53
developed a legendary reputation
for always being the first to arrive
on the scene. As a result of Casey’s
findings, however, Orr was placed
under surveillance, with a
monitoring device secretly attached
to the bumper of his car. Orr found
and removed it, only to have police
fix another under his dashboard
when he brought in his vehicle
for maintenance.
When the set of the popular
television drama The Waltons
was engulfed in flames on the
afternoon of 22 November 1991,
in Burbank, Teletrac showed Orr
driving home from the scene of
the fire at 3:30am to receive the
dispatcher’s report. Tellingly,
although the dispatcher incorrectly
reported the address of the fire,
Orr still managed to arrive at the
correct location.
Although they lacked the
necessary evidence to make an
arrest, the taskforce realized that
as long as Orr remained at large,
human lives were at risk. They
quickly applied for a warrant to
search his home. In a briefcase,
investigators found a cache of
cigarettes, matches, and rubber
bands, while his car yielded sheets
of lined yellow paper. Even more
damning was a video Orr had shot
on 14 March 1990, of a hillside
residence in Pasadena, followed by
footage of the same house ablaze
on 2 October 1992. Crucially, Orr
had penned a manuscript for a
novel entitled Points of Origin in
which the protagonist Aaron Stiles
(an anagram of “I Set LA Arson”),
lived the double-life of an arson
investigator and firestarter.BANDITS, ROBBERS, AND ARSONISTS
Not only did Stiles employ the same
incendiary device as the “Pillow
Pyro”, he also set fires on his way to
arson conferences and had burned
down a hardware store, killing a
little boy named Matthew.Frightening revelations
John Leonard Orr was arrested on
4 December 1991, and charged
with five counts of arson. But his
true day of judgment arrived on
25 June 1998, when the California
State Court convicted him on four
counts of first-degree murder
related to the 1984 Ole inferno, for
which he received a sentence of life
in prison without parole.
Orr’s personal charm was later
attributed to psychopathy, because
it was accompanied by other
notably psychopathic traits,
including manipulativeness, vanity,
and lack of remorse. Alhough Orr
still maintains his innocence, after
his arrest, the number of major firesin the area dropped from an annual
average of 67 to 1. Given that Orr
had been a secret serial arsonist, it
is likely that he had a sixth sense
for fires because he set them. This
suspicion prompted Deputy District
Attorney Michael J. Cabral to
estimate that Orr set more than
2,000 fires over a 30-year period,
making him one of the most prolific
arsonists in US history.
In a final gruesome twist, Points
of Origin features a scene in which
Aaron Stiles sexually assaults and
murders a young girl in a vehicle
that is then burned. Investigators
claim to have identified the case,
but lack conclusive evidence of
Orr’s involvement. Two additional
fire-related deaths described in
Points of Origin remain
unaccounted for. If these horrific
passages turn out to be true, Orr is
not only an arsonist and mass
murderer, but also a sexually
motivated serial killer. ■Orr’s day of reckoning arrived at
the conclusion of his murder trial in
June 1998. His defence lawyers argued
that faulty wiring was to blame for the
Ole fire, but the jury found Orr guilty.048-053_John_Leonard_Orr.indd 53 02/12/2016 14:40