Fire Lover
Page 39
But then he figured that it had to do with his recent request for a DNA test, claiming it could clear him if there were still traces of DNA material on the cigarette butts used in the incendiary devices.
Mike Cabral saw John’s request as a grandstand play to bolster his appeal. Cabral said that John knew very well that the cigarette butt in his trial had been dipped in ninhydrin for fingerprint traces. But the ploy was okay with Cabral as long as John donated his blood and saliva.
Had John Orr known Cabral’s true reason for the DNA test, he’d have said that it was proof that the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office would never rest until they strapped him on a table in San Quentin Prison and killed him.
As he awaited the results of the DNA testing, Steve Patterson said that if there was a match, this fifty-seven-year-old retired firefighter would climb to the top of a promontory and blow a trumpet, as Gunga Din had done in the old movie. But perhaps Steve Patterson had forgotten that Gunga Din got shot down during his moment of greatest glory.
On January 14, 2002, Mike Cabral received a phone call from the DNA laboratory of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department. The material from the vaginal swab taken from the body of Jane Doe Number 39 did not match the DNA from the blood sample of Lompoc inmate John Orr. The killer of Mary Susan Duggan was still at large.
After Cabral phoned Steve Patterson, after profound disappointment, Steve Patterson said, “Well, Mary’s DNA and her killer’s are finally on file. Maybe now Mary’s killer can get caught.”
Nothing had changed for him. Hopeful and unyielding, he was ever her champion.
And there was absolutely no more to be done by the People of the State of California in the strange case of John Leonard Orr.
EPILOGUE
Perhaps it was fitting that the two people who’d tried so hard to be heard, who’d endured bureaucratic indifference and ridicule and sometimes hostility, were classified as law-enforcement officers but were not from the police ranks.
Marvin G. Casey of Bakersfield, though his contribution would always be demeaned by some from the Pillow Pyro Task Force and the DA’s Arson Task Force, had solved the mystery of the Central Valley and Central Coast fires of 1987 and 1989. If other law-enforcement officers had been as instinctive and diligent as he, John Orr would have been arrested back then. Whether or not John Orr would have been linked to the Ole’s blaze is doubtful, for he probably would not have written Points of Origin, a work that contributed much to putting him in prison for life. So some might argue that when Marv Casey was let down by law enforcement, the Ole’s victims got their day in court.
Others would argue that law-enforcement mistakes—the classification of the Ole’s fire as an accident, the grievous error with the fingerprint, the failures with the tracking device, and the unsatisfying interrogation—had all been redeemed by law enforcement. By the diligence of Mike Matassa, Glen Lucero, and their task force, and by the tenacity of Walt Scheuerell, Rich Edwards, and their task force, one might say that their work atoned for all of the mistakes, and made the arrest and prosecution of John Leonard Orr a success unlike any other.
In the end, it seems ironic that the most passionate investigators were not career law-enforcement officers, but firefighters. Marv Casey of Bakersfield and Steve Patterson of Burbank were firemen who’d attended training sessions conducted by John Orr and had admired him tremendously. Both Casey and Patterson had brought something extra to the investigation: the zeal and drive to right the wrongs that one of their own had done. The cops from both task forces had never taken the investigation so personally as had the firefighters, for after all, a cop is very different.
A friend and colleague of John Orr, Jim Allen of the state Fire Marshal’s Office, a man who’d served at one time as a deputy sheriff and knew both sides of the coin, said: “Firefighters are cooperative, obedient team players. They pull levers, turn valves, man the hose lines, rescue things. Cops look for trouble, make quick decisions, get in people’s faces, sometimes kill things. Firemen never really think like cops. Cops never really think like firemen.”
The cynicism of law-enforcement professionals had caused a great deal of anxiety for Marv Casey and Steve Patterson, who had nevertheless stubbornly followed their intuition as far as they could. Marv Casey’s hunch had been right. Steve Patterson’s had not, but no one could say it had been a bad thing for a cruelly murdered girl to have had a zealous champion struggle so long to find justice for her, and, as he put it, a “tiny bit of comfort” for her family. It didn’t seem in the end to have been a failure, that Quixotic mission. That quest.
In fact, it seemed most fitting that arson sleuths Marv Casey and Steve Patterson were not police officers, as John Orr had always longed to be. They were firefighters, a vocation that John Orr had only settled for, and one for which he may have been ill suited. If he was what every member of the task force said he was—a classic psychopath—then clinically speaking, the firefighter’s ultimate reward was of little value and beyond his grasp. And he may have known it.
John Orr himself had often set it forth in his writings, sometimes sardonically, but perhaps a touch wistfully: everybody loves a fireman.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There are many people to thank for the interviews and for providing thousands of pages of documents, reports, and court transcripts. In alphabetical order, these include: Jim Allen, Karl Anglin, Chris Blancett, Walter Brown, Mike Cabral, Mike Camello, April Carroll, Marvin Casey, Ken Croke, Rich Edwards, Carl Faller, Sandra Flannery, Chuck Galyan, Gus Gary, Peter Giannini, Pat Hanly, John Herzfeld, Tom Kuczynski, Joe Lopez, Glen Lucero, Mike Matassa, Douglas McCann, Steve Patterson, Edward Rucker, Walt Scheuerell, and Stefan Stein.
My interviews with John Leonard Orr and the permission to use his unpublished autobiography were invaluable as well.
Hopefully, those depicted in this book will find their portrayals to be fair.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The son of a policeman, Joseph Wambaugh (b. 1937) began his writing career while a member of the Los Angeles Police Department. He joined the LAPD in 1960 after three years in the Marine Corps, and rose to the rank of detective sergeant before retiring in 1974. His first novel, he New Centurions (1971), was a quick success, drawing praise for its realistic action and intelligent characterization, and was adapted into a feature film starring George C. Scott. He followed it up with The Blue Knight (1972), which was adapted into a mini-series starring William Holden and Lee Remick.
Since then Wambaugh has continued writing about the LAPD. He has been credited with a realistic portrayal of police officers, showing them not as superheroes but as men struggling with a difficult job, a depiction taken mainstream by television’s Police Story, which Wambaugh helped create in the mid-1970s. In addition to novels, Wambaugh has written nonfiction, winning a special Edgar Award for 1974’s The Onion Field, an account of the longest criminal trial in California history. His most recent work is the novel Hollywood Moon (2010).
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
Copyright © 2002 by Joseph Wambaugh
Cover design by Amanda Shaffer
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4151-5
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