Unwilling to take a financial loss by selling her Milan home and eager to leave her live-in boyfriend, Tifany Mapes turned to Christopher Bandy for help.

And Bandy, a South Lyon native who federal agents described as a serial pipe bomber for setting off devices near homes in Livingston County, said he offered his experience and expertise to help the woman he soon hoped to marry.

“Yes, I started it,” Bandy, 32, said about the April 23, 2009, blaze while testifying Friday at Mapes’ preliminary hearing. “I told her the way I’d do it, there won’t be any evidence. I just wanted to help Tifany.”

His plan, albeit simple and fashioned after popular cop television shows, appeared to work. Fire investigators were satisfied to call the blaze accidental and local police weren’t pushing any further - until Bandy faced federal indictment last fall for manufacturing explosives.

Bandy - in handcuffs and a prison jumpsuit - explained how he planned to be with Mapes, 20, after her recent break-up and hatched the arson conspiracy with her blessing. Now in federal custody while awaiting sentencing, he was among a handful of prosecution witnesses who testified against her Friday. 

Bandy offered the critical evidence that prompted District Judge Richard Conlin to order Mapes to stand trial on multiple counts of arson and insurance fraud.

Under a recent plea agreement with federal prosecutors, Bandy said he’ll serve more than eight years in prison, and three other felony counts will be dismissed with his continued cooperation.

Washtenaw County Assistant Prosecutor John Reiser said local arson charges stemming from the fire will also be dismissed with his truthful testimony in Mapes’ case.

But Rolland Sizemore III, Mapes’ attorney, said it is impossible to know when Bandy is telling the truth.

He hammered Bandy with examples of repeated lies to investigators, Mapes and his own mother in the past year. Bandy admitted to all of it, and also said he coached Mapes on what to pack and rearrange in the home to help bolster their story.

Bandy said he intended to blow the house up by causing a gas leak, but he couldn’t loosen the pipe attached to the furnace. Instead, he wrapped three cloth towels around the main wires leading to the main electrical panel and lit them on fire.

The couple hurried to Bandy’s family cottage with Mapes’ dogs and established an alibi, he testified. After authorities notified her of the blaze, they returned to the scene, where Mapes played the role of a devastated homeowner, Bandy said. She cried, appeared distraught, and complained enough of anxiety attacks to get evaluated by paramedics.

Witnesses indicated Mapes received roughly $120,000 for a house she purchased for $58,000 just three months earlier with the help of federal aid. She has since purchased a home in Dundee, which she shares with the live-in boyfriend who is now her fiancée.

Bandy said he proposed to Mapes in late May, and just three days later caught her cheating with the man. He later admitted to spying on the couple for several hours and ramming his car into the other man’s vehicle upon finding them in bed together.

Sizemore also argued prosecutors can’t prove the fire was intentional. Two of the three investigators who examined the scene, including Milan Area Fire Marshal Martin Ritchie, determined it was an electrical fire.

But the third investigator, an electrical engineer, found that the arcing wires left behind indicated it was not an electrical fire, but rather a fire that occurred near the electricity panel.

“We can’t ask ‘did Tifany Mapes have anything to do with this fire?’ if we can’t answer whether anyone had anything to do with it,” Sizemore said.

Reiser said Bandy’s testimony was believable, and eyewitnesses corroborated critical elements of his story.

Conlin acknowledged Bandy’s obvious credibility issues, but said his story was supported by strong circumstantial evidence that a jury should hear.

Art Aisner is a freelance writer for AnnArbor.com. Reach the news desk at news@annarbor.com or 734-623-2530.