to social media.

Leon’s alleged text messages to the woman, sent sometime in 2013, included the lines, “I will make the devil look like a saint,” “You should never have brought this side of me out,” and “There will b nothing that can stop what is going to happen fun fun fun ha ha ha…”

Leon was hospitalized the February before the fire after threatening suicide in a text, prosecutors wrote. Police were also called the day of the Hulett Street fire when he spoke to a friend about taking his own life, prosecutors wrote. That came after the woman refused to speak to Leon after learning of the fire.

According to prosecutors, in the St. Johnsville fire no one was hurt and no one has been charged. Leon helped the woman and her children out, prosecutors wrote.

That fire happened March 17, 2013, at a rental property at 9 New St. in St. Johnsville. The woman in common lived there with her children. The fire was originally thought to be accidental, prosecutors wrote. Further investigation, however, pointed to an open flame put to “combustible materials” as the cause. The fire was set in the area of the first floor near the stairs that led to the woman’s apartment, prosecutors wrote. Gasoline was used.

Prosecutors cited one witness who testified under oath that Leon threatened the previous summer that he would burn down the woman’s house if she ever left him. Another witness recounted seeing Leon approaching the St. Johnsville apartment house carrying a gas can either the day of that fire or the day before.

The Hulett Street fire in Schenectady, prosecutors wrote, was set on the stairs leading up to Terry’s apartment and it was set using gasoline.

Killed in the May 2, 2013 fire at 438 Hulett St., Schenectady, were Terry and his three children, Layah, 3, Michael, 2, and Donavan Duell, 11 months. The only child to survive was then-5-year-old Sa’fyre Terry. She suffered severe burns resulting in a long recovery that continues.

Leon was one of two people indicted in November for allegedly lying to the grand jury investigating the fire. Jennica Duell of Schenectady — the mother of the three children killed in the fire and the child injured — was also accused of giving contradictory statements to the panel. She testified in vivid detail that she was with the person who set the fire when the crime was committed. She later testified that what she said in her initial testimony was not true.

The man she accused of setting the blaze, Robert A. Butler, was initially charged with setting the fire. Those charges were dropped nine months later and Butler was freed.

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