Pennsylvania Woman Charged With Hiring Arsonist to Burn Down Estranged Wife's Home

A Pennsylvania woman is charged with multiple crimes in an alleged scheme to burn down the house where her estranged wife was staying and kill everyone in the home, as is the man she is accused of hiring to carry out the plan.

Heather Ann Dibert, 43, of Duncansville, is charged with 32 felonies and seven misdemeanors, TV station WTAJ reports. The Pennsylvania State Police filed a criminal complaint against her last Wednesday, saying she hired Zachery Sellers, 34, of Lewistown, to set fire to the home in Napier Township. She gave him money and drugs, police say.

The house was set on fire just after midnight October 28, but the fire was extinguished quickly and damage was minimal.

The charges against Dibert include conspiracy to commit aggravated arson and conspiracy to commit murder. Police say that when Sellers told her there were other people living in the house with her estranged wife, including children, she said, “Kill ’em all.” Sellers is facing 32 charges, including attempted criminal homicide. Dibert and Sellers are both in jail, with bail for each set at $1 million.

Dibert’s wife, whose name has not been made public, was removed from their home in mid-October after the wife’s father sent police to conduct a welfare check, Pennsylvania’s Bedford Gazette reports. Police say Dibert had frequently threatened to harm her wife, and many of the threats involved some action by Sellers. During the welfare check, Dibert threatened to kill her wife’s father, and police in East Freedom, Pa., charged her with making terroristic threats, the paper reports. The wife moved in with her parents, and there were also three minor children in the home.

The state police responded to the report of a fire at the parents’ home about 12:30 a.m. October 18. Someone had used a fire extinguisher to put out the flames, and police found a Molotov cocktail near plastic toys that had started to melt. “Police said accidental ignition sources were ruled out and that ‘the fire was incendiary and was ignited under circumstances in which a person knows it should not be ignited,’” according to the Gazette.

Police connected Dibert and Sellers to the fire through cell phone records. They say Dibert was trying to set up an alibi by going to a strip club in West Virginia the night of the fire, but cell phone records showed she was near the Napier Township home before continuing on to West Virginia. Sellers’s phone records showed he was in the area as well, police say.

Preliminary hearings for Dibert and Sellers are set for Wednesday.

Pictured: Heather Dibert