Sharon Woman Charged with Arson
By Sandy Cooch

A 49-year-old Sharon woman was arraigned Monday on felony charges of arson and burglary, for allegedly attempting to set a Woodstock home on fire Sept. 29.

Now police are reëxamining a series of unsolved arson fires in the last two months, in Vermont and New Hampshire, to determine if Cheryle Potwin might be linked to any of those.

Potwin, caught in the act of igniting some objects in a Woodstock home last Friday, just before noon, pleaded innocent to the arson and burglary charges Monday in Windsor District Court.

She was taken directly to Vermont State Hospital in Waterbury for psychiatric tests, to determine if she is mentally competent to stand trial and if she was sane at the time she allegedly committed the crime.

According to court records, Potwin told investigators she has been diagnosed with multiple personality disorder and has nine or 10 personalities.

A mental health screener told the court that if the criminal allegations against Potwin are true, they could be the result of dissociative identity (multiple personality) disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The court agreed with an unusual request from Windsor County State’s Atty. Robert Sand, who asked that Potwin’s husband, Chris Potwin, be allowed to drive her to Waterbury. She is to return to court by mid-October, once the psychiatric evaluation is complete.

A resident of the Woodstock home, Rory Kilcullen, told police he was upstairs reading, at about 11:30 a.m. last Friday, when he heard someone downstairs. He walked into the living room to find a woman—later identified as Potwin—setting fire to papers by a computer, while a chair was already on fire.

Kilcullen was unable to detain the woman while he called 911, but was able to note her license plate number.

The Sept. 29 fire in Woodstock—which was caught early and caused only minor smoke damage—was one of three suspicious fires reported in the area that day. A Plainfield, N.H. home was destroyed by fire, earlier that morning, and a Hartland resident returned to his residence at 6 p.m. to find the home full of smoke.

In her interview with police, Potwin told police she was out running errands on Friday morning. At one point, she had stopped at a business just one mile away from the Plainfield, N.H. house that was destroyed by fire.

According to court records, she told police she couldn’t remember what else she did that morning.

Several other fires that occurred in Central Vermont in mid-August, all considered to be arson, remain unsolved.

They include three August 18 fires, all reported in the early afternoon. The fires destroyed a mobile home on Route 14 in Sharon and a storage trailer in Royalton, and damaged a camp in Barnard.

The following morning, a West Hartford residence was destroyed by fire.

No people were hurt in these fires, but several pets have perished.

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