The Crime Book

50

W

ith its arid climate and

expanses of wilderness,

California is a magnet

for firestarters. But none of them

have come close to the level of fiery

devastation wrought upon people

and property by John Leonard Orr.

In the early 1980s, a series of blazes

began in the Los Angeles area,

sometimes as many as three a day.

In one incident, 65 homes were

reduced to smouldering ash. But it

was not until 10 October 1984, that

human lives were extinguished by

the flames.

At 7pm, the public address

system at Ole’s Home Center in

South Pasadena blared

an emergency warning. Noticing

smoke pouring out of the hardware

department, cashier Jim Obdan

rushed to help customers flee the

store, and was badly burned in the

process. Fortunately, though, he

lived to tell the tale. Co-workers

Jimmy Cetina and Carolyn Kraus

were not so lucky. Nor were

customers Ada Deal and Matthew

Troidl, a loving grandmother and

her two-year-old grandson.

The following morning, arson

investigators searched the

blackened ruins for the point of

origin – where a fire first begins –

to determine its cause. Unable to

locate it, they concluded that it

was an electrical accident. But one

seasoned arson investigator –

Captain Marvin Casey of the

Bakersfield Fire Department –

was certain the fire had been

intentionally set in a stack of

flammable cushions.

In January 1987, a number of

suspicious fires broke out north of

Pasadena in the city of Bakersfield.

At a craft shop, Marvin Casey

discovered an incendiary device in

a bin of dried flowers. It was crude

but effective – three matches

bound to the middle of a cigarette

by a rubber band and concealed

within a sleeve of yellow lined

paper. After lighting the cigarette,

the offender would have ample

time to leave the scene before the

cigarette burned down far enough

to ignite the matches and start

the fire.

Later that same day, a second

conflagration erupted in a bin

containing pillows and foam rubber

at Hancock Fabric store in

Bakersfield. The trail of arson

continued in rapid succession with

JOHN LEONARD ORR

IN CONTEXT

LOCATION

Southern California, US

THEME

Serial arson

BEFORE

1979–80 Bruce Lee (born

Peter Dinsdale) committed

11 acts of arson in and

around his hometown of

Hull, Yorkshire, UK.

AFTER

1985–2005 Thomas Sweatt,

a prolific American arsonist,

set close to 400 fires, the

majority of which were in the

Washington, D.C. area.

1992–93 Paul Kenneth Keller,

a serial arsonist from

Washington state, set 76 fires

in and around Seattle during

a six-month spree.

John Orr wanted to be a

Los Angeles police officer for a

long time. He applied in 1981.

He passed all of the tests

except one. It was the

psychological test.

Joseph Wambaugh

Pyrophilia

While the vast majority of

arsonists are insurance

fraudsters or attention seekers,

the pyromaniac is a unique

breed, fascinated by fire to the

point of compulsively setting

them. Even rarer than the

pyromaniac is the pyrophile –

Greek for “fire-lover” – a person

who is sexually aroused by the

flames, the smell of smoke, the

intense heat, and (sometimes)

the whirr of sirens racing to

combat the inferno. Numerous

entries in Orr’s mostly

autobiographical Points of

Origin indicate that the lead

character, Aaron Stiles (i.e.

Orr himself), possessed this

dangerous paraphilic disorder.

Joseph Wambaugh, who

worked as a detective sergeant

in the Los Angeles Police

Department for 20 years before

he became a bestselling author,

chronicled Orr’s life in his book

Fire Lover. Wambaugh reported

that the linking of fire and sex in

Orr’s manuscript is continuous,

and a key facet of Orr’s

motivation, a theory shared by

investigator Marvin Casey.

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51

The “Pillow Pyro” started a fire that

swiftly became a firestorm in Glendale,

California, in June 1990. A total of 67

properties were damaged or destroyed

in the blaze, including this house.

one fire in Tulare followed by

another two in Fresno. With the

exception of the Bakersfield craft

store, Casey determined that every

fire had begun in a pile of pillows.

An audacious theory

This modus operandi (MO) did not

escape Casey, who noted that the

arson attacks had progressed

sequentially from Los Angeles

north along Highway 99 to Fresno.

Nor did the troubling realization

that the fires had occurred

immediately before and after an

annual arson investigator’s

conference in Fresno.

Casey began to develop a

controversial theory: the fires were

set by one of the 300 arson

investigators who had attended the

Fresno symposium. He obtained

a list of the attendees, reducing the

list of suspects to the 55 who had

travelled alone through Bakersfield

on Highway 99.

Unsurprisingly, when Casey

shared his suspicions with his

fellow arson investigators he was

either ignored or ostracized. Yet

he persevered, convincing the

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and

Firearms (ATF) to conduct

scientific testing on the yellow

paper recovered from the craft

store. The ATF lab applied

ninhydrin (a chemical used to

detect ammonia) to the paper on

the off chance that it would react

to amino acids from fingerprint

residue. To the technician’s

and Casey’s surprise, a partial

fingerprint appeared. Using a

special photographic filter to

deepen the contrast and reveal the

ridge detail, the technician was

able to render a usable print. It

was entered into the Automated

Fingerprint Identification System

(AFIS) where it was compared to

the fingerprints of criminals across

the country. When the AFIS failed

to produce a match, Casey asked

the ATF to compare the print ❯❯

BANDITS, ROBBERS, AND ARSONISTS

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