By Guillermo Contreras
San Antonio Express-News
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — A former Fair Oaks Ranch police officer convicted of arson pleaded guilty Thursday to a federal stalking charge and admitted he sent sexually explicit photos of a woman over the Internet to her and 29 of her co-workers.
As part of a plea deal, Robert Lee Crews, 41, who now lives in San Diego, Calif., agreed to a sentence of two years in federal prison when Chief U.S. District Judge Fred Biery sentences him Oct. 7. The maximum is five years.
Crews was indicted in April and admitted Thursday that he caused the San Antonio woman, with whom he had a previous relationship, “substantial emotional distress,” according to his plea deal.
He admitted he sent the woman a text on July 27, 2010, at 10:20 p.m. telling her, “I hope you have a good day tomorrow.”
At the same time, Crews, who lived in Nevada at the time, sent an email to the woman and her co-workers titled “the end of the victim,” with an attachment of 15 sexually explicit photos of her, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Wannarka.
Crews was in the news in 2000 after he was arrested for a string of fires in the Wood Lake subdivision in McQueeney, near where he was living.
The blazes occurred between November 1999 and February 2000. He resigned from the Fair Oaks Police Department when arson charges were filed against him.
In one incident, a home’s privacy fence caught fire and Crews knocked on the owner’s door to report the blaze, according to published reports. Another fire severely damaged a house whose owners were out of town. When emergency responders arrived, Crews was rushing into the home purportedly to rescue anyone who may have been inside, Guadalupe County Sheriff Arnold Zwicke said.
“In my opinion, he was trying to be the neighborhood hero,” Zwicke, then a sergeant who investigated Crews, told the San Antonio Express-News. “He was Johnny-on-the-spot.”
Crews was found guilty of three counts of arson in June 2001 and sentenced to six years in prison. Texas Department of Criminal Justice records show he was released from prison June 15, 2007.
Copyright 2011 San Antonio Express-News