Fire Lover

by Joseph Wambaugh

  But many who knew him said that he was forever a cop wanna-be, and the badge was validation of their opinions.

  The day after the arrest of John Orr was indeed a busy one for the entire task force as well as for Assistant U.S. Attorneys Stefan Stein and Walter Brown, who’d been consulting with the task force since early summer.

  Of greater interest to the lawyers than anything found in the searches of John Orr’s car, home, and office were copies of letters that he’d kept with the manuscript of his novel. One of the letters was designed for any potential publisher or agent in order to explain something about the story accompanying it. This one was sent on April 17, 1991, to the L. Harry Lee Literary Agency:

  “Common” criminals seem to have one characteristic they all share, the need to distance themselves from their crimes as quickly as possible, all criminals, that is, except the arsonist. The arsonists stay close by, and sometimes even participate in the discovery and eventual extinguishment of “their” fires. Bizarre? Indeed it is. With the criminal so close at hand why is it that the crime of arson has the lowest arrest and conviction rate of all? The reason is simple. The arsonist is weak and insecure, and usually perpetrates his crime in the dark, generally in seclusion. Sometimes he uses time delays. Additionally, the evidence is almost always destroyed, if not by the fire, then by the firefighters during extinguishment. Arsonists are not greed motivated like the “common” criminal.

  I have been a professional firefighter for over twenty years with the last ten devoted to full-time arson investigation for a fire department in the Los Angeles area. With the clearance of over 400 cases I have found that the true pyromaniac is responsible for only five percent of all fires, but generally causes the most destruction and sets the most dangerous types of fires.

  My novel, POINTS OF ORIGIN, is a fact-based work that follows the pattern of an actual arsonist who has been setting serial fires in California over the past eight years. He has not been identified or apprehended, and probably will not be in the near future. As in the real case, the arsonist in my novel is a firefighter.

  The second letter found in the search of the Orr residence was dated July 28, 1991, was addressed to the Writer’s Digest Criticism Service, and had been sent with a check for three hundred dollars. Again there were certain passages of great interest to the task force.

  My completed manuscript (started in 5/90, finished in 4/91) is my first attempt at fiction, after writing a series of articles for a fire service magazine, AMERICAN FIRE JOURNAL. I am a firefighter, an arson investigator, actually, with 21 years of fire service. POINTS is the story of a serial arsonist and the investigator who tracks him in Southern California. Aaron, the arsonist, is actually a firefighter, and Phil Langtree slowly develops the theory that the suspect is somehow related to the fire department.

  My arsonist is sexually/psychologically motivated, and POINTS is somewhat fact-based. There is an arsonist plying his trade in the west, and he sets the same types of fires portrayed in my novel. The investigation is continuing …

  There was a letter addressed to Natasha Kern Literary Agency, Inc., the postscript of which caught the attention of the task force:

  My novel is fiction, but is based on a real arsonist who has again hit the L.A. area earlier this year doing over $12 million in damage. The investigation now has federal assistance and could be linked to fires outside California. It is my feeling that the arsonist could be a firefighter, but I’m not directly linked to the investigation and can’t confirm this fact.

  The most interesting letter the task force found was one addressed to the Dominick Abel Literary Agency, dated June 3, 1991.

  My work is a fact-based novel of an ongoing investigation here on the west coast. A serial arsonist is setting fires throughout the west and is quite possibly a firefighter. The series has been going on for over five years and I was even considered a suspect at one point. In early May of this year, I found a radio tracking device attached to my car in San Luis Obispo while I attended a training conference. Ironically, my protagonist experiences the same situation. I had already written the chapter dealing with the protagonist being tailed before I found that I was being followed. By the way, I’m not the arsonist and the investigation out here continues. My work is fictional.

  In that the Pillow Pyro Task Force hadn’t even known about the series of fires in the Central Valley in 1987, and on the Central Coast in 1989, the letters to the agents and publishers were among the most damaging evidence they’d found. John Orr’s novel was depicting some events he shouldn’t have known about, and he’d indicated that they were arsons committed by a firefighter, when only a few people in Central California knew about Marvin Casey’s theory.

  As if anyone needed any more convincing, John Orr had not believed for one moment the bomb hoax story, and knew “he was even considered a suspect at one point” of a federal investigation. And yet he had never come forward to ask any questions, to comment or to deny, as his fictional arson investigator had logically done in Points of Origin. The assistant U.S. attorneys believed that the letters might ultimately prove more of a problem for the defendant to explain than the novel itself.

  One of the people Mike Matassa had phoned first was Mike Cabral, the deputy district attorney whom he had been assisting in court back in March when the extraordinary fire series had struck Redondo Beach, Inglewood, and Lawndale. When the fingerprint match had come back on April 17, Matassa felt bad that he couldn’t explain to Cabral what they were doing and why he had to partly abandon Cabral’s case.

  He’d said then to the prosecutor, “It’s something I can’t share, Mike. But when it happens, you’ll know it. Sorry.”

  When he explained it all to Cabral on December 5, the prosecutor said, “I knew it was big, and I understand why you couldn’t tell me about it. It’s okay.”

  After prosecutor Mike Cabral hung up the phone that day he couldn’t have known that in the years to come, this case was going to consume a larger portion of his life than Matassa’s.

  On December 6, John Orr received a visit from his Glendale lawyer acquaintance, Jack Dirakjian, who handled mostly civil cases and decided that John would be better served by his associate, Douglas McCann, who handled criminal matters. John wrote of that meeting:

  I hated McCann instantly, but it was obvious that Jack wanted Doug to represent me … I listened to the staccato presentation of McCann outlining defense strategy. Only thirty-two years old, he cut off his superior and me, choosing to take total control of our brief interview. He was arrogant, opinionated, sly, and a complete asshole … I retained him on the spot. I wanted a cutthroat to go after the feds who had exposed Wanda and me to this travesty.

  He required a ten-thousand-dollar retainer. Wanda made the arrangements, and early the next week, Doug announced that he’d moved up the bail-review hearing to December 10. This pleased me immensely and renewed my faith in the man despite both Wanda and I initially wondering if he was the right choice. He was young enough to be our son. Later, I’d wish he’d been devoured at birth.

  Actually, Douglas McCann was not young enough to be the prisoner’s son; John was forty-two years old at the time. And one might question John’s strategy of selecting a lawyer he hated, especially in this complex case involving multiple counts and multiple jurisdictions. Defender and defendant would need to work closely.

  Wanda Orr had to use her home as collateral for her husband’s fifty-thousand-dollar bail, which was set on December 10. Eight days later, the prisoner was released on bail subject to home detention with a transmitter anklet. Once home, Wanda prepared a cup of freshly brewed coffee laced with a shot of Kahlúa.

  Close friends and family offered loans, and John’s mother frequently dropped by to run errands and do Christmas shopping for them while they tried to get by on Wanda’s salary. The accused and his wife forged an agreement that he alone would deal with their lawyer, Douglas McCann, and his defense investigators, insulating Wanda from the trauma as much
as possible. She was a private person and tried not to talk about the case with friends. She ducked reporters as best she could during a time in which John’s face or, rather, photos and videos of him in action as a firefighter were shown almost daily by the print and electronic media.

  The task force spent part of the day following the arrest making further notifications to people who had worked closely with John. One of these was Jim Allen of the state Fire Marshal’s Office, who was a personal friend of the Orrs as well as a respected arson investigator in his own right.

  Mike Matassa made that particular courtesy call, and began it by saying, “Jim, I didn’t want you to have to hear it cold on the news …”

  When he had concluded, and Allen had recovered sufficiently to ask perfunctory questions, and Matassa was about to hang up, Allen said simply, “You ought to look at the Ole’s fire.”

  When Matassa asked Jim Allen to clarify that, Allen said, “Ole’s Home Center in South Pasadena. October 1984. Do you remember it?”

  And Matassa said, “Yeah. I was there the day after, driving the bomb truck as a rookie agent. What about it?”

  Jim Allen said, “John’s been obsessed for years about that one. He was very angry that they called it an accident. He brings it up. Often.”

  Matassa thanked Jim Allen and later said, “A light went on!”

  He grabbed his copy of John Orr’s novel and paged through it until he came to the chapter dealing with a fire at “Cal’s Hardware Store.” When Glen Lucero came in the office that day, Mike Matassa said, “You ain’t gonna believe this!”

  Neither Matassa nor any of the task-force members who had read the manuscript had matched Cal’s Hardware with Ole’s Home Center. Too many years had passed. But as Mike Matassa talked and read, Glen Lucero remembered. In the novel five people die, including a little boy. In real life, four people had died, including a little boy. In the book, the arson cops were too stupid to figure out that it was an arson, and they called it an accident. So the firefighter arsonist had to set another fire at another hardware store to expose their ignorance.

  Glen Lucero had never shared Matassa’s confidence that they had a rock-solid case, and being a member of the fire-fighting brotherhood, Lucero had mixed emotions about the arrest of one of their own. But as he sat and listened to Matassa, he began to change.

  He later said, “It all became easier for me after I thought about the people who’d died in the Ole’s fire. Then I thought, okay, let’s really get him.”

  The two lead investigators of the Pillow Pyro Task Force, Mike Matassa and Glen Lucero, reread chapter 6 of Points of Origin that afternoon, but this time they read it with new eyes.

  10

  FIRE LOVER

  The general public might think that by the time the suspect in a major investigation is arrested, the work of the investigators ends, but in reality, it gets more intense. In this instance, they had to ensure their case against a prominent arson investigator, a case based entirely on circumstantial evidence. Even with the best piece of circumstantial evidence, the fingerprint, the assistant U.S. attorneys could think of several scenarios whereby a clever defense lawyer might convince a jury that there could be an innocent reason why a piece of notebook paper touched by John Orr had been found on an incendiary device in Bakersfield.

  Stefan D. Stein was an attractive and effective thirty-five-year-old government prosecutor who, prior to joining the Pillow Pyro Task Force, had been part of a team that had won an important guilty verdict against a DEA agent in a corruption case. Stein was assigned to the Public Corruptions Group, and a month after the major DEA case had concluded, the chief of the Major Crimes Section came to him and said, “I’ve got a phenomenal case for you. You think that other case was something …”

  Stefan Stein, along with Assistant U.S. Attorney Walter Brown, another talented prosecutor even younger than Stein, worked out of the federal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles. Stein, a graduate of Hollywood High School, had previously been in private practice for seven years, near his boyhood home on the west side of Los Angeles. He’d done entertainment litigation, but lacked trial experience and had always heard great things about the U.S. Attorney’s Office. He’d taken a big salary cut when he joined them, and he had to make a three-year commitment. Those three years were almost up when he became involved in the day-to-day monitoring of the John Orr investigation.

  Like everyone else connected with the case, Stein knew how dicey it could be: an M.O. case, a circumstantial case. He’d had the fingerprint examined half a dozen times before he could relax about it, knowing that without the fingerprint they had no chance at all. More investigators were now assisting in the witness interviews; Mike Matassa mostly assisted Stein, and Glen Lucero primarily helped Walt Brown. There were lots of man-hours being expended.

  As Stein and Brown began examining the evidence seized on December 4, their confidence grew. Like all the others in the task force, they said it took a while to digest the manuscript of Points of Origin. One of the fires set by John Orr’s fictional arsonist, Aaron Stiles, happened in a fabric store during the summer seminar in Fresno, and mirrored the actual blaze.

  And on page 239, Aaron Stiles sets a brush fire in a canyon, very much like Chevy Chase Canyon in Glendale, causing him to “stroke himself wildly.”

  There was a passage in the book describing a fire on Victory Boulevard, where the Pillow Pyro had actually struck on two occasions. This one was set by the novel’s Aaron Stiles in a display of curtains, as had happened in at least one of the Pillow Pyro series.

  This passage, like all of the book, had been written before the Pillow Pyro Task Force had been formed. The author seemed to have had knowledge about the L.A. fire series that they did not have.

  The author of Points of Origin was very much aware of the proprietary feelings of the serial arsonist, as evidenced in a chapter describing Aaron Stiles setting a grass fire when the Santa Anas are blowing, admiring his fire, “wanting to be near his fire.”

  The task force thought that the fictional arsonist offered clues to the defendant’s ability to compartmentalize and rationalize his activity, when Aaron Stiles attends a Fresno arson conference, “blocking out his history … divorcing himself from the fact that he was an arsonist.”

  There were dozens of calls made to the task force by firefighters and arson investigators who were having second thoughts about fires they’d suppressed or cases they’d worked with John Orr. As for the brush fires in the foothill areas, it seemed that the proliferation had occurred after John had gone to work in Glendale. They found fire reports from 1985 about an arsonist who’d set sixteen fires in Glendale homes, carports, and garages during an eight-month spree. At the time, John Orr had given interviews to the Los Angeles Times about his hunt for this serial arsonist, claiming that six incendiary devices had been found at Glendale brush fires during that hot summer.

  Stories began to surface about some of those devices found by Captain Orr. Arson investigators from neighboring cities described incidents to the task force when they’d gathered at fire sites trying to find an area of origin when John Orr would drive up, gaze at the area, stroke his mustache, and like a water seeker with a divining rod, say, “I believe the point of origin is … there.”

  And lo! The Glendale arson investigator would go to where he’d pointed and find the remnant of an incendiary device under a rock. At the time they’d felt like applauding.

  There were stories about afternoons in the foothills when they’d tried stakeouts to catch the elusive brush-fire arsonist. One afternoon, Lucero and others met at a Glendale fire station near Chevy Chase Canyon, where so many grass fires had occurred, and found John Orr with a map board that he’d marked off in quadrants.

  The cluster of investigators were assigned to one-man cars for a patrol of these quadrants, and each man had a radio set to the same frequency. John was the rover; the others were assigned to fixed positions. Lucero wasn’t out there any time at all before a f
ire occurred at a location he’d driven past a moment before. When the engine company arrived to suppress it, Lucero met with John and said, “I couldn’t have missed the arsonist by a minute! He’s a ghost!”

  So it was better luck next time. But when Lucero drove from that grass fire to his fixed location, he found another grass fire burning from where he’d just been! At sunset they’d called off their stakeout and gone back to their respective fire departments. The phantom arsonist was never caught.

  Glen Lucero said to the task force, “Now I know it was John toying with the big guys, the L.A. Fire Department arson investigators. The people who washed him out of their academy. It must have done a whole lot for his ego.”

  There was a passage from the novel, spoken by Phil Langtree, that was as prophetic as an omen, concerning the number of identification points needed in a good fingerprint. The man who had penned those lines could not have foretold how his own life story would teeter on the number of points in a latent fingerprint.

  Assistant U.S. Attorneys Stein and Brown soon began listing similarities between the fictional serial arsonist, Aaron Stiles, and his creator, John Leonard Orr. They came up with nine:

  1. The defendant and Aaron Stiles are both firefighters.

  2. They’re both nonsmokers.

  3. They both use a delay device that gives them a ten-to-fifteen-minute escape opportunity.

  4. In the original three-chapter manuscript found during the search, the delay device used by Aaron Stiles is a match attached to a cigarette, placed inside a paper bag, similar to the match, cigarette, and lined paper used by the defendant.

  After reworking the manuscript, the completed version had changed the device to a bead of glue on a cigarette, which they interpreted as John Orr realizing that he was getting too close to writing a diary.