FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Investigators say a drifter with arson convictions in Oklahoma and Louisiana must serve 40 years in prison for two Texas fires.
George Wayne Reibert was sentenced Friday in Fort Worth after pleading guilty to arson of a habitation.
Investigator Brad Sims with the Fort Worth Fire Department said Reibert set two vacant houses on fire last summer while on parole for a Louisiana arson conviction. Security video helped trace the 42-year-old Reibert to a homeless shelter.
Sims said Reibert, who’s suspected in a dozen more Fort Worth fires, was a volunteer firefighter in the Tulsa, Oklahoma, area in the 1990s.
Records show Reibert, with a prior arson conviction, was cornered in 1999 by some children in Tulsa and arrested as a suspect in a dumpster fire. Details weren’t immediately available.