Gladstone woman sentenced for trying to hire someone to burn down businesses at 39th & Bell
By Zoe Brown
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KANSAS CITY, Missouri (KCTV) — A Gladstone woman will spend three years behind bars for trying to hire someone to burn down her Kansas City, Missouri, building that had several businesses inside.
Mia Lee Jamison, who is 70 years old, pleaded guilty in June to soliciting a crime of violence and making a false statement to ATF investigators.
Jamison was sentenced to three years in federal prison without parole for each count. The sentences will run concurrently. After that, she will be on supervised release for three years.
Jamison admitted to meeting an undercover ATF agent at her home several times in the spring of 2019 so she could discuss hiring him to commit arson. She offered to pay him $150,000 to burn down her commercial business, Mia Plaza, near the corner of W. 39th Street and Bell Street.
At that time, three businesses were operating out of that location. There was a liquor and grocery store, a sushi bar, and a hookah lounge.
Jamison told the undercover agent that she was going to be losing ownership of the business because of a civil lawsuit and wanted it burned before April 29, 2019. She said she wanted it to look like an accident. She also said she had a $1.5 million insurance policy on the building, which was actually a $2 million policy.
She ended up giving the undercover agent a $3,500 deposit and they agreed that the fire would be set between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m., in order to limit the risk to the tenants.
Jamison met with the undercover agent for a final time on April 28, 2019. She said she’d removed video surveillance cameras in preparation for the arson.
She did not know that investigators had recorded all the meetings between Jamison and the undercover agent.
At about 4 a.m. the next day, federal investigators went to Jamison’s residence. They asked whether she burned down the building or whether she had asked someone to do so. Multiple times, she denied asking or hiring someone to commit arson.
After the interview, federal investigators let Jamison know that the building hadn’t actually caught fire and that she was under arrest.
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