A 41-year-old woman booked into the Collin County Jail over the weekend on a second-degree felony arson charge is the first female arson suspect logged in the county’s jail records in at least two years, according to a review by The Dallas Express.
Amanda Lynn Turner was booked at midnight on October 26, 2025, facing four charges, including arson and assault on a peace officer or judge — both second-degree felonies — as well as two Class B misdemeanors: failure to identify as a fugitive and interference with public duties, the Collin County Sheriff’s app revealed.
Jail records list Turner as a white female, five feet one inch tall, weighing 125 pounds, with brown hair and hazel eyes. No bond amounts were listed for the two felony charges, while each misdemeanor carried a $2,000 bond.
Amanda Lynn Turner
The app database, which contains at least two years of arson records, shows six male arson suspects over that period, and Turner as the first woman accused of the crime.
The 429th District Court of Collin County was unable to provide an arrest warrant affidavit or other relevant case materials at this time. The Dallas Express will update this story as additional details become available.
Court records show Turner has prior cases in the county, including a 2025 misdemeanor trespassing charge and a 2022 traffic conviction for passing an authorized emergency vehicle. In both cases, Turner was listed at an address in The Colony, Texas.
While female arsonists make up a small minority of those charged with the crime, they have drawn renewed public attention in recent years. Nationally, women account for about 12% of those imprisoned for arson, according to a 2000 special report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Psychiatric researchers have noted that women accused of arson often display distinct patterns from men charged with similar crimes.
A systematic review presented at the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law found that female arsonists had a greater prevalence of sexual abuse, and a higher prevalence of depression and psychosis, and tended to act out of attention-seeking or ‘cry for help’ motivations, rather than for profit or concealment of other crimes.
“Female arsonists are a unique patient population, distinct from both male arsonists and non-arsonist female offenders,” Alick Wang and colleagues from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, concluded. They added that better risk management strategies could help prevent such cases, “and avoid dramatic outcomes for them and community members.”
Other studies have echoed those findings.
A 1989 Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law article titled “Female Arsonists: A Clinical Study” found “a high prevalence of various behavioral disturbances,” including personality disorders and suicidal behavior, among women convicted of arson. Researchers suggested that “poor impulse control may be a prerequisite to this type of criminal behavior.”
A 2023 Swedish study comparing 100 male and 100 female arson offenders also reported that women displayed “more self-destructive behaviour, lower Global Assessment of Functioning scores, and had been in contact with psychiatric health services to a greater extent than men.” The authors concluded that these differences “suggest that specific actions may be needed for preventing and treating women compared with men at risk for committing arson.”
Texas women have made national headlines for arson in recent months.
In September, federal prosecutors announced that a Temple woman, 38-year-old Natasha Marie O’Dell, had been sentenced to six years in prison for setting fire to a Seattle-area church in 2023, causing more than $3.2 million in damage.
“Ms. O’Dell acted with extreme disregard for community safety when she poured more than a gallon of gasoline on the church building and used a lighter to start the blaze,” Acting U.S. Attorney Teal Luthy Miller said in a press release. “This conduct put anyone inside the church, the neighbors around the church, and the firefighters who responded in extreme danger.”
Turner remains held in Collin County Jail as of Monday afternoon, according to the most recent booking data.