WINDHAM – Donato Corsetti, the Windham variety store owner and former newspaper publisher charged with setting fire to a three-unit apartment building in Windham Center late last year, will be in court Thursday, May 9, for a dispositional conference.

According to Tamara Getchell, spokeswoman for the Cumberland County District Attorney’s Office, the routine conference will be attended by Corsetti, his lawyers, and prosecuting attorney Jennifer Ackerman, as well as the judge, “to see if it’s possible to resolve the case without going forward on trial. It’s a meeting that happens in the courtroom environment to figure out what needs to be done before the next stage, which is jury selection,” Getchell said.

Corsetti, who has owned Corsetti’s Market at the intersection of Windham Center Road and Route 202 since 1978 and founded the Windham Independent newspaper in 2004, was arrested March 7 on two counts of class A arson, each punishable by up to 30 years in prison, a result of a fire Dec. 7, 2012, at an apartment building he owned. He was indicted on the charges by the Cumberland County grand jury March 8.

The first arson charge pertains to the structure and the second focuses on the firefighters and occupants whose lives were put in danger, Ackerman said.

According to court documents, Corsetti told authorities the blaze was a failed Rhode Island organized crime hit related to gambling debts. He said two men bound him with lamp cord in the middle apartment and set the blaze, leaving him to die. A Corsetti’s Market employee noticed Corsetti flailing about in the apartment and rescued him.

Fire investigators and the district attorney’s office don’t believe Corsetti, who had owned the apartment building at 447 Gray Road since the 1980s. They say he burned the structure to recoup insurance money. Corsetti’s mortgage lender foreclosed on the building, as well as Corsetti’s private home to the rear of the building, on Nov. 28, and Corsetti was served a notice of foreclosure in person Dec. 4, three days before the fire.

Corsetti posted $25,000 cash bail March 8 and has been living in Windham, Ackerman said. He is represented by attorneys David Hirshon and Marshall Tinkle of the Portland-based Hirshon Law Group.