A judge on Monday sentenced a former Kansas University student to five years in prison for a 2004 arson spree that included a fire set in the stacks of Watson Library on the KU campus.

“His actions have very serious consequences,” Dist. Atty. Charles Branson said of 26-year-old David Ryan Jay. “I don’t know that he was necessarily out to see anybody else harmed, but he was definitely out to see the destruction that fire would cause.”

Judge Robert Fairchild sentenced Jay to three years in prison for the fire at the library, plus one year each for a fire at the dental office of Keith Jones, 647 Country Club Terrace, and at Clinton Parkway Nursery & Garden Store, 4900 Clinton Parkway.

That’s in addition to a six-year prison sentence he’s already serving for setting 13 fires in Johnson County around the same time as the Lawrence fires. One of those fires destroyed a $7 million senior center under construction in Olathe and injured a firefighter.

After Jay’s arrest, he was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome – essentially high-functioning autism – attention-deficit disorder, mild cognitive delay and a form of psychosis. He told police he set fires using starter logs and just wanted to see a fire – the more spectacular, the better.

Jay shook his head no when Fairchild asked whether he wanted to say anything on his behalf.