Stalker Who Burned Down Woman's Home Sentenced To 27 Years: Queens DA

QUEENS, NY — A dangerously obsessed stalker who burned down a woman's Queens apartment after she ended their relationship will spend nearly three decades in prison, prosecutors said.

Steven Somerville, 52, was sentenced last week to at least 27 years behind bars in a harrowing stalking and arson case that prosecutors said almost ended in the deaths of a woman and her three children.

The woman fled with her children to a domestic violence shelter just days before Somerville set fire to their Forest Hills apartment in December 2021, prosecutors said.

Somerville sent the woman a spate of threatening texts before and after the blaze, authorities said.

"I'm gonna devote my whole life to finding you and killing you," is just one terrifying text he wrote to the woman, prosecutors said.

Jurors found Somerville guilty of arson, stalking and other criminal charges in a July trial.

The case covered the brief intimate relationship that began in October 2021 between Somerville and the woman, who worked together, prosecutors said.

Their pairing quickly soured as Somerville, who was married, became fixated on the woman, authorities said. He targeted her with unwanted attention, such as showing up at her home uninvited if she didn't answer his calls and driving her to work in spite of her desire to not see him, prosecutors said.

Somerville's fixation became so clearly dangerous that his wife, after she learned about the affair, reached out to the woman and urged her to contact the police for her safety, prosecutors said.

The tense situation boiled over Dec. 4, 2021, when the woman tried to call off the relationship and Somerville threatened to kill her, authorities said.

She took her three children to a domestic violence shelter, but Somerville didn't stop, prosecutors said.

"Over a 24-hour period, Somerville called the victim more than 100 times," a Queens district attorney's office release states.

Somerville then entered the woman's empty apartment early Dec. 7, 2021, moved two mattresses into the living room, piled them with clothing and household items and set it all on fire, prosecutors said.

A photograph from the apartment after the blaze showed it gutted by flames, with items strewn across the floor.

"There is no where I won't find you now," is among the texts Somerville sent before and after the fire, prosecutors said.