A criminal justice professor who has worked at various California colleges pleaded guilty Thursday after being charged with setting a series of blazes near the massive Dixie Fire in 2021.
Gary Stephen Maynard, 49, pleaded guilty to three counts of arson to federal property in Sacramento federal court before U.S. District Judge Daniel J. Calabretta.
Maynard, who is being held without bail in the Yuba County Jail, was arrested in August 2021 after a three-week investigation that included the use of a tracking device hidden on his vehicle by authorities who followed his movements throughout Northern California for hundreds of miles, court papers say.
“It appeared that Maynard was in the midst of an arson-setting spree,” court papers filed after his arrest say.
Maynard worked teaching part-time at various schools, including Santa Clara University, where he was an adjunct faculty member in the sociology department from September 2019 to December 2020, and at Sonoma State University, where he was a lecturer in the fall of 2020 specializing in criminal justice, cults and deviant behavior