Waukesha apartment arson, West Bend woman committed

WAUKESHA, Wis. – The West Bend woman accused of setting a fire at her mother’s Waukesha apartment building has been committed to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services for 25 years.

Alexandra Steinmetz, 30, was found guilty of arson but not guilty due to mental disease/defect. Additional charges of first-degree recklessly endangering safety were dismissed.

Firefighters were called to the fire near St. Paul and Fairview on Oct. 7, 2021. According to a criminal complaint, multiple people who lived in the apartment building evacuated before firefighters arrived on the scene.

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The complaint indicates the fire started near a rug that was on an enclosed porch. It was apparent to one officer that “the rug was clearly burned with a towel on top of it.” The officer was unable to find any articles that would indicate a cigarette butt or anything else was used to start the fire, and nobody at the scene had information that would indicate how it started either.

The same day as the Waukesha fire, the complaint states “approximately 17 fires” had been set in the Children’s Wisconsin parking lot in Wauwatosa. Detectives met the next day regarding those fires, and surveillance footage “recorded a vehicle being driven by a woman, as being the individual who was setting these fires.” A check on the license registration shows it was registered to Steinmetz and her mother.

Detectives spoke with the mother about the fires set in Wauwatosa. The mother showed law enforcement text messages between her and Steinmetz that were “confrontational.”

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Almost a week after the fires, detectives requested a search warrant for Steinmetz’s address in West Bend. Prior to executing that search warrant, detectives received information from Wauwatosa police that “they had conducted a search of the defendant’s vehicle” and a “strong odor of gasoline” was coming from inside.

Steinmetz was taken into custody and shown photos from Children’s Wisconsin. The complaint states she “acknowledged that the vehicle in the photos was hers and that it was her in the photos,” but she couldn’t remember anything else.

Later that month, during a conversation between Steinmetz and a detective, the complaint states she admitted to setting the hospital fires and also admitted to setting fires at her mother’s Waukesha home. When asked how she set the fires, she said she used a towel and gasoline. She ended the conversation saying “she knew she had done wrong.”