asst. managing editor

ALTUS -- An Altus woman who embezzled thousands of dollars while serving as treasurer at St. Paul's Episcopal Church must pay thousands more in fines, fees and restitution after her guilty plea Tuesday in District Court.

Vicki Payton King, 62, pleaded guilty to 17 counts of embezzlement for checks she wrote during a period from August 2003 to April 2004 on the church's "content account" for the purchase of personal goods. The checks, 17 in all, totaled $7,614.93. The smallest amount was on Nov. 29, 2003, for $55.50. The largest was for $1,029 on Nov. 5, 2003.

On Tuesday, King was handed a suspended sentence of five years each for seven felony embezzlement charges and one year each for 10 misdemeanor embezzlement charges -- all to run concurrently in the state Department of Corrections.

To stay out of prison, King must complete two years of supervised probation and 250 hours of community service, pay fines and court costs totaling $5,515.78 and make restitution of $11,000 to St. Paul's.

The church's "content account" came into being as part of a $450,000 insurance settlement following a fire at the church in the early morning hours of April 27, 2002. The fire, believed to have been arson, destroyed about half the building at the corner of East A and Thomas, including the chapel, Sunday school rooms and several offices. The other half of the building sustained extensive smoke damage.

Prior to the fire, several churches in Altus, including Grace New Life Church, Emmanuel Baptist Church, First United Methodist Church and St. Paul's, had lost an array of electronics and musical equipment in a string of burglaries.

Taylor V. Hetzel, then 29, was arrested in early May of that year after police found a stash of the stolen property in his residence. He is currently serving a seven-year sentence in the Department of Corrections for knowingly concealing stolen property. He was not charged with arson.

The church received an insurance payment of $300,000 for the property damage and another $150,000 to replace items that were lost in the fire -- the "content account."

Suspicion about King's activity came to the attention of church officials when on May 28, 2004, a bank statement was found on the church copy machine. "The bank statement had white-out across the payee line on one of the checks," according to an affidavit filed in District Court.

One church official told police that he had obtained copies of checks and had compared them with the bank statements on file at the church. He found that "several of the checks on the bank statements did not reflect the same payee as was on the check copy received from the bank."

King, the affidavit states, waived her right to legal counsel and "admitted to altering the payee line of the checks on the bank statement and said she did that so the checks would not be questioned." King also said that "many of the checks were made out to her as reimbursement for her labors at the church."

However, such reimbursement had not been approved.