Pizza Ranch owner expected to surrender for arson

By JARED STRONG
j.strong@carrollspaper.com

The owner of Jefferson’s Pizza Ranch was unable to pay back his $450,000 mortgage for the restaurant and — perhaps with the help of one or more people — torched the building in January to collect a big insurance payment, investigators allege.

Robert Duane Schultz, 53, of Ankeny, faces three felony charges for the fire, which damaged nearby buildings with smoke.

The most-serious charge is punishable by up to 25 years in prison.

Schultz was expected to arrive in Jefferson today to surrender for arrest. He will need to pay a $25,000 bail to be released, Jefferson Police Chief Mark Clouse said.

Clouse declined to say how many other people might face charges for the arson. He also declined to say whether or not one of the restaurant’s managers, Melinda Wood, might be implicated in the insurance-fraud scheme.

Wood is a felon who admitted in 2011 to stealing more than $12,000 from another restaurant where she was an assistant manager. Schultz told Herald  Publishing last month, “I hate to point any fingers because Mindy was a good manager.”

Schultz did not respond to a request to comment for this article.

Wood this morning said the criminal charges against Schultz vindicate her.

“A lot of people say he probably used me” as a scapegoat, she said. “I really don’t know what to say about it. I’m a little upset. I put a lot of trust in him.”

Clouse, the police chief, said the investigation revealed that Schultz apparently doused the restaurant with gasoline in several locations inside the building the night of Jan. 26 and someone else ignited it.

Several people reported smelling gasoline in and near the restaurant in the days that led to the fire, and Schultz said he had accidentally spilled some of the highly flammable fuel in the restaurant’s dining area, Clouse said. He claimed he took the fuel inside the restaurant to give to an employee whose vehicle had run empty.

Schultz told investigators that he left the restaurant about 10:15 p.m. on Jan. 26 and arrived at his Ankeny home about 11:15 p.m.

The fire was reported just after midnight.

A video surveillance system in the restaurant that might have recorded the arson hadn’t functioned for weeks, Clouse said, and Schultz had no reasonable explanation for why he didn’t fix it. Clouse did not know whether the security system had been tampered with.

Schultz faces felony charges of arson, criminal mischief and insurance fraud.

County records show he obtained an open-ended real estate mortgage for the building in November 2012 for up to $375,000.

In the next two years, he requested the bank increase that amount three times, most recently in June 2014, when it was raised to $450,000.

Schultz told investigators he was “behind on his mortgage payments,” according to court records.

Clouse said he is investigating a text-message exchange Schultz had with someone else that might reveal others who were involved in the arson scheme.