PARIS — The man accused of setting fire to the home of former Oxford Plains Speedway announcer Robert “Bobby” Walker in 2007 pleaded guilty Friday and will serve 18 months in prison.

Robert Conrad, 35, of Paris was sentenced to 10 years behind bars with all but 18 months suspended, plus four years of probation. He must also pay $7,500 in restitution. The court allowed him to report to prison the day after Thanksgiving.

Conrad admitted to setting the fire at Walker’s home at 303 Country Club Road in Norway on March 13, 2007.

Assistant District Attorney Joe O’Connor said Conrad’s girlfriend at the time, Tanya Stickney, told investigators that Conrad was bitter toward his ex-girlfriend, who was Walker’s daughter, and decided to torch Walker’s house.

While Conrad was suspected, he wasn’t charged with arson until this year when his name came up during an investigation into another intentionally-set fire in June, this one in Oxford, according to O’Connor.

Conrad said he had been home with Stickney when the fire started, O’Connor said.

Investigators spoke with her and eventually she told them about the 2007 fire.

O’Connor said Stickney reported she went to Walker’s ranch-style house with Conrad the night of the fire and waited in the car as a lookout. She told police Conrad took a torch into the house and lit curtains on fire. When he left, Conrad told Stickney that no one would suspect arson because he’d started the fire near electrical wiring.

Police equipped Stickney with a listening device to record Conrad confessing to the fire. Instead, Conrad became suspicious that Stickney was wearing a wire and became hostile, at which point police stopped the sting and arrested Conrad, according to O’Connor.

Stickney told police Conrad threatened to kill her family if she told anyone, O’Connor said.

At Friday’s court proceeding, Conrad’s lawyer denied that and said that it was Stickney who had blackmailed him for the past three years by threatening to turn him in.

O’Connor said the state doesn’t plan to charge Stickney.

When Conrad was charged, police searched the home of his parents, who also collect NASCAR memorabilia, and confiscated items they believed belonged to Walker, who reported them missing from the partially burned house, O’Connor said. He said Walker identified several photographs and other items as stolen from his home.

Conrad and his parents maintain that they purchased all of the memorabilia and that none came from Walker’s home, according to Maurice Porter, Conrad’s attorney.

Conrad, who was a firefighter with the Oxford Fire Department about seven years ago, was not charged with theft of the memorabilia or the June fire.

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