Three more sentenced in Mobile Walmart arson case – include woman who started fires

MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) - A federal judge on Friday handed out punishment to three more members of a conspiracy to set Gulf Coast Walmart stores on fire.

U.S. District Judge Terry Moorer imposed four-year prison sentences on two women married to co-conspirators. Erica Sikes is married to admitted mastermind Jeffery Sikes, whom the judge sentenced earlier this week to 18 years in prison.

Jenna Bottorff has a husband and a son who are awaiting sentencing.

Moorer sentenced Mikayla Scheele, who admitted setting the fires, to two years in prison.

All three women will be supervised the U.S. Probation Office for three years after their prison terms. The judge also ordered them, along with the other defendants, to pay Walmart almost $7.3 million for the damage to four stores.

Scheele faced a minimum of three years and a month under advisory sentencing guidelines. But she benefited from her early and deep cooperation with law enforcement investigators.

“Here, the conduct was significant, but it is noted that the Defendant before the Court had no part in planning the crimes nor in causing physical (health) injury to any victims,” defense attorney Brian Lockwood wrote in a sentencing memo.

Sikes has admitted to orchestrating the arson scheme after fleeing Nebraska in 2018 to avoid sentencing in a federal fraud case there and renting a home in Lillian. He directed the creation of a manifesto delivered to local media organizations demanding Walmart implement higher pay, improved benefits, better working conditions and other changes.

Fires hit Walmart stores on the Interstate 65 Beltline and Tillman’s Corner just before Memorial Day in 2021, followed by blazes on June 4 in Biloxi and Gulfport.

Lockwood pointed to Scheele’s testimony during a two-day evidentiary hearing last week. He wrote that it made clear she “played no role in determining who, when, where, what, how, or why the crimes would be committed. Instead, as the ‘expendable’ person from the point of view of her co-defendants, Ms. Scheele was drugged, transported, and ordered to perform the actions for which she is now to be sentenced.”

Scheele has a driving under the in fluence conviction from Nebraska and several scrapes with the juvenile justice system. Lockwood wrote in the sentencing memo that his client’s parents kicked her out of the home after she got pregnant and that after her relationship with the child’s father fell apart, she moved in with Jeffery and Erica Sikes.

Scheele lived with the couple is several states and became a “victim of human trafficking” when the couple forced her to move to Nebraska “for purposes of providing ‘services’ to the Sikes’ business partner.

Jeffery Sikes’ brother-in-law, Sean Bottorff, who wrote the manifesto at his behest, remains to be sentenced. Bottorff’s son, Michael Bottorff, is the final member of the conspiracy who has not yet been sentenced.

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