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[sirens] NARRATOR: For over a
decade, suspicious fires burned businesses and homes
in Southern California.
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Arson was suspected, but there
was little physical evidence. Investigators found an
important piece of evidence
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in a novel that
described several fires strikingly similar
to the real ones. How was it possible
that the author knew
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information never
revealed to the public? [theme music] South Pasadena, California, a
town of only three square miles
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located just north of Hollywood. On the night of
October 10, 1984, most residents were getting
ready to watch the San Diego
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Padres take on the Detroit
Tigers in the World Series. Jim Obdam, just 19
years old at the time,
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was working as a cashier
at Ole's Home Center. JIM: And I was like, why
is it so quiet in here?
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I go, oh, yeah. It's the World
Series this evening. I was thinking that it was
nice and quiet in the store.
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NARRATOR: Around 7:00 PM, Obdam
heard an emergency announcement over the public address system.
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He went to investigate. JIM: I was walking toward
the front of the store and I noticed a
pillar of smoke, just
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a grayish, white
pillar of smoke. NARRATOR: Obdam went to
the hardware department
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and began to lead customers
toward the front of the store. JIM: I looked down one
of the side aisles,
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even turned down the side
aisle, and noticed at that point in time that there was
just a wall of flames.
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I felt trapped and I didn't
know where to go from there. NARRATOR: Then, the
lights went out,
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and Obdam couldn't
see the others. Everyone inside the
store desperately tried to find a fire exit.
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JOSEPH: The first unit to arrive
at Ole's observed a column of smoke coming
from the roof area.
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The chief in charge was
not certain at that time what they had. He didn't realize the
extent of the conflagration.
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NARRATOR: Within a very
short period of time, the fire was a roaring inferno. Jim Obdam barely got out alive.
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JIM: My ears were singed. The left arm was burnt. As soon as I got
out of the store,
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I still remember touching
my arm and the skin just falling off of it. NARRATOR: Four others
were not so fortunate.
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WOMAN: He was trapped in there. He was dead. That's all we know.
REPORTER: Your son?
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Your grandson?
-My grand baby. He would have been
three in January. NARRATOR: Matthew Troidl
was the youngest victim.
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His grandmother, Ada Deal,
and two store employees, Jimmy Cetina and Caroline
Kraus, also perished.
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When the fire was
extinguished, investigators searched through the
rubble for clues.
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-Just in normal
fire investigation, you have to first discover the
area of the point of origin.
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You can't find out what
caused the fire unless you can find out where the fire started.
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NARRATOR: But investigators
couldn't determine the origin. JOSEPH: When one goes to
the scene of an arson fire,
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one finds-- essentially,
a pile of trash. Three feet of water sometimes. And it's extremely hard to
find the point of origin.
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NARRATOR: The
official explanation was that the fire
was accidental. But John Orr, arson investigator
for the nearby Glendale Fire
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Department, strongly disagreed. He was at the fire
and took these photos. -Within a day of fire, John
Orr met with Karen Berry, who
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was the sister-in-law of
one of the terms of fire, and he expressed his
opinion that this,
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in fact, was an arson fire. NARRATOR: Orr believed the fire
started in some patio cushions
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which were made of
polyurethane foam, a highly flammable petroleum byproduct. The debate didn't last long.
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Soon, there would
be other fires. There was no doubt an
arsonist was on the loose.
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[sirens] Two months after the
fire at Ole's Home Center there was another suspicious
fire at a second Ole's store.
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This time, there was no
dispute-- the cause was arson. -The fire was set in
the foam padding section
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of the home products department. NARRATOR: And 90
miles away, there were several other
suspicious fires
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in Bakersfield, California. One of the fires occurred
at a Craft Mart store. Arson investigator Marvin
Casey arrived at the scene
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shortly after it
was extinguished. -Craft Mart is where they
sell different crafts.
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They sell foam rubber
batting and dry vegetation for making floral arrangements.
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NARRATOR: And at this
fire, investigators found their first
real piece of evidence
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in a bin of dried flowers. MARVIN: I looked in the bin
and I saw a yellow-lined piece
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of paper that was used to
conceal an incendiary device. It was readily recognizable
because it had three matches
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that were wrapped around
a, uh, cigarette butt. And it was attached
with a rubber band.
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NARRATOR: The incendiary
device burns slowly, allowing the arsonist
time to make a getaway.
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MARVIN: The burning
cigarette will come down and it will ignite the sulfur
on the end of the match head.
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You instantly have
a going flame. NARRATOR: And there was
another fire that same day
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in a nearby fabric store
that started in a bin holding pillows and foam rubber. -It doesn't take
a rocket scientist
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to figure out that
you have a problem with, uh, a fire
bug on the loose. NARRATOR: There were
other suspicious fires
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in Fresno and Tulare,
cities north of Bakersfield. At one, investigators
found an incendiary device
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identical to the one found
at the Craft Mart fire. When Casey reviewed the dates
and times of these fires,
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he discovered a
troubling coincidence. They all occurred along
Highway 99 around the time
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a group of arson
investigators met for their annual
convention in Fresno. MARVIN: So that just threw up
a red flag in my mind thinking
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that it could possibly be
one of our own setting fires. NARRATOR: Casey got the
list of the 300 people
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who attended the conference and
narrowed it down to 55 people based on where they
lived in relation
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to the convention center. MARVIN: What these
55 people had in common was that they had
attended the conference.
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They had traveled alone. They had passed through
Bakersfield down 99. NARRATOR: When Casey told his
superiors that one of these 55
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arson professionals was
their serial arsonist, he was ignored. MARVIN: I was an outcast.
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I was shunned for
developing this theory of a fire investigator
setting fires. -Nobody but nobody
that I know of
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believed that Casey
was on to anything. -As a matter of fact, when I
would attend the conventions,
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uh, I-- I couldn't talk to
anybody about this theory very much, because nobody would
really want to listen ,
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and nobody shared
my idea with it. NARRATOR: But maybe
they should have. The incendiary device
from the Craft Mart fire
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was sent to the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms for analysis. It was a yellow piece of
lined paper folded neatly
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with a cigarette and
some matches inside. ATF's fingerprint expert
selected ninhydrin
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to look for possible prints. CHARLES: Ninhydrin is a
wet chemical that when applied to the paper actually
reacts to the amino acids which
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are part of what makes up
a fingerprint, uh, residue. NARRATOR: It usually takes a
day for the chemical to dry,
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but heating the circulating
air speeds up the process. Miraculously, they
found a partial print.
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CHARLES: Fingerprints
are referred to as just a chance impression. They may be there, they may not.
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So to find a fingerprint,
especially to find one that was identifiable, the examiners
as well as the investigators
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were very lucky in this case. NARRATOR: The color of
the paper and the lines obscured the print.
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To bring out additional
detail, criminalists photographed it with
a special filter.
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CHARLES: The filters would then
enhance not only the print, but the ridge detail that
makes up the pattern.
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And then also with
the filters, it would eliminate any of
the background colors so that the pattern can
be seen more clearly.
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NARRATOR: The print was entered
into AFIS, the Automated Fingerprint
Identification System,
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containing prints of
convicted criminals. Unfortunately, the
print did not match
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any in the database of
known criminal offenders. Marvin Casey then asked the ATF
to compare the print to the 55
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individuals on his list of
people who attended the arson convention near the fires,
but that request was denied.
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-They felt like that
was too many names to submit to the
different departments to get their fingerprint
cards to analyze.
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NARRATOR: Casey's investigation
had come to a dead end. Then, two years later, there
was another rash of store fires,
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this time in cities
along Highway 101. When Casey examined
the dates of the fires,
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he discovered that
they also coincided with a nearby convention
of arson investigators.
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And on that list of attendees
were 10 individuals who had also attended the
earlier arson conference.
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MARVIN: I was quite excited. Now I felt like we have
something we can work with.
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-And he persuaded ATF to take
these 10 names to their lab, surreptitiously obtain
fingerprint impressions,
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and compare them to the
print that he'd found, and could not come back
with a positive finding.
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NARRATOR: But they
could find no match. Casey couldn't believe it. -And I was kind of
discouraged, too.
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Because I just felt
like that-- that we're going to get somewhere with
these 10 names off-- off
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of this list. NARRATOR: Another
two years past. Then, the arsonist struck
again in Los Angeles,
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setting fires in dozens of
stores throughout the area and causing millions
of dollars in damages.
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ATF Special Agent Mike Matassa
headed the investigation. -The MO was to start fires
in retail businesses, midday
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hours, primarily
during open business. NARRATOR: Matassa heard
about Marvin Casey's
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controversial theory
that these fires were started by an
arson investigator. And he also learned
about the fingerprint
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on the incendiary device. So Matassa asked the
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office to
analyze the print.
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They compared it to their
fingerprint database of everyone who had ever
applied there for a job,
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and they found a match. -I was blown away. I couldn't believe it. NARRATOR: The print matched
the left ring finger
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of John Leonard Orr,
an arson investigator with the Glendale
California Fire Department.
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I'm JOSEPH: John Orr wanted
to be a Los Angeles Police officer for a long time. He applied in 1981.
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He passed all of the
tests except one. It was a psychological test. NARRATOR: Orr then
applied for a job
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with the Los Angeles
Fire Department but failed the physical
part of the training.
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-He wasn't in good enough shape. And that was a crushing
disappointment in his life.
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NARRATOR: Eventually, he worked
odd jobs until finally getting a job with the Glendale
Fire Department.
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-It was the lowest-paying
fire department in the Los Angeles area. And he quickly rose
through the ranks
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and became an
arson investigator. And eventually, a captain. NARRATOR: Orr was 1 of the
10 people on Casey's list
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who had intended both
arson conventions. The earlier
fingerprint comparison had simply missed it.
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The print linked Orr to
only one of the fires. MICHAEL: Rather than
arrest him on one fire
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with minimal damage that
probably would have a very minimal sentence
associated with it,
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we decided to investigate
and try to tie him into all of the fires that
had the same MO.
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NARRATOR: And for
that, they turned to the latest in
surveillance technology. After a seven-year search
for the serial arsonist,
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California investigators
finally had a suspect. But the evidence against John
Orr, a partial fingerprint,
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linked him to only
one of the fires. So investigators decided
to track Orr's whereabouts
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by planting a device on
his car called a Teletrac. REX: The tracking
device itself is
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about the size of a videotape. It can be installed
anywhere in the car. NARRATOR: The Teletrac system
uses a network of communication
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towers which transmit signals
to the wireless device mounted in the car. In some ways, it's better
than ground satellite systems.
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REX: The one disadvantage of GPS
is that if you're in a garage, or if the antenna is
blocked from seeing the sky,
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it's very hard to
get a good location. With this technology, we
don't need to see the sky.
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NARRATOR: On November
22, 1991, at 3:30 PM, the Teletrac placed Orr near
the Warner Brothers Studio
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in Burbank, where
a fire broke out on the set of a television show. Interestingly, Orr
immediately drove home,
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then received the official
dispatch from headquarters. The dispatcher
inadvertently gave
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the wrong address for the fire. MICHAEL: We can watch him
on the Teletrac device
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leave his house, drive to the
first fire location, which was misidentified
in the dispatch.
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But yet, he makes it
to the right location. -And with that information,
we couldn't tie him directly
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to the cause of that fire, but
we knew that we couldn't allow him to be on the
street any longer.
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NARRATOR: With a
warrant, investigators searched Orr's home. MICHAEL: We found in his
briefcase cigarettes, matches,
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rubber bands, the
type of materials that were used in the device. And we found yellow
lined paper in his car
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NARRATOR: Orr denied
that there was anything sinister
about the materials. And also denied it
was his fingerprint
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on the incendiary device
found at one of the fires. -I've never set an arson
fire, except in my training
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exercises. NARRATOR: And investigators
found evidence that Orr planned
some of the fires
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long before they happened. On a home video found
among Orr's things was a close-up of a beautiful
Hillside home in California.
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There's footage of the same
house 18 months later on fire. MICHAEL: He had what we would
call before and after shots
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of the fire, and shots
actually as the fire was being perpetrated before
any fire companies could arrive.
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-Other people said that
he photographed the fires so that he could
relive the event.
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For the same reason that serial
killers photographic victims, so that they can look at them
later and relive the events.
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NARRATOR: Also confiscated
from Orr's home was a manuscript for
a book he had written.
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It was about a
fictitious firefighter turned arsonist, Aaron Stiles. The similarities between
the book and the real crimes
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were far too coincidental. The Stiles character
used delayed devices to set fires in
retail stores while
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on his way to and from
arson conferences. -He discussed how he set
multiple fires at the same time
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in order to distract
firefighting personnel to one location to the other,
so he could sit and watch
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one of the other fires
become rather large. NARRATOR: And the book describes
a fire at a Cal's Hardware
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store similar to
the fire in South Pasadena that
killed four people. In the novel, one
of the dead victims
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was a young boy named
Matthew, the same name of the two-year-old who
died in the real fire.
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-"The deaths were
blotted out of his mind. It wasn't his fault,
just stupid people
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acting as stupid people do." NARRATOR: Joseph
Wambaugh wrote a book about this case
called "Fire Lover."
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JOSEPH: I think John Orr
does a better job than anyone in describing the psyche of
the organized serial arsonist.
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The power, the
excitement, the thrill that motivates these people. In his novel,
"Points of Origin,"
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he has his arson investigator
explain it like this. "The fire becomes a
mistress, a lover."
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From those words of John Orr,
I got my title, "Fire Lover," as I thought about it-- my
mistress, my lover, the fire.
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NARRATOR: John Orr was charged
with numerous counts of arson and for the murder of the four
victims of the Ole's fire.
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-We, the jury in the
above entitled case, find the defendant,
John Leonard Orr, guilty of the crime
of first-degree
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murder in violation of-- NARRATOR: He was sentenced to
life in prison without parole.
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JOSEPH: For the 10 years
prior to John's arrest, there were an average of
67 brush fires per year
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in the hills above
Glendale, Burbank, Pasadena-- major fires. And after John's arrest,
the average number
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of fires in that same
area dropped from 67 to 1. -Well, it's my opinion that he
set in excess of 2,000 fires
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over a period of about 30 years. NARRATOR: John Orr is believed
to be one of the 20th century's
00:20:51
most prolific arsonists, his
long career brought to an end by a scrap of charred paper
and the relentless work
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of investigators. [theme music]