Plus Fine of Nearly $200,000 : Artist to Pay for Crime--With Bust of a Judge

A sculptor who set fire to an Oceanside abbey and then threatened a judge while in jail was ordered Wednesday to serve five years’ probation, repay nearly $200,000 for damages caused by the blaze--and produce a chiseled likeness of a retiring Vista Superior Court judge.

Judge David Moon ruled that Tadeusz (Ted) Lukjanczyk, 53, had served enough time in jail and ordered the sculptor, who has been called a modern-day Michelangelo, placed in a Tucson, Ariz., counseling and rehabilitation program.

Lukjanczyk (pronounced luke-JAN-sick) has been incarcerated at the Vista jail since October, when he was arrested after confessing to setting fire to several buildings at the Prince of Peace Abbey, a Benedictine monastery atop a shrub-covered hillside in Oceanside.

Under Moon’s ruling, Lukjanczyk will be enrolled in the counseling program for an indeterminate period, but the terms of his probation will be reviewed in November and again next May.

The probation also calls for Lukjanczyk to submit to drug testing and continue to take prescribed medication. The artist has variously been diagnosed as being a paranoid schizophrenic and a manic-depressive, for which he has taken lithium.

In addition, Lukjanczyk is being required to pay back the $195,977.90 in damage he caused at the abbey. Moon said the artist could pay back the money in increments as low as $100 a month, meaning the payments could theoretically be spread over more than 165 years.

Perhaps the most unusual aspect of the probation, however, was Moon’s decision to have Lukjanczyk produce either a portrait or sculpture of Judge F.V. Lopardo, who is retiring in a few weeks from the North County bench.

Moon was prompted to take that action because Lukjanczyk had threatened a Vista Superior Court judge while in jail. Lukjanczyk claimed the threat was only a hoax, explaining that he was trying to frighten the judge.

Shortly after he landed in jail, Lukjanczyk says, he met a young Vietnamese man who told the artist he was being sent to prison by Judge Zalman Scherer “for joy riding” in a stolen car. Outraged by the youth’s predicament, Lukjanczyk dispatched his letter to Scherer.

Damage from Fires

During the various fires Lukjanczyk admits to setting Oct. 2, a workshop and storage shed were destroyed and a chapel that the monks had nearly completed was damaged. In addition, the fire ruined a larger-than-life rendering of Christ on the cross that Lukjanczyk had been carving out of mahogany for the abbey.

While the fires were still smoldering the next morning, Lukjanczyk struck out at another of his works, hacking off the arms of a graceful carving of St. Benedict on display in the abbey’s entryway.

The artist then fled in his pickup truck to a friend’s residence in Twentynine Palms. Oceanside police tracked Lukjanczyk down within a day and the sculptor confessed to the crimes.

A native of the Ukraine, Lukjanczyk said he was angry at Abbot Claude Ehringer for failing to adequately pay him and for mistreating several Polish workers at the abbey. Ehringer said the claims are untrue, maintaining he has paid Lukjanczyk more than $45,000 for various sculptures and treated the workers fairly.

A former member of Synanon, Lukjanczyk always had a knack for carving wood, but he did not become a serious sculptor until well into his 20s. Despite a somewhat late start, he managed to hew a solid reputation. Lukjanczyk has had a bronze bust of the Pope displayed for a time in the Vatican library and several other pieces have been priced well into six figures.