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Speaker 7: You are now listening to True Murder The most shocking
Speaker 7: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 7: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker, DTK. Every week,
Speaker 7: another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous
Speaker 7: killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host
Speaker 7: journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 8: Good Evening. Four years Lori Orr believed her Los Angeles
Speaker 8: firefighter dad was a selfless hero. When Laurie's dad was
Speaker 8: arrested in charge with four murders and countless arson fires,
Speaker 8: it was her testimony that helped keep him from being
Speaker 8: sent to death row. Eventually, Lorie's search for the truth
Speaker 8: led her to the dark secrets lurking in her family's
Speaker 8: past and to an inescapable conclusion about the remorseless killer
Speaker 8: an arsonists known as the Pillowcase Pyro and his reign
Speaker 8: of terror. In sunny Southern California excerpt, a hardware store
Speaker 8: employee saw the flames as they roared toward him down
Speaker 8: one of the over stalked aisles. A group of employees
Speaker 8: ran by, and then he herded them toward a nearby
Speaker 8: fire escape. The fire was sucking all of the oxygen
Speaker 8: out of the room and when they got the door open,
Speaker 8: the group of panic Shoppers employees running for their lives
Speaker 8: were literally pushed out of the door as though they
Speaker 8: were shot from a cannon. It was coming coming fast
Speaker 8: towards us. The flame, the fire, everything together with award
Speaker 8: winning journalist Frank C. Girardo Junior, or looks back at
Speaker 8: on the journey that took her from love to fear
Speaker 8: and the search for answers about how the father she
Speaker 8: loved could also be a thrill seeking predator, a predator
Speaker 8: brought to justice by a dogged investigator no one wanted
Speaker 8: to believe, A master manipulator who participated in the writing
Speaker 8: of this memoir and hopes that it would redeem him
Speaker 8: in the eyes of his family and others who trusted
Speaker 8: and believed in him. The book that we're featuring, the
Speaker 8: Siveing is Burned, Pyromania, Murder, and a Daughter's Nightmare with
Speaker 8: my special guest journalist and author Frank C. Girardo Junior.
Speaker 8: Welcome back to the program and thank you very much
Speaker 8: for Greeninger's interview. Frank C.
Speaker 5: Girardo Junior, Hey, Hi, Dan, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 5: That was a great introduction and.
Speaker 8: Thank you very much, Thank you very much. Good to
Speaker 8: have you back. Let's talk for a second about how
Speaker 8: you came to write this book. We mentioned Lori Anne Kovac.
Speaker 8: Let's talk about a little bit about how you came
Speaker 8: to write this book.
Speaker 5: It really came about it in a sort of circuitous way.
Speaker 5: I knew John her dad when he was a fireman,
Speaker 5: and I knew him when he was a murder suspect
Speaker 5: and on trial, and I kind of knew Laurie peripherally,
Speaker 5: but I hadn't really, you know, thought much about the
Speaker 5: case for twenty five years or more. And then the
Speaker 5: Wild Blue Press said that they'd been approached by Laurie.
Speaker 5: She'd been writing a diary and needed somebody to kind
Speaker 5: of help her flesh it out. And I jumped at
Speaker 5: the chance, because, you know, it was a story that
Speaker 5: I was intimately familiar with and one that affected many
Speaker 5: of the neighborhoods around where I live. So her Dad
Speaker 5: is quite an interesting character. He is the most prolific
Speaker 5: serial arsonist of the twentieth century, at least he's been
Speaker 5: described that way. And his story is just absolutely fascinating,
Speaker 5: primarily because he tells it himself. In a work of
Speaker 5: fiction or what he calls fiction, and his telling of
Speaker 5: it kind of led to his arrest and conviction and
Speaker 5: near sentenced to death row. Now Laurie. Laurie's relationship with
Speaker 5: her father is very complicated because she grew up believing
Speaker 5: he was a hero. This was a man who would
Speaker 5: be on the nightly news talking to reporters about, you know,
Speaker 5: a fire he helped put out, or a dog he
Speaker 5: helped rescue, or a family he helped rescue, and later
Speaker 5: on in his career talking about, you know, his investigations
Speaker 5: into major arson fires. So she saw her dad as
Speaker 5: a hero, and when he was facing the death notely,
Speaker 5: she's so leaved in him that she showed up at
Speaker 5: court testified on his behalf, and many of the jurors
Speaker 5: said later they were so moved by what she had
Speaker 5: to say that they decided that they would not seek
Speaker 5: the definitely for John or in this very complicated series
Speaker 5: of arsons that took place over about a twenty year
Speaker 5: period of time.
Speaker 8: You talk about what you write about in the book
Speaker 8: about Glendale, Los Angeles suburb the home of the famed
Speaker 8: Rose Bowl. Now you talk about just sort of the
Speaker 8: of course, the geography and position of Los Angeles and
Speaker 8: also Glendale. And you talk about fire season, so as
Speaker 8: you do write in a book, tell us a little
Speaker 8: bit about for people that don't know about fire season
Speaker 8: and propensity of fires, major fires, tell us a little
Speaker 8: bit about Glendale and Los Angeles and the history of
Speaker 8: major wildfires and fires.
Speaker 5: So so Angelina's like to think, there's you know, four
Speaker 5: seasons here, and they're not the ones that everyone else,
Speaker 5: you know, knows. If you live in Canada or if
Speaker 5: you live in Boston, you have you know, a real
Speaker 5: solid spring, a solid summer, a solid ball, and a
Speaker 5: solid winter. But in southern California, our seasons are a
Speaker 5: lot different. And one of one of our seasons and
Speaker 5: the most the scariest one, is fire season. And it
Speaker 5: usually starts, you know, sometime between June and August. It
Speaker 5: doesn't have a set day, you know, it's not the
Speaker 5: first day of summer, and it's marked by very dry conditions,
Speaker 5: high winds for you know, massive fires. And you know,
Speaker 5: over the last two years, I'm sure you've you've seen
Speaker 5: news reports about some of these fires. The what's interesting
Speaker 5: about LA and Glendale where which is sort of where
Speaker 5: this book is centered is that many of the homes
Speaker 5: in this part of the of the south Land are
Speaker 5: built right into these hillsides, and these hillsides are covered
Speaker 5: with you know, dried desert grasses, tinder, if you will,
Speaker 5: and creaso and other sorts of plants that you know,
Speaker 5: naturally burn and when they do, they burn hot when
Speaker 5: the wind blows it can you know, take a fire
Speaker 5: of a couple acres up to one hundred acres in
Speaker 5: a matter of minutes, and you know, if there's houses
Speaker 5: anywhere near, you're not going to be You're not going
Speaker 5: to be protecting your property. You're going to be running
Speaker 5: for your life with whatever possessions you can grab. John
Speaker 5: Lord's dad an arson investigator in Glendale. He knew about
Speaker 5: this stuff. And you know, his job initially was to
Speaker 5: go and inspect weeds strewn lots, to tell people to
Speaker 5: cut back their weeds watch out for you know, fire season,
Speaker 5: and and so he you know, it turns out that
Speaker 5: he was actually able to manipulate people that that didn't
Speaker 5: follow the rules the way that he thought they should.
Speaker 5: One of the stories that we uncovered for the book
Speaker 5: Burn was John going to the home of a city
Speaker 5: planning commissioner in Glendale. I'll tell you a bit about
Speaker 5: Glendale in a fact, and telling the guy he needed
Speaker 5: to cut the weeds in his backyard. The man didn't
Speaker 5: feel that he had to, and within a matter of
Speaker 5: days he had a fire that burned, you know, down
Speaker 5: the hillside and nearly right to his front door. Of course,
Speaker 5: the man believed later on that it may have been
Speaker 5: that by John Glendale. To understand Los Angeles, you have
Speaker 5: to envision it as not just being you know, La
Speaker 5: Palm Trees, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, but actually a collection of
Speaker 5: eighty eight very different communities. And those communities have in
Speaker 5: many cases their own police departments, in their own fire departments.
Speaker 5: They all have different standards of you know, what it
Speaker 5: takes to be a fireman or what it takes to
Speaker 5: be a policeman. And within those you know, eighty eight
Speaker 5: communities our twelve million people. So predators, especially in the
Speaker 5: seventies and the eighties and even the nineties, could move
Speaker 5: pretty easily from communities to a community without you know,
Speaker 5: stirring up a lot of attention. And that was sort
Speaker 5: of John's forte He was very good at making his
Speaker 5: way into a place, not really being seen or noticed,
Speaker 5: and then you know, finding a way to take advantage
Speaker 5: of the situation where he could set a fire.
Speaker 8: Let's go back to Laurie's life and talk about growing
Speaker 8: up with her father, John Orr and then that family
Speaker 8: changing and her mother being with someone named Jerry, So
Speaker 8: her life changing dramatically. But of course she knows her
Speaker 8: father and and talks about that in your book about
Speaker 8: growing up with him. So tell us about her early
Speaker 8: life with her father and her mother and what happened
Speaker 8: and to set her life in a different course. Sure.
Speaker 5: So, you know, Laurie is one of two children that
Speaker 5: John had with his first wife, Jody. They were, you know,
Speaker 5: kind of a close knit family. They you know, they
Speaker 5: lived in a home very close to John's parents and
Speaker 5: very close to Jody's parents. But John was a serial
Speaker 5: philanderer and eventually he and Jody split. She had the kids,
Speaker 5: and John, you know, went on with his life. Laurie,
Speaker 5: you know, didn't know this was going on. She saw
Speaker 5: her father through the prism of this man who was
Speaker 5: a hero, fighting, hero, always working, always out there protecting
Speaker 5: the citizens of Los Angeles County and of Glendale where
Speaker 5: they lived, and and her mom Jody Ah had you know,
Speaker 5: had her flaws. She hooked up with a with a
Speaker 5: man named Jerry, and Jerry wasn't the kindest stepfather that
Speaker 5: one could ask for. In fact, he was abusive to
Speaker 5: Laurie's mom and abusive to Laurie and her sister Carrie.
Speaker 5: And they hoped they saw their dad, you know, as
Speaker 5: being you know, a savior perhaps. But you know, the
Speaker 5: thing is, the interesting thing is that John was so
Speaker 5: wrapped up in himself and he'll tell you this today
Speaker 5: that you know, he didn't really see what was happening
Speaker 5: with his with his girls or didn't care about it,
Speaker 5: uh and you know, sort of ignored their cries for help,
Speaker 5: and some of their cries for help, you know, weren't
Speaker 5: the verbal cries, hey, dad, come and get us out
Speaker 5: of this situation. You know, they were they were running away,
Speaker 5: they were drinking at ay, you know, young age, they
Speaker 5: were engaging in you know, some dangerous behaviors because they
Speaker 5: didn't like the situation that they were in with their mom.
Speaker 5: And so they're living in this kind of oh you know,
Speaker 5: Cinderella asks sind situation and here's their dad, Tiro, and
Speaker 5: they're always looking at him as sort of being the
Speaker 5: man that can rescue them from being Cinderella. It didn't happen,
Speaker 5: but that didn't keep them from loving him. They you know,
Speaker 5: went on trips with their dad occasionally, They you know,
Speaker 5: were introduced to subsequent girlfriends and wives, and in fact,
Speaker 5: you know, we got some family pictures of one of
Speaker 5: John's weddings where you know, the girls are there and happy,
Speaker 5: beautifully dressed, and you know, on the outside it disappeared
Speaker 5: to be an you know, a flawed but all American family.
Speaker 8: Let's go back to some of the things that you
Speaker 8: write about in that he had this workaholic nature. He
Speaker 8: took not only when he finally did get a job
Speaker 8: with the fire department or any job he had, he
Speaker 8: took as many jobs as he could. And so let's
Speaker 8: talk about some of that that major characteristic that drives
Speaker 8: him through his entire life. Basically that these this workaholic
Speaker 8: and also that before we talk about that his disappointment
Speaker 8: in trying to become a member of law enforcement, how
Speaker 8: that how that shapes his attitude, and how that helps
Speaker 8: him get into a career and with the fire department.
Speaker 5: Okay, this is I think really gets to the heart
Speaker 5: of John Orr his you know, his wor alkoholic nature
Speaker 5: as you know, as a young guy, even you know,
Speaker 5: a young team, John was on the mate looking two
Speaker 5: ways to make money. You know, he did paper outs,
Speaker 5: he did you know, car washes, he did anything that
Speaker 5: he could to make a book. And you know it's
Speaker 5: I guess that sort of served him while he was
Speaker 5: an awkward teenager growing up. But you know, he didn't
Speaker 5: want for money. He after high school. John was in
Speaker 5: high school in the sixties and that was when the
Speaker 5: Vietnam War was raging really and you know, the options
Speaker 5: for a young man who wasn't necessarily college bound were
Speaker 5: a few. One of them was get drafted or joined
Speaker 5: the military. John decided to join the Air Force, and
Speaker 5: in the Air Force he followed through on a lifelong dream,
Speaker 5: and a lifelong dream was to be a firefighter. So
Speaker 5: John gets trained as a firefighter in the Air Force
Speaker 5: and he's sent to Spain and he performs, you know, moderately.
Speaker 5: Well it's about that time too, that he and Jody
Speaker 5: get married and they're living on the base in Spain,
Speaker 5: and John is exhibiting a characteristic that will come to
Speaker 5: mark him for the rest of his life. And that
Speaker 5: is working all the time. Here's Jody is his newlywed wife,
Speaker 5: and she never sees the guy because he's even when
Speaker 5: he's not on shift, he's out working, you know, palling
Speaker 5: around with his buddies or you know, looking for ways
Speaker 5: to make more money. After John was discharged honorably, so
Speaker 5: he came back to Los Angeles and decided that, you know,
Speaker 5: his career.
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Speaker 5: Path probably lay h law enforcement, and he took a
Speaker 5: job as a security guard at the Sears department store
Speaker 5: and sought out employment with the Los Angeles Police Department.
Speaker 5: In the late sixties and early seventies, L A. P.
Speaker 5: D would put out constant calls for recruitment. So, uh,
Speaker 5: he got into a recruiting class, headed over to l
Speaker 5: A p D. And took the psych psychological evaluation, which
Speaker 5: is a at that time a very complicated taest. Uh,
Speaker 5: you know, like a Minnesota multi Phasic Personality Inventory type
Speaker 5: of thing m mp I, and you know, the evaluators there,
Speaker 5: after looking at the task, UH saw that he had
Speaker 5: some tendencies that would not make him a good cop.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 5: You know, he exhibited a personality that you know was
Speaker 5: borderline sociopathic and potentially psychopathic. Thing. LAPD called him in,
Speaker 5: told him he was rejected. It devastated him then, you know,
Speaker 5: so involved in his career as a security guard at Sears,
Speaker 5: he figured that he'd be a natural cop, right because
Speaker 5: he so knew his community in Los Angeles, he figured
Speaker 5: that he'd be a great cop in LA. So he decided, well,
Speaker 5: if I can't be a cop, I'll be a fireman.
Speaker 5: And he went and applied for a job with the
Speaker 5: Los Angeles Fire Department and the LA Fire Department, big
Speaker 5: city fire department. He did okay on a psychological test,
Speaker 5: and he did okay on most of the entry tests,
Speaker 5: but in the academy class. One of the requirements was
Speaker 5: that you carry a large ladder for a certain amount
Speaker 5: of feet and be able to put the ladder up
Speaker 5: against the window and then get up on it. And
Speaker 5: John was unable to physically unable to do it. And
Speaker 5: again this, this inability to do this caused the Los
Speaker 5: Angeles Fire Department and to him, Hey, you know what, sorry,
Speaker 5: but you're not suitable. You're not physically fit for the
Speaker 5: kind of work that we need Los Angeles firefighters to do.
Speaker 5: So thanks for your application. Sorry, so again. John walks
Speaker 5: away from a dream job, extremely bitter, angry, really angry
Speaker 5: at the system, angry at you know, the bureaucrats that
Speaker 5: are holding him back, and I'm kind of angry at
Speaker 5: this the city that he loved. I remember, I told
Speaker 5: you that Los Angeles is a community of many communities.
Speaker 5: And just because Los Angeles itself wasn't hiring, other cities were. Glendale,
Speaker 5: a neighbor of Los Angeles just to the north, had
Speaker 5: a fire department and they still do. At that time,
Speaker 5: they were among the well, let's just say, the lowest
Speaker 5: paid and probably lacking, you know, the significant kind of
Speaker 5: training that a fire department would need in its personnel.
Speaker 5: And so John was able to convince the folks in
Speaker 5: Glendale that he was a good match and they hired
Speaker 5: him and brought him on board as a firefighter. Well,
Speaker 5: the pay was low, hours were long, and that meant
Speaker 5: John needed to keep his job as a security guard
Speaker 5: at Seers, and he did. It also meant that, you know,
Speaker 5: every now and then he'd even take a third job
Speaker 5: on a couple of occasions, for you know, months at
Speaker 5: a time. He worked as a clerk at the seven
Speaker 5: to eleven, constantly looking for ways to make money. Some
Speaker 5: of that money, you know, went toward child support, you know,
Speaker 5: and later on alimony and those types of things that
Speaker 5: you know, John would need to pay as he went
Speaker 5: from girlfriend to girlfriend and marriage to marriage. But he
Speaker 5: he just had this you know, desire to be out
Speaker 5: sort of you know, doing something. He earned quite a
Speaker 5: reputation as a security guard, he as he tells it,
Speaker 5: you know, he developed a knack for nailing shoplifters. You know.
Speaker 5: I mean, if you've ever been in the department store
Speaker 5: where they get a shoplifter, you probably have never even
Speaker 5: seen it because they do it very quietly, you know, right.
Speaker 5: But John would always make a big show of it.
Speaker 5: And you know, he didn't mind being armed. He didn't
Speaker 5: mind chasing people out into the parking lot, he didn't
Speaker 5: mind scuffling with people if they took stuff, and he
Speaker 5: didn't mind. He will always want it to be the
Speaker 5: hero and being in a department store security guard gave
Speaker 5: him that opportunity. As a rookie firefighter, some of those
Speaker 5: what we would call law enforcement skills, you know, he
Speaker 5: put them to work. There's there's stories of John driving
Speaker 5: around in a city fire truck and spotting vandals, you know,
Speaker 5: from a local gang, and you know, rather than calling
Speaker 5: the police department for backup, you know, John makes an
Speaker 5: effort to apprehend these men, and in one case, he
Speaker 5: even gets into just imagine this, right, He's in a
Speaker 5: car chase with some bad guys in LA and he's
Speaker 5: driving a fire truck, you know, and they're driving their
Speaker 5: their car and an accident ensues during the course of
Speaker 5: this chase, and John gets out and holds one of
Speaker 5: them a gunpoint.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well, the well, the Birthday police department comes up and
Speaker 5: arrests them, and everybody that you know knows John, you know,
Speaker 5: laughs at this part of his personality. You know, he's
Speaker 5: kind of the uh, you know, Paul Blart, mall cop
Speaker 5: of the of his day.
Speaker 8: Right now, let's get to sorry, let's get to some
Speaker 8: of the the what what they call now what they
Speaker 8: said at the time as well, was that this was
Speaker 8: an epidemic of intentional fires in the eighties in this
Speaker 8: Los Angeles county. And then you talk about right about
Speaker 8: October tenth, nineteen eighty four, game two of the World
Speaker 8: Series San Diego Padres versus Detroit Taggers, and you said,
Speaker 8: the streets of South Pasadena were quiet, but a little
Speaker 8: fire started at a grocery store in Pasadena, and an hour
Speaker 8: or later another Pasadena Fire Department investigation tell us what
Speaker 8: happens on October tenth, nineteen eighty four with the starting
Speaker 8: with the small fires and what it leads to.
Speaker 5: Sure, so, Los Angeles in the early in mid eighties
Speaker 5: had this epidemic of what we're called potato chip fires.
Speaker 5: And this is surprising. It was surprising that meanwhile, kind
Speaker 5: of researching the book, potato chips are some of the
Speaker 5: most flammable things in the grocery store. So don't try
Speaker 5: this at home. But if you go on YouTube, you
Speaker 5: can look it up and you'll see that you take
Speaker 5: a bag of Dorito's or a bag of potato chips
Speaker 5: and you can get it going pretty good. So there
Speaker 5: was this a series of small fires and potato chip
Speaker 5: racks at grocery stores throughout what I guess would be
Speaker 5: the San Gabriel Valley, a communities, you know, a group
Speaker 5: of communities adjacent to Glendale, adjacent to Los Angeles. These
Speaker 5: fires are minorly destructive, but nothing major. And on this
Speaker 5: particular night, a couple of them took some grocery stores
Speaker 5: that were you know, minutes apart. But something else happened
Speaker 5: that night too. There was a At the same time
Speaker 5: that fire department in South Pasadena was responding to a
Speaker 5: grocery store fire, a fire broke out in a hardware store,
Speaker 5: and the hardware store was called Ole's. It was a
Speaker 5: prominent chain of hardware stores in southern California. And this fire,
Speaker 5: although nobody knew it at the time, broke out in
Speaker 5: a stack of polypoam, you know, like Mattros type of
Speaker 5: and pillow type of material. That stuff then was largely
Speaker 5: made out of a derivative of petroleum and gasoline that's
Speaker 5: highly flammable, and as the fire department was chasing down
Speaker 5: these potato chip fires and putting them out, this fire
Speaker 5: in the hardware store began to build, and it built rapidly.
Speaker 5: The hardware store actually two buildings that had been put together.
Speaker 5: They were separated by a mechanical fire door so that
Speaker 5: if a fire were to break out there, this door
Speaker 5: would slam shut, feeling off you know, one area from
Speaker 5: another and limiting the amount of damage. Turns out that
Speaker 5: this fire would so massive and spread so quickly that
Speaker 5: it caused a mechanical failure in that fire door that
Speaker 5: trapped people inside. The fire grew quickly, it created a
Speaker 5: like a weather system of its own. It sucked out
Speaker 5: all the oxygen from the air in this building and
Speaker 5: exploded in a force that, you know, many people hadn't seen.
Speaker 5: One employee of this store described going out, you know,
Speaker 5: getting crawling through smoke and heat to get out of
Speaker 5: the building, and when he got outside, his skin just
Speaker 5: melted right off. His hair was burned. People were panicked.
Speaker 5: They were running and trying to get out as fast
Speaker 5: as they could. Sadly, four people ended up being trapped
Speaker 5: inside and killed. Among them were a grandmother, ate a deal,
Speaker 5: her son, her two year old grandson, Matthew Troudel, another
Speaker 5: man by the name of Jimmy Setina, who was a
Speaker 5: seventeen year old college i'm sorry, high school baseball star
Speaker 5: in Pasadena. And then a woman named Carolyn Kraus, who
Speaker 5: you know, essentially, you know, young married woman who just
Speaker 5: happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong
Speaker 5: time on her shift. By the time the fire department
Speaker 5: arrived after putting out the potato chip fire fully engulfed,
Speaker 5: these people were certainly dead, and you know, it was
Speaker 5: a huge tragedy in the in the community. Anytime there's
Speaker 5: a big fire like that, the uh, you know, the
Speaker 5: powers that be are called out, and it just so
Speaker 5: happens that in the community of South Pasadena, arson investigations
Speaker 5: are largely done. The county sheriff has a large arsenal
Speaker 5: and explosives team, the which by now, John see this
Speaker 5: is this is an interesting little thing here. So John Orr,
Speaker 5: also an arson or at least you know, fledgling arsen
Speaker 5: investigator at the time, thought that he should be the
Speaker 5: lead investigator on this case. And when the sheriff was
Speaker 5: out there investigating it, the sheriff determined that the cause
Speaker 5: of the fire was electrical in nature and very quickly
Speaker 5: shut down any inquiries into whether or not it was arson,
Speaker 5: whether or not it could have been caused by something
Speaker 5: other than a malfunctioning light bulb, and you know, quickly
Speaker 5: wrote a report, put it out to the media within
Speaker 5: twenty four hours of the fire, and you know, for
Speaker 5: all intents and purposes, the investigation was done. Well, let
Speaker 5: me tell you something about this fire. Fire was set
Speaker 5: by John Warren. So were the potato chip fires. They
Speaker 5: were intentional diversions. And he was very, very upset that
Speaker 5: the Sheriff's department didn't recognize his handiwork as an arsenist.
Speaker 5: And immediately within days, two other Olie stores, the hardware
Speaker 5: store of the chain, were hit with similar fires. Nobody
Speaker 5: was killed in either of them. The damage wasn't great,
Speaker 5: but the investigators never linked them to the big one
Speaker 5: that happened at OLiS either. They just kind of sat
Speaker 5: there as being part of the pillowcase pyro, which is
Speaker 5: what they called the this arsonist and the potato chip
Speaker 5: arsonist investigations. So start having all these fires and all
Speaker 5: this damage, it caused the into the attention of the
Speaker 5: ATAF so at this point in time. Sorry, the atif
Speaker 5: is now, you know, kind of looking at these series
Speaker 5: of fires. But everybody's accepted the sheriff's take on Olie's
Speaker 5: and not thrown it into the mix. What does or
Speaker 5: a huge tragedy?
Speaker 8: Sorry, what does John I'm sorry in criticizing, in criticizing
Speaker 8: the decision from the fire chief, what does this want
Speaker 8: to be John Orr have to say about the cause
Speaker 8: of the fire contrary to what has this other police
Speaker 8: chief has concluded.
Speaker 5: Well, so, so you know, John's going around town everybody,
Speaker 5: it's an arson fire. I can go in there and
Speaker 5: show you exactly where it started. I mean he's literally
Speaker 5: going to point them in the direction of the point
Speaker 5: of origin of the fire of course that he started.
Speaker 5: And personally for him, if he were able to have
Speaker 5: done that, you know, he would have been looked at
Speaker 5: as this you know, great sort of Sherlock Holmes and investigator, uh,
Speaker 5: you know, able to deduce from a bare minimum of
Speaker 5: clues how this massive fire had started. And he was
Speaker 5: frustrated in that by the sheriff saying, Nope, electrical fire,
Speaker 5: that's what it is. You're not going in there, You're
Speaker 5: not looking at anything. I'm telling the other way it is,
Speaker 5: and that's that the arrogance of the of the county
Speaker 5: sheriff's fire investigator really upset John, massively upset him. And
Speaker 5: and it only and it only upset him because he
Speaker 5: didn't get credit for the fire that he started. So
Speaker 5: it was, you know, it's it's really like for us
Speaker 5: to think about this. It's odd, right, it's backwards. You'd
Speaker 5: think that a guy that you know was engaged in
Speaker 5: criminal activity would not want to have anyone discerned that
Speaker 5: he was involved in it. But John was certain they
Speaker 5: wouldn't catch him. He he wanted to hit you know,
Speaker 5: his alter ego, his you know, hidden persona to get
Speaker 5: credit for the fire. They killed four innocent people.
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Speaker 8: There's a task force that gets sets up set up
Speaker 8: in response, and you write, but what is what is
Speaker 8: John Orr's response to this in terms of his advancement
Speaker 8: of his career? He doesn't get this, this recognition that
Speaker 8: he wants. So what does he do in response to
Speaker 8: that in terms of becoming the kind of respected fire
Speaker 8: professional that he wants to be?
Speaker 5: Well, so, I mean that's exactly what he does. So John,
Speaker 5: you know, John doesn't that has the shriff's department doesn't
Speaker 5: respect him. You know, there's it's clear that he's not gonna,
Speaker 5: you know, be the guy that figures this fire out.
Speaker 5: So a task force is set up, you know, in
Speaker 5: the communities of the foothills, places where you know fire
Speaker 5: weather is likely to destroy homes, and you know, John
Speaker 5: very quickly becomes an officer in the in the club,
Speaker 5: you know, and you know, starts to establish his himself
Speaker 5: as a respected arson investigator, affiliated with other arson investigators
Speaker 5: and a sleuth. Yeah, you know, sort of legendary proportions,
Speaker 5: and you know, arsenal investigators from around the region at first,
Speaker 5: and then from around the state and soon from around
Speaker 5: the country sought his advice because he had, you know,
Speaker 5: been a part of his task force and sort of
Speaker 5: proved himself as a pretty good investigator. You know, the
Speaker 5: intent was likely to you know, be able to be
Speaker 5: the guy that pointed out fires like the Olies fire though,
Speaker 5: you know, be able to go into another situation like
Speaker 5: that and point out, hey, this is arson and make
Speaker 5: the sheriff and everybody else that didn't believe it looked bad.
Speaker 8: In terms of fires being abated. We talked about the
Speaker 8: eighties in this rise for him to gain respect as
Speaker 8: a fire investigator and his goal to become captain. What's
Speaker 8: the situation in terms of fires being set in in
Speaker 8: the area, and what does the taskforce do in response?
Speaker 5: So there's so I gotta tell you, this guy set
Speaker 5: so many darn fires that you know this so that
Speaker 5: this task force really wants to, you know, get down
Speaker 5: to the brass tax of what's happening here. And I'll
Speaker 5: just give you an example. So they one of the
Speaker 5: things that they do in the late eighties is they
Speaker 5: have this task force, and then they set up the
Speaker 5: task force so that they can go and teach each
Speaker 5: other how to investigate fire. And they go to there's
Speaker 5: a conference that's held up in uh, you know, several
Speaker 5: communities away in northern California, and John's invited to the conference,
Speaker 5: and on his way home from the conference, he lights
Speaker 5: several fires. In fact, actually it's good to go back there.
Speaker 5: While they're at the conference, John lights the fire that
Speaker 5: destroys a fabric store and and a fabric store that's
Speaker 5: a lot like Olie's. You know, it has that polyphone
Speaker 5: in it, and the fire, while it's covered on you
Speaker 5: know television in the community, doesn't really get a lot
Speaker 5: of recognition for being an arson fire. John goes home
Speaker 5: from the conference and on the way home lights four
Speaker 5: or five more fires, all at fabric stores between Fresno
Speaker 5: and Los Angeles. This has this task the task force,
Speaker 5: like we got you know, what's going on here? John
Speaker 5: is suggesting to his friends and others that what's happening
Speaker 5: is that there's a serial arsonist who knows that all
Speaker 5: the arson investigators are together at this conference and wants
Speaker 5: to show off. But something happened along the way. One
Speaker 5: of the fires that he set was in Bakersfield, California,
Speaker 5: and there was an old time arson investigator there by
Speaker 5: the name of Marvin Casey, and Marv Casey went out
Speaker 5: to this. It was a dud fire. It probably did,
Speaker 5: you know, less than a couple of hundred dollars worth
Speaker 5: of damage at a fabric store and the main part
Speaker 5: of Bakersfield. Your listeners probably know Bakersfield as being the
Speaker 5: you know, the home of Merle Haggard and Buck Owens.
Speaker 5: But it's a big oil community. There's a lot of
Speaker 5: families that live there and it and it does have
Speaker 5: season investigators like Marv Casey. So Marv goes after this fire.
Speaker 5: He looks at it and here is the device. He
Speaker 5: finds it. That's the fire. The device consists of a cigarette,
Speaker 5: three matches, a piece of rubber band, and then some
Speaker 5: lines notebook paper set up as a tenth. The way
Speaker 5: this works is the cigarette you let this back. Then
Speaker 5: cigarettes would burn, they didn't have retardant in them. The
Speaker 5: cigarette would burn when it got down to the match heads.
Speaker 5: The match heads would flare up. The flare from the
Speaker 5: match heads would set the tented paper on fire. The
Speaker 5: flame from the tented paper would go into the polyphone,
Speaker 5: and the polyphone, being a gasoline product, would ignite. Well,
Speaker 5: in this case, for some reason, the fire didn't take
Speaker 5: the cigarette device. The matches and the paper were still there.
Speaker 5: Marv Casey knew that there had been a conference of
Speaker 5: arsenal investigators. It's just in the neighborhood. And notice that
Speaker 5: there had been fires on the road, the highway between
Speaker 5: Fresno and Los Angeles. So he went to the ATF
Speaker 5: and he said, he asked him, hey, I would like
Speaker 5: to I found a fingerprint, and I'd like to run
Speaker 5: this fingerprint through the database of firefighters that attended this
Speaker 5: conference to see if there's a match, see if we
Speaker 5: have a fireman who you know, may be setting fires.
Speaker 5: And the ATF and other investigators were horrified by the
Speaker 5: suggestion that a fireman might be an arsonist. They told me, no, way,
Speaker 5: can't do it. This is this is outrageous. There's something
Speaker 5: else going on here. Do not pursue that line of investigations. Well,
Speaker 5: you know, Omarv said, Okay, I mean, if that's what
Speaker 5: you want me to do, that's all I'm going to do.
Speaker 5: But you know, he knew his heart that they weren't
Speaker 5: going to solve these these fires, and he believed that
Speaker 5: there would be you know, more fires to follow, and
Speaker 5: he was right. You know, two years later, there's another again,
Speaker 5: same group. This is the same task force of people
Speaker 5: that are looking for the pillowcase pyro and the potato
Speaker 5: chip arsonist and this guy that's making his way up
Speaker 5: and down the state. They meet in the town of
Speaker 5: San Luis Obispo and that's on the coast. It's a
Speaker 5: nice place, it's a good place to have a conference.
Speaker 5: And sure as heck, at the end of this conference,
Speaker 5: there are a series of five fires in hardware stores
Speaker 5: and fabric stores along the road between San Luis Obispo
Speaker 5: and Los Angeles. So Marv Casey down to baker Field
Speaker 5: catches wind of this. It reminds me of what happened
Speaker 5: in you know, years earlier, in eighty seven. He's got
Speaker 5: that piece of paper in that fingerprint, and he again
Speaker 5: goes to the ATF and he says, hey, you know,
Speaker 5: you remember a couple of years ago, I wanted to
Speaker 5: run this against firefighters. You guys said no, but it's
Speaker 5: just too coincidental that this thing happened again. And they
Speaker 5: and ats said, well, all right, but if you can
Speaker 5: narrow down the number of people that you want to
Speaker 5: run a print on, then will take a look at it.
Speaker 5: So he gets a list of firefighters from Los Angeles
Speaker 5: area that attended the eighty seven conference, compares it to
Speaker 5: a list of firefighters that attended the eighty nine conference.
Speaker 5: Finds an finds out there's a handful of them that
Speaker 5: attended both, and says, all right, here, I've got a
Speaker 5: list of five guys, ten guys. One of the names
Speaker 5: on the list, by the way, is John Orr. He
Speaker 5: submits the list amidst the print, the ATF runs it
Speaker 5: and no match comes back. So now Marv's, you know,
Speaker 5: really scratching his head and it's just it really doesn't
Speaker 5: make sense to him. How can it be that here's
Speaker 5: these fires, here's these conferences of firefighters, here's this pattern
Speaker 5: of you know, hardware stores and stuff between LA and
Speaker 5: San Luis Obispo and between La and Fresno. He's kind
Speaker 5: of stumped. AHF is kind of stumped, and John knows that,
Speaker 5: you know, and he's not really feeling the heat. And
Speaker 5: he's probing people in the Task force to find out,
Speaker 5: you know, what they know is there, you know, an
Speaker 5: investigation where he might be the suspect. You know, is
Speaker 5: there something that he because he's close to them, you
Speaker 5: know that he can learn about their investigation trying to
Speaker 5: figure it out. It's not that simple though, for John
Speaker 5: uh and it's it's not that simple for investigators either,
Speaker 5: because it's going to be about two more years before
Speaker 5: they finally hook them up.
Speaker 8: You talk about in June twenty seventh, June twenty seventh,
Speaker 8: nineteen ninety sixty six homes destroyed or damaged, fifty million
Speaker 8: dollars in damage. And you're getting witnesses that are coming
Speaker 8: forward to describe possible suspects. So how do they progress
Speaker 8: with that information?
Speaker 5: So let me I gotta tell you this. So this
Speaker 5: this is the Glendale or what they call the College
Speaker 5: Hills fire, and this is this was a massive wildfire
Speaker 5: set on the hillside in a neighborhood that is ripe
Speaker 5: to be to have a wildfire that particular year. Fire
Speaker 5: season came a little bit early. Temperatures were hot, humidity
Speaker 5: levels were extremely low. That it hadn't rained much in
Speaker 5: the uh, you know, prior months of April, May and
Speaker 5: early June. So the grasses were tinder dry, and somebody
Speaker 5: set a fire and fire burned up a hillside and
Speaker 5: it was out. You know, this is an interesting thing.
Speaker 5: This fire was out in a day, but you know,
Speaker 5: by the time it was it was out, and you know,
Speaker 5: millions of dollars of damage, homes gone, families, uh, you know,
Speaker 5: taken out of their neighborhood.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 5: There were witnesses, people you know, that saw things. But
Speaker 5: I'm want to I'm going to tell you a story
Speaker 5: that I heard after I wrote the book, and I
Speaker 5: wish I had heard it when I wrote it. A
Speaker 5: friend of mine worked for a local TV station and
Speaker 5: he had a crew that was doing a story on
Speaker 5: somebody in the College Hills. And the film crew is
Speaker 5: a reporter of a cameraman and a Michaephan guy just
Speaker 5: happened to be in the neighborhood where this fire started
Speaker 5: at the time that it started, and they got, you know,
Speaker 5: some early footage of the flames as they made their
Speaker 5: way up this hillside. And this is just so great.
Speaker 5: The next morning, John Orr is at the TV station,
Speaker 5: the Fox TV station, demanding that they turn over the
Speaker 5: the tape that they that they had shot that day.
Speaker 5: As you know, part of his investigation, and the man
Speaker 5: told me that, you know, he later on found out
Speaker 5: that the reason John, and it's obvious, you know, but
Speaker 5: the reason that John or wanted that tape was so
Speaker 5: that he could find out whether or not they caught
Speaker 5: him setting the fire. They were that close to him.
Speaker 5: The people did see him, and he was very noticeable
Speaker 5: in an unnoticeable way, you know, because it's I guess
Speaker 5: it's that you know, that thing of you know, the
Speaker 5: dissonance that you get sometimes, right, you don't really put
Speaker 5: two and two together to keep so out to ask
Speaker 5: this this fire, now, remember this is a fast moving fire,
Speaker 5: and it goes, it blows right through the point of
Speaker 5: origin and up this hillside and into these homes so much,
Speaker 5: so quick and so fast that investigators were able to
Speaker 5: go to the point of origin within hours after it started,
Speaker 5: and they noticed that John was dragging his feet, that
Speaker 5: he didn't really have a strong desire to go to
Speaker 5: the spot where they believed the fire had been set.
Speaker 5: And then when he did go there, he acted so
Speaker 5: unusual and suspicious that you know, later on it would
Speaker 5: keep people into that maybe there was something more there.
Speaker 5: John told reporters that, you know, he knew how the
Speaker 5: fire started. He had seen a device that started it.
Speaker 5: But when his superiors asked him for it, asked him
Speaker 5: to write a report and asked him to do follow
Speaker 5: up and find a suspect, he wouldn't deliver. I almost
Speaker 5: refuse to deliver in an insubordinate way. And uh, it
Speaker 5: began to you know, draw, it began to draw some
Speaker 5: attention to him at the same time, Uh, Marvin Casey
Speaker 5: and the ATF roughly about the same time. A lot
Speaker 5: of little interviewing facts. But we'll just go right back
Speaker 5: to Mark Casey and the ATF and that and that fingerprint.
Speaker 5: You know, they've run that. Eventually, they're gonna run that
Speaker 5: print again. And John knows it. And he also has
Speaker 5: been setting other fires, more hardware store fires, this time
Speaker 5: in Los Angeles and communities that are, you know, a
Speaker 5: little bit south of the city instead of north. And
Speaker 5: he's seen at the scene of one of them, like oddly,
Speaker 5: guys that knows him sees him at the scene of
Speaker 5: this fire, and people are starting to piece it together.
Speaker 5: They In nineteen ninety one, there's another one of these
Speaker 5: arson conferences. This time it's up in San Luis Obispo again.
Speaker 5: And this time they have a pretty good sense that,
Speaker 5: you know, John is a suspect, and they put a
Speaker 5: tracker on his car. And it never police had never
Speaker 5: done this before. It was you know, new GPS technology,
Speaker 5: and so they put a tracker on his car. And
Speaker 5: he's at the conference and he comes out and he
Speaker 5: sees the antenna from the tracker sitting kind of pointing
Speaker 5: out from under the bumper, and he gets in his
Speaker 5: car and he hauls the ass out of the parking lot,
Speaker 5: drives down to the San Luis Obispo Sheriff's department and
Speaker 5: tells him that there's a bomb under his car. Well,
Speaker 5: you know the ATF that puts his tracker on his car.
Speaker 5: And the detectives are horrified. They're like, this guy, he's
Speaker 5: gonna blow up our you know, our tracking device, and
Speaker 5: we're gonna you know, we're not gonna get it. We're
Speaker 5: not gonna be able to follow him anymore. So they
Speaker 5: call into the the Sheriff's department while oars there and
Speaker 5: they tell him, hey, look this, we're the ATF. We're
Speaker 5: not going to tell you why, but there's a tracker
Speaker 5: on this guy's car. You can whatever you want to do.
Speaker 5: Pretend just play along with him. It's not a bomb,
Speaker 5: don't do an investigation. We'll just we'll figure this out later.
Speaker 5: So so he was pretty slick and he knew that
Speaker 5: they were they were onto him, and they were able
Speaker 5: subsequently to that to get another tracker on and uh,
Speaker 5: they tracked him to the scene of a fire on
Speaker 5: the Warner Brothers movie studio, a lot where his wife
Speaker 5: at the time worked. And evidence is starting to pile up.
Speaker 5: And now now they run that fingerprint for a third time.
Speaker 5: And what they did was they expanded the database of
Speaker 5: prints that they could run it against. And one of
Speaker 5: the pieces of information that they had was the l A.
Speaker 5: P D database. And remember when he applied for that
Speaker 5: job at LAPD at that time, he had to give
Speaker 5: him his fingerprints, and so they had him in there.
Speaker 5: They made him. They figured out that while John was
Speaker 5: in fact the guy that set that fire in Bakersfield,
Speaker 5: he was the guy that in fact set the fires
Speaker 5: in Fresno and Sai Louis Obispo. And they showed up
Speaker 5: at his house and for this is a federal case
Speaker 5: and the rest of him in connection with I want
Speaker 5: to say, eight hardware store fires in central California News.
Speaker 8: Right, absolutely, you talk about till two. We just something
Speaker 8: that's very, very striking was that during all in all
Speaker 8: of this, he's in the midst of investigation, but he
Speaker 8: makes his way finally onto the cover of the Los
Speaker 8: Angeles Times at the same time that he's being suspected
Speaker 8: and people don't want to believe it, but end up
Speaker 8: believing that this. And you talk about a dogged atf worker,
Speaker 8: a named Mattessa that's instrumental in this investigation. And also, yeah, sorry,
Speaker 8: go ahead, what I wanted to do before we before
Speaker 8: we talk about it a little bit later, let's talk
Speaker 8: about the origin of Points of Origin. Origin. Pardon me?
Speaker 8: Why is he writing this book? And you talk you
Speaker 8: write about that he sends a draft of the book
Speaker 8: to somebody in the in the fire department, and they
Speaker 8: forward as someone else. So it's an eerie confluence of
Speaker 8: events that are going on at the same time that
Speaker 8: he's this suspect and doesn't quite know it for a
Speaker 8: while till the surveillance is obvious to him. So tell
Speaker 8: us about the book that he's working on, Points of Origin.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on in his
Speaker 5: life all at the same time, and it's it's it's
Speaker 5: like you wonder, you know, especially as a writer. When
Speaker 5: I was writing this, I wondered how he kept all
Speaker 5: these different personas together. And you can, I mean, just
Speaker 5: this whole manic personality, right, where does this come from?
Speaker 5: So at the time that all this is happening, John
Speaker 5: is in the midst of writing a book, a work
Speaker 5: of fiction called Points of Origin, and the story of
Speaker 5: Points of Origin is about two firemen, one of whom
Speaker 5: is this amazing investigator named Phil lang Tree, and the
Speaker 5: other is a firefighter who happens to be an arsonist
Speaker 5: named Aaron Stites or Styles, I'm sorry, Aaron Styles. So
Speaker 5: the book is essentially a cat and mouse game between
Speaker 5: Phil and Aaron. Aaron in chap there's about Aaron. There
Speaker 5: are these very detailed descriptions of arson fires and how
Speaker 5: and how the arsonists aroused by these fires, sexually aroused
Speaker 5: by them. And he's mixing you know, the images of
Speaker 5: large breasted women with images of flames, you know, burning
Speaker 5: up potato chip racks. When he gets angry at people,
Speaker 5: he finds ways to get back at them by starting fires.
Speaker 5: And he loves to watch the fire department respond to
Speaker 5: these fires. In the heart of the book is the
Speaker 5: description of a fire that's a lot like Olie's that
Speaker 5: remember that fire in South Pasadena that killed those four
Speaker 5: innocent people, And Aaron in the book Points of Origin
Speaker 5: sets a fire in a hardware store uh in the
Speaker 5: in foam rubber mattresses, uh. And the fire spreads rapidly
Speaker 5: and ends up killing in the book five people, including
Speaker 5: a two year old. And there's a lot of little things,
Speaker 5: you know, So this is kind of inside writer baseball, right.
Speaker 5: But you know, to make a good story, you gotta
Speaker 5: have dialogue, right. You can't. It can't just be description, description, description.
Speaker 5: You've gotta have some dialogue. So there's a there's a
Speaker 5: snippet of dialogue in the book where Aaron overhears a
Speaker 5: grandmother and grandfather tell their grandchild that when they're done shopping, uh,
Speaker 5: they will buy him ice cream at the baskin Robbins
Speaker 5: Monk turns out that that snippet of conversation wasn't just
Speaker 5: made up. It's in fact something that the actual arsonists
Speaker 5: of the Olies fire probably overheard. John is shopping this book.
Speaker 5: He's desperately trying to get it published because his idea
Speaker 5: is that, you know, if he can publish this book,
Speaker 5: it can be made into a movie. And you know,
Speaker 5: he's living the Hollywood dream, right. He got his he
Speaker 5: got his book optioned, it became a movie. And now
Speaker 5: he's not just Arson investigator John Orr. He's you know,
Speaker 5: the next Joseph Wambaugh, right, a guy who has some
Speaker 5: working knowledge of his profession. So one of the so
Speaker 5: his captain, read the book and immediately saw the strong
Speaker 5: parallels between the cows fire in points of origin and
Speaker 5: he always fire in real life. And you know, it
Speaker 5: raised many red flags for him, and it raised later
Speaker 5: on would there's other parts of the books that would
Speaker 5: that of that book that raised flags for others too.
Speaker 5: Now all of this is coming, you know, it's sort
Speaker 5: of being discovered at the same time the Feds are
Speaker 5: working these cases up in Central California. But it's beginning.
Speaker 5: They're beginning to see that, you know, or have a
Speaker 5: sense of who John is, and they're getting a better
Speaker 5: sense of it from the book. And probably I think
Speaker 5: most stunning to all of them was after the young
Speaker 5: kid died, after the baby died, and the grandmother died,
Speaker 5: and the people died in the hardware store. In the book,
Speaker 5: The Arsenist says something along the lines of, well, they
Speaker 5: deserved it. They didn't get out of there fast enough.
Speaker 5: So you're really looking into the mind of a you know,
Speaker 5: cold hearted killer, and people are starting to see that.
Speaker 6: M hm.
Speaker 8: You talk, you talk quite a bit about his personal life,
Speaker 8: and I know it doesn't have that much relevance, but
Speaker 8: what has characterized these married four times and Laurie and
Speaker 8: her sister say that all they remember is, you know,
Speaker 8: the rare visits was that there was always women around.
Speaker 8: What characterized his personal life with these women in terms
Speaker 8: of anything out of the ordinary, Well, so.
Speaker 5: John was heavily into be indeed, bondage and discipline, rough sects,
Speaker 5: rape fantasies, control over the women that he was with.
Speaker 5: And you know, just about every woman who he was
Speaker 5: either you know, a boyfriend and girlfriend with or married to,
Speaker 5: describes these scenarios where you know, John is essentially breaking
Speaker 5: them and it's a power you know, it's sort of
Speaker 5: a power thing where he's exerting some sort of power
Speaker 5: over women. Forensic psychologists will tell you that, you know,
Speaker 5: the arsonist. The personality of an arsenist is somebody who
Speaker 5: is powerless, and the personality of a rapist is sometimes
Speaker 5: also the personality somebody who's powerless. So you have this
Speaker 5: confluence of you know, really dangerous personality types all pent
Speaker 5: up in this man. His kids. You know, obviously his
Speaker 5: kids don't see any of this. I mean, his kids
Speaker 5: are you know, they meet the wives and the girlfriends
Speaker 5: and all the dogs that come and go from the house,
Speaker 5: and you know, in all the different living scenarios. You know,
Speaker 5: they kind of, you know, like kids do. They compartmentalize
Speaker 5: and go with the flow and you know, figure out
Speaker 5: how to navigate their father's weird personal life at the
Speaker 5: same you know, I mean surfacely weird. They don't know
Speaker 5: the weird stuff. At the same time, you know that
Speaker 5: they're really reaching out in hopes of having a relationship
Speaker 5: with them with him, and he's not giving himself over
Speaker 5: to them to have a relationship with them, and it's
Speaker 5: you know, it's a strain obviously on them. And again,
Speaker 5: you know, as you ask, all this is happening at
Speaker 5: the same time, right the same time he's starting the fires,
Speaker 5: the same time he's about to get caught, right and
Speaker 5: their relationship with his girls is becoming more and more
Speaker 5: strangth and he's writing this book and having I mean,
Speaker 5: I you know, I don't it's hard to like talk
Speaker 5: about it, and it's hard to write about people's sex
Speaker 5: lives and to talk about because you know, I mean, obviously,
Speaker 5: you know, everybody has their own thing, right, but some
Speaker 5: of the things that he does, you know, would appear
Speaker 5: to be you know, rather out of the ordinary and
Speaker 5: certainly not you know, in the bounds of what might
Speaker 5: be described as typically normal. And I think it comes
Speaker 5: I think that that the reason and it's you know,
Speaker 5: and the reason that I included this in the book, right,
Speaker 5: The reason that it's there is because it goes to
Speaker 5: the personality of the you know, the arsonist, right, the
Speaker 5: controlling personality of the arsenists.
Speaker 8: You talk about. Why I mentioned it is because of
Speaker 8: the point of origin the perpetrator in this fictional account
Speaker 8: that they used at trial and they used in this
Speaker 8: investigation to shed some light on his personality and motivations
Speaker 8: and you know, details about the crimes that he writes about,
Speaker 8: supposedly fictionally that the perpetrator in this was sexually motivated
Speaker 8: to do these arsens which is very interesting.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a good question, Dan and a good observation
Speaker 5: the the perpetrator, the fictional perpetrator in Points of Origin
Speaker 5: was sexually motivated to start fires, and in you know,
Speaker 5: in the body of the work, it's by the way,
Speaker 5: I don't know if you've seen it, but there, you know,
Speaker 5: it's probably two hundred pages. It's really thin, it's a
Speaker 5: really it's it's I'm not I don't want to say
Speaker 5: it's crappy, but it's very formulaic except for these like
Speaker 5: very vivid descriptions.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 5: So in one part of the book, there is aerin
Speaker 5: the arsonists, uh rapes and kills a woman with whom
Speaker 5: he is infatuated. And uh, there are investigators who claim
Speaker 5: that John did the same thing, and they, you know,
Speaker 5: they can even pinpoint the case where he did it.
Speaker 5: But he's never been tried for it. And you know,
Speaker 5: this case remains unsolved. Now. I asked him about it.
Speaker 5: I I you know, I read the book, asked him.
Speaker 5: I said, John, you know, listen, oberin Burbank and Glendale,
Speaker 5: there are people that believe that you're not just you know,
Speaker 5: an arsenist who killed people in South Pasadena, but you
Speaker 5: know you raped and murdered at least one woman and
Speaker 5: he's not. I no, I didn't. But you know you
Speaker 5: have this you know, you have this persona where you
Speaker 5: you know, you engage in all this kinky sacks and
Speaker 5: you know, and he he cannot slip out of this thing.
Speaker 5: He turns it around. It comes about. You know, the
Speaker 5: investigators don't like him because he was so good at
Speaker 5: what he did. And you know, it's too bad they
Speaker 5: can't catch the real arsonists and don't know all the facts.
Speaker 5: That's the deal. That's that's John Or in a nutshell.
Speaker 8: Now he goes to trial. He's out on fifty thousand
Speaker 8: dollars bail. Like you write in the book, it's the
Speaker 8: story isn't as big as it maybe should be because
Speaker 8: there's so many other events that are overshadowing. You talk
Speaker 8: about Rodney King in that case, tell us about as
Speaker 8: you as you write the sentencing for those fires and
Speaker 8: and for those crimes, but also how the investigation continues
Speaker 8: afterwards to include that OLA's department store and basically the
Speaker 8: murder of those four people.
Speaker 5: Okay, so there's one. You know, there's a lot thing
Speaker 5: in La not just the arrest of John Law, but
Speaker 5: you know, the the Rodney King story that everyone knows
Speaker 5: occupied the you know, the media's attention for you know,
Speaker 5: a good year. And it wasn't just you know, the
Speaker 5: incessant playing of that video, that horrific video of Rodney
Speaker 5: King getting beaten, but it was you know, the relationship
Speaker 5: with the Los Angeles Police Department, and then of course
Speaker 5: the trial of the four police officers, their acquittal and
Speaker 5: the riots you know that followed, or the civil unrest
Speaker 5: if you will. And so you know, John Orr, the
Speaker 5: Glendale fire captain arrested for you know, eight minor arsons
Speaker 5: in the Central Valley didn't occupy a lot of media attention.
Speaker 5: He's now what happened was he he goes to trial
Speaker 5: and trial is not looking good, but ultimately he pleads
Speaker 5: guilty to an arson fires a single arson fire, enters
Speaker 5: a guilty plea to a single arsen fire and very
Speaker 5: a small fire I think could cost sixty four dollars
Speaker 5: in damage at a builder's emporium in North Hollywood.
Speaker 8: And John.
Speaker 5: Is given a ten year federal prison sentence, you know,
Speaker 5: in this instance. And he thinks that while he's in
Speaker 5: the clear, but it turns out that you know, the
Speaker 5: fire that he pled guilty to is one in which
Speaker 5: bears many of the similarities of the fires in South Pasadena,
Speaker 5: uh and the fire you know, and on and on
Speaker 5: and on, right, and so now the LA County, remember
Speaker 5: this is a federal case where he's convicted, but now
Speaker 5: LA County is determined that they're going to prosecute him
Speaker 5: for the Olies fire. Now, now this is going to
Speaker 5: be difficult. This is not an easy task because, you know,
Speaker 5: they're LA County's own investigator said, while that Olies fire,
Speaker 5: you know, that wasn't an arson and that was an
Speaker 5: electrical fire, right. So there, so it took almost six
Speaker 5: years pieces together into a criminal case that La County
Speaker 5: could prosecute for the holiest fire, the four murders, the
Speaker 5: you know, multiple homes that were destroyed in Glendale, the
Speaker 5: fire on the burbank lot, and a couple of other uh,
Speaker 5: you know, hits or misses around the region. The court case, well,
Speaker 5: this is now, this is where I'm gonna stumble a
Speaker 5: little bit. I don't remember all the statistics, but in
Speaker 5: the UH I was very fortunate that in the writing
Speaker 5: of the book, I was able to get access to
Speaker 5: not just all the all the documents that related to
Speaker 5: the case, I mean everything including by the way, most
Speaker 5: of the reports that John wrote as a firefighter, Wow,
Speaker 5: and in in the with the in the files that
Speaker 5: I had were were John's notes, and he took very
Speaker 5: copious notes on every one of the witnesses, on his attorneys,
Speaker 5: on evidence that was presented. So I was able to
Speaker 5: you know, sort of synthesize in my memory, which you know,
Speaker 5: was fading having gone to the trial. There were certain
Speaker 5: things that I didn't remember, but I was able to
Speaker 5: you know, piece the trial back together and the investigation,
Speaker 5: you know, through all of these various documents that I
Speaker 5: was really fortunate to have. It was a I mean,
Speaker 5: I guess as a writer, you'd call it a gold mine.
Speaker 5: On top of that, we talked about points of Origin.
Speaker 5: But you know, John also wrote a second book called
Speaker 5: Points of Truth, and Points of Truth is his autobiography
Speaker 5: and his defense in the criminal cases that he was
Speaker 5: confronted with. So Points of Truth, remember, points of Origin is,
Speaker 5: you know, so let's say two hundred pages, you know,
Speaker 5: I mean, it's super formulaic tropes everywhere, you know, you
Speaker 5: could you can figure out the plot pretty quickly. Points
Speaker 5: of Truth is probably about four hundred pages, very densely written.
Speaker 5: It starts out with him, you know, as a five
Speaker 5: year old describing his first arson fire but completely not
Speaker 5: taking completely, not admitting that he said it, and then
Speaker 5: going through his entire forty five year history of as
Speaker 5: an arsonist, describing every fire that he ever investigated, describing
Speaker 5: every girlfriend, every wife, every relationship that he ever had,
Speaker 5: describing his feelings about being rejected as a police officer,
Speaker 5: his feelings about being rejected as a firefighter, his feelings
Speaker 5: about his promotions, his superiors, the rests that he made
Speaker 5: when he was a security guard. And what's interesting to
Speaker 5: me is that after reading these two books, I realized that,
Speaker 5: you know, John has two personalities, just like you know,
Speaker 5: his firefighter arsonist and his good guy firefighter. And his
Speaker 5: books are the complete opposite of what they pretend to be.
Speaker 5: Points of Origin, which purports to be a work of fiction,
Speaker 5: is actually a work of nonfiction, and Points of Truth,
Speaker 5: which purports to be nonfiction, is actually so John turns
Speaker 5: everything upside down in you know, in everything, and it's, uh,
Speaker 5: I guess, you know, in a relationship, you'd call it
Speaker 5: gas lighting. But you know it's clear that he's you know,
Speaker 5: super manipulative, and this is his way of being I
Speaker 5: caught during the course of So before writing the book,
Speaker 5: I wrote him a letter and I said, John, I'm
Speaker 5: writing this book. I'd like you to participate. Uh. He said,
Speaker 5: I will if you can get my daughter to write
Speaker 5: me a letter and tell me that she's participating in it. Also,
Speaker 5: so Laurie wrote him a letter and said, hey, yeah,
Speaker 5: I'm working on this book with Frank. We're going to
Speaker 5: publish it. And we knew then the book would be
Speaker 5: called Burned, and we knew that it would be published
Speaker 5: by Wild Blue Press. And U she told him, she said, Dad,
Speaker 5: I hate to tell you this, but you know you
Speaker 5: are not going to look good when this book comes out.
Speaker 5: So John didn't write back to her. He wrote to
Speaker 5: me and he said, well, my daughter says she's working
Speaker 5: with you. So all right, you know, ask any questions
Speaker 5: you want to ask. I'll you know, I'll provide you
Speaker 5: with any information that I can. And I'm hoping that
Speaker 5: at the end of you writing the book, at the
Speaker 5: when the process is all over, that that you get
Speaker 5: to a point where you see me as being innocent. Okay,
Speaker 5: you know, I mean whatever I write, you know, I
Speaker 5: write the whole thing. And we correspond a lot during
Speaker 5: the course of this, and talked on the phone a
Speaker 5: couple of times, and then, you know, at the end
Speaker 5: of it, I wrote the maletter and I said, okay, John,
Speaker 5: the book's done. I'll make sure you get a copy
Speaker 5: of it. I just want you to know that your
Speaker 5: daughter was right. You don't look good. And in fact,
Speaker 5: I'm more convinced than I ever was that you're guilty
Speaker 5: of the Olies fire and a bunch of other fires,
Speaker 5: you know that hurt people and damage property. And it
Speaker 5: took a while. A couple of weeks went by, and
Speaker 5: I get a letter and it's from John, and it's
Speaker 5: about a ten page letter. The first three or four
Speaker 5: pages and him, you know, talking about how hard it
Speaker 5: is to be away from his family, and you know
Speaker 5: how he's done his time, and you know how he
Speaker 5: plans to do his time and the future, and you
Speaker 5: know how he might get out. And then he says
Speaker 5: then he you know, halfway through the letter, he says, oh,
Speaker 5: you know you're wrong about me. I'm not guilty. But
Speaker 5: since you think that, it's okay, lots of people think
Speaker 5: I'm guilty. I just want you to know that I
Speaker 5: imagine that when you're done with this, you'll probably read
Speaker 5: another book, maybe two or three other books, and you'll
Speaker 5: want to talk to guys in the joint. Well, I've
Speaker 5: been in for thirty five years and I know a
Speaker 5: lot of people, including Bobby Bosley who was with the
Speaker 5: Manson family. So if you ever need a connection or
Speaker 5: a good word on your behalf, just let me know. Yeah, sincerely, John, Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 5: manipulative run until the very end. Yeah.
Speaker 8: You write in the book, of course, the devastating story
Speaker 8: of Laurie and having to hear the news of her
Speaker 8: father's arrest initially and then having to have the realization
Speaker 8: that her father is this serial arsonist and a murderer
Speaker 8: and she has to go to the trial to make
Speaker 8: sure that he doesn't receive the death penalty. Tell us
Speaker 8: a little bit about this.
Speaker 5: Wow, this is a you know, nerve wracking situation for
Speaker 5: her to be in because at the point of the
Speaker 5: trial in which she was asked to, you know, speak
Speaker 5: for her dad, she really didn't know what he was
Speaker 5: accused of. She thought, oh, you know, he's you know,
Speaker 5: they're saying he set some fire, and there's no way
Speaker 5: in heck my dad would set fires, and you know,
Speaker 5: this is a bunch of crap, and I'll happily go.
Speaker 5: So she shows up and everybody's staring at her. It's
Speaker 5: a packed courtroom on there, you know, I mean I
Speaker 5: certainly remember it. The death penalty case. Courtrooms packed and
Speaker 5: she comes in. They start asking, you know, all these questions,
Speaker 5: are your dad good? Yep? Dad a hero? Yep? You
Speaker 5: love your dad? Yep? Do you think you should get
Speaker 5: the definitely? Nope, you know I have. She at that time,
Speaker 5: she had a young son, and you know, it was
Speaker 5: a heartfelt plea for her dad's life, and it wasn't
Speaker 5: easy for her to do that. It's you know, she's
Speaker 5: I mean, she didn't ask for any of this, worry,
Speaker 5: didn't ask for any of this. I mean, she's just
Speaker 5: you know, a regular person trying to grow up normal
Speaker 5: and you know she's kind of saddled with being the
Speaker 5: lone person who can save her dad. But I mean,
Speaker 5: I think as most of us would probably do in
Speaker 5: that situation. You know, she testified in his behalf and
Speaker 5: and I guess you know, if it was a gamble
Speaker 5: for John, I guess it paid off. It helped him,
Speaker 5: but maybe a decade or so later, or a couple
Speaker 5: of decades after that, you know, Laurie began to think about,
Speaker 5: you know, what really happened, why her dad was arrested,
Speaker 5: you know what, you know, what had he been involved in?
Speaker 5: Then she had and she has children of her own,
Speaker 5: and one of her children has exhibited some signs of
Speaker 5: perhaps being mentally ill, and Laurie thought, well, you know,
Speaker 5: here's my dad. He's in prison for being an arsonist.
Speaker 5: Maybe there's a family history of mental illness. Maybe, you know,
Speaker 5: I can ask him, like, hey, have you ever been
Speaker 5: diagnos with mental illness? Do you know what it's called?
Speaker 5: Do you know kinds of help I can get? Or
Speaker 5: is there a family history of it? And so she
Speaker 5: writes him a letter and explains what's kind of what's
Speaker 5: going on and what she's looking for, and John flips out,
Speaker 5: there's no there's no history of mental willness. How dare
Speaker 5: you ask me that? It's ridiculous for you to say that,
Speaker 5: And uh, you know, I'm not going to talk to
Speaker 5: you if this is what you're going to accuse me of.
Speaker 5: End of the relationship and the beginning of Laurie's reassessment
Speaker 5: of you know, her dad's life, and she'll tell you.
Speaker 5: You know, she'll say, you know that back then she
Speaker 5: was ninety nine point nine percent certain that he was
Speaker 5: innocent at the time of the trial, but she'll tell
Speaker 5: you now that she's ninety nine percent certain that he's guilty.
Speaker 5: And the the idea of the book, when we've talked
Speaker 5: a lot about John, the the idea of the book
Speaker 5: was really to look at the family, right, a family member,
Speaker 5: somebody who you know is an innocent victim, like Laurie
Speaker 5: or Laurie's daughter, and you know, there are people that
Speaker 5: are in the wake of this criminal mastermind. You know,
Speaker 5: like he's got these targets, these people who don't even
Speaker 5: care about But then he's also got family and he
Speaker 5: doesn't care about them either, and you know, the toll
Speaker 5: it takes on them in their lives is not insignificant.
Speaker 5: And you know, as victims, sometimes the family members of
Speaker 5: the criminals are overlooked.
Speaker 8: You talk about the or you write about the incredible
Speaker 8: incident where she is being abused by this Jerry, her
Speaker 8: mom's husband, and she doesn't want to take it anymore,
Speaker 8: and she confronts him and then she goes to her
Speaker 8: father or to tell him about this behavior and so
Speaker 8: you talk about him being a hero to her, but
Speaker 8: that was dashed when he didn't do She really disappointed
Speaker 8: her in that area.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that I think that was probably you know,
Speaker 5: it's it's interesting. I mean, if she was ever going
Speaker 5: to get an inkling of what her dad was really about,
Speaker 5: that would have, you know, early on, that would have
Speaker 5: been the you know, the highlight moment. The Jerry, the
Speaker 5: husband is not a good guy. He's an abusive stepdad
Speaker 5: and the brunt, you know, the people that bear the
Speaker 5: brunt of his abuse are his wife and his stepchildren,
Speaker 5: Laurie and Carrie. And Laurie's convinced that, you know, her dad,
Speaker 5: this guntating detective Sherlock Holmes guy, you know, will come
Speaker 5: to her rescue if she tells him what's going on
Speaker 5: at the household. And he doesn't. He wents out, you know,
Speaker 5: he says, Hey, that's the house you live on. That's
Speaker 5: the roof you you know I'm paraphrasing herebody, that's the
Speaker 5: roof you live under. Those are the rules you got
Speaker 5: to follow. Uh, you know, he didn't. He didn't have
Speaker 5: time in his life for their problems. And uh, you know,
Speaker 5: I think to it. For Laurie, it was the beginning
Speaker 5: of the crack in his armor that would ultimately you know,
Speaker 5: and this is see in the book is written you know,
Speaker 5: in that perspective, like, you know, Laurie being completely divorced
Speaker 5: from the facts of what he's doing and having this
Speaker 5: relationship with him that's you know, not good to begin with,
Speaker 5: and slowly falling apart until they both end up in
Speaker 5: the same courtroom. Uh, and he's about to be put
Speaker 5: to death.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's interesting that the extraordinary effort by prosecutor Michael
Speaker 8: Cabral utilizing points of origin letters to literary agents. Does
Speaker 8: it seem like this narcissism really was the the end
Speaker 8: of John Orr his need.
Speaker 5: I think that's a very good read Dan. You know,
Speaker 5: he obviously very narcissistic. His you know, his need to
Speaker 5: be somehow recognized for that always fire was you know,
Speaker 5: I think really drove him writing the the you know,
Speaker 5: the book, because he couldn't you know, he just couldn't
Speaker 5: like jump up and say, hey, I set the fire,
Speaker 5: I killed those people. He had to you know, say
Speaker 5: it in a different way. And and he was very narcissistic,
Speaker 5: and his letters to the you know, to literary agents
Speaker 5: and who you know, people who were in the film
Speaker 5: industry are just chocked full of the sort of narcissism
Speaker 5: that you know that we now see on Facebook every day,
Speaker 5: but in that day was a was a quite bold
Speaker 5: form of it. And uh and and and the fact
Speaker 5: that he left a paper trail like that, you know
Speaker 5: that and so detailed and and so specific. Yeah, it
Speaker 5: undid him. And Cabral, Mike Cabral, you know, this like
Speaker 5: a bulldog prosecutor in this case, you know, he he
Speaker 5: he tore it apart. And Mike. Mike also did something
Speaker 5: else too that I didn't appreciate at the time, and
Speaker 5: that is, you know, he got the judge in the
Speaker 5: criminal case to put kind of a gag order on
Speaker 5: it so that neither side could talk to reporters. And
Speaker 5: you know, looking back, yeah, I'm certain that it was
Speaker 5: done because John was so charismatic and so manipulative that
Speaker 5: you know, he might have been able to, you know,
Speaker 5: through the media, sway the jury somehow into believing that
Speaker 5: there was no way he was anything but a hero.
Speaker 5: So Cabral worked. Cabral really worked that case. He became
Speaker 5: an expert in in murderous Arson, and in fact, he
Speaker 5: had been sort of a an insurance fraud guy as
Speaker 5: a prosecutor before that, so you know, having that background
Speaker 5: made it easy for him to like, you know, turn
Speaker 5: the table and it's not really insurance fraud, but it's
Speaker 5: a fraud of the sort, right, you know, the fraud
Speaker 5: of pretending you're re firement while you're at arsonists uh
Speaker 5: co council. There was a Shandy Flanner and the Flannery uh,
Speaker 5: nice young woman really adapt at sort of peeling apart
Speaker 5: uh some of the the science of of murder. And
Speaker 5: also one of the things that now remember, he's one
Speaker 5: of the things that they have to do with that prosecution.
Speaker 5: In the prosecution, they have to tear down the sheriffs
Speaker 5: lead Arson guy who said the only spire was electrical
Speaker 5: in nature. So so part of the prosecution required tearing
Speaker 5: down their own people. And and this and this guy,
Speaker 5: this this Arson investigator. You know, he was an arrogant
Speaker 5: dude who was not going to you know, just roll
Speaker 5: over and admit that his conclusion was was wrong. Uh,
Speaker 5: you know, he was you know, nearly a hospital prosecution
Speaker 5: with It's fascinating really to how it all came together.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 5: And of course John who throughout you know, all those
Speaker 5: years that argued that, oh it's not electrical, it's not electrical,
Speaker 5: it's it was arson. Now he'll tell you, oh no,
Speaker 5: it was an electrical fire. Really, Oh yeah, he's got
Speaker 5: he tell you. You know, it's all you can tell
Speaker 5: from this, that and the other thing. You know. But
Speaker 5: I mean at that time he didn't say that. And
Speaker 5: he says, now, well, I've reevaluated it, you know, now
Speaker 5: that I've had a chance to look at all the evidence.
Speaker 5: So I did have a chance to look at them,
Speaker 5: you know, but for averable, Yeah.
Speaker 8: How important in this you've looked at this so carefully?
Speaker 8: How important was the fingerprint and how important was the
Speaker 8: dogged determination that they should hang on to that idea
Speaker 8: that fingerprint was relevant and could be associated to a firefighter.
Speaker 5: Yeah, good question, Dan. The fingerprint is everything. I mean,
Speaker 5: without the fingerprint, there's you know, there's no real case,
Speaker 5: right always is an electrical fire. There's some weird serial
Speaker 5: arsonists that they'll never catch, you know, roaming around the
Speaker 5: Central Valley. But the but Marv Casey is is the
Speaker 5: is a hero. He you know, in the book, we
Speaker 5: I talk a little bit about Sherlock Holmes and sort
Speaker 5: of how uh you know John or had a fascination
Speaker 5: with Sherlock Holmes and deductive reasoning and and fire investigations
Speaker 5: are largely, you know, a an exercise in deductive reasoning, right.
Speaker 5: You know, you have to you have to examine the
Speaker 5: where the fire is, you have to examine the you know,
Speaker 5: these subtle differences and how things burned or just colored,
Speaker 5: all these things, right, And but separates Marvin Casey from
Speaker 5: just your average sort of detective is that he's not
Speaker 5: just looking at the scene of the fire and you know,
Speaker 5: deductively reasoning that you know, an arsonist came in, set
Speaker 5: up a device with a cigarette and some matches and
Speaker 5: a piece of paper and you know, lit a building
Speaker 5: on fire. He's considering the totality of many other events
Speaker 5: and then deducing from that logically that there is no
Speaker 5: way that anybody other than a firefighter attending that conference
Speaker 5: could have set these fires. So having that fingerprint and
Speaker 5: going to the ATF, right then you know, obviously would
Speaker 5: have validated his theory had the probably had the ATF
Speaker 5: taken you know, done what they were supposed to do.
Speaker 5: And I think that you know, a lot of times
Speaker 5: when you know, in fiction, it's all you know, it's
Speaker 5: a detective story, right. Fiction is always these great detective stories. Uh,
Speaker 5: you know, dashal Hammett stuff, Raymond Chandler, you know, on
Speaker 5: and on and on Rockford Files on television, they're always
Speaker 5: about to detective. But I think Marv Casey, this arson
Speaker 5: investigator in Bakersfield, is you know, kind of underappreciated as being,
Speaker 5: you know, a great detective. And the guy that really,
Speaker 5: you know, brought brought the master arsonist you know, to justice,
Speaker 5: and it's you know, it's kind of just look, you know,
Speaker 5: kind of a you know, cowboy country guy. You know,
Speaker 5: I'm sure, I mean, you know, if you met him,
Speaker 5: you'd think he's the nicest guy in the world, you know,
Speaker 5: and you know, and very unassuming and yet you know,
Speaker 5: a master puzzle solver.
Speaker 8: Yes, we have to mention Ada Deal and her grandson Billy,
Speaker 8: Jimmy Setina and Karen Cross victims.
Speaker 5: Yes, so let's go back to Bully, right. So yeah,
Speaker 5: so I ate a Deal grandmother. Her actually her grandson
Speaker 5: was Matthew Troudel and uh, and they were killed in
Speaker 5: the police fire. You know, people can just regular people
Speaker 5: out on a shopping trip on a week night because
Speaker 5: it was you know, warm, and they wanted to get
Speaker 5: out of the house. Jimmy Settina, you know, a good
Speaker 5: you know, so the so you think about this, This
Speaker 5: fire happened in nineteen eighty four. That's a long time ago.
Speaker 5: And uh and I there's people today in you know,
Speaker 5: in and around Pasadena where Jimmy Settina grew up you
Speaker 5: still remember him fondly. And uh and you know and
Speaker 5: and and and how close to his family was and
Speaker 5: what a good son he was and a loving you know,
Speaker 5: a loving kid who was on his way to success.
Speaker 5: He really was, you know, if he was going to
Speaker 5: be successful as an athlete or if he was going
Speaker 5: to be successful in school. You know, Jimmy Setina was
Speaker 5: on the road to something, and at seventeen, his life
Speaker 5: was cut short. And you know the fourth victim, Karen Kraut,
Speaker 5: you know, she's like just a reg you know, regular
Speaker 5: working woman, showed up to work, hard working, just happened
Speaker 5: to be on the job on the wrong day at
Speaker 5: the wrong time. And you know, her sister h kind
Speaker 5: of suspected early on that she her sister knew John
Speaker 5: and suspected that that John may have had some involvement,
Speaker 5: but you know, she's never really able to, you know,
Speaker 5: put those pieces together. And all these families to this
Speaker 5: day are you know, suffering from the loss of their
Speaker 5: love for day. You know, lives cut short for no
Speaker 5: good reason other than, you know, a thrill seeking sexual
Speaker 5: predator who got off on setting buyers. That's John Orr.
Speaker 8: There's something to be said too when you describe in
Speaker 8: the book the humiliation that he was a laughing stock,
Speaker 8: considered him a wannabe cop. He didn't have a lot
Speaker 8: of things going for him compared to some other people,
Speaker 8: and it looked like and again this is he's not
Speaker 8: the first, but it seems like the people that have
Speaker 8: been humiliated, at least in their minds, go on to
Speaker 8: do a lot of damage.
Speaker 5: So John, you know, John in burned. You know, we
Speaker 5: describe John's motivation as being largely or stemming largely from
Speaker 5: a lot of humiliation he suffered at the hands of others.
Speaker 5: You know, he was humiliated by not being able to
Speaker 5: become a Los Angeles police officer. He was humiliated because
Speaker 5: he couldn't carry a ladder and become a Los Angeles
Speaker 5: Fire Department firefighter. He was you know, laughed at for
Speaker 5: being the security guard who you know was rough with shoplifters,
Speaker 5: laughed at for being the firefighter who you know, tried
Speaker 5: to pop gang members, laughed at and cajoled for being
Speaker 5: the you know, the rule adherent who tried to bust
Speaker 5: the city planning commissioner. He he John a bridled under
Speaker 5: the yoke of authority. He hated authority, just couldn't stand it.
Speaker 5: And he really couldn't stand anybody being above him. Uh
Speaker 5: And and what was worse is that a lot of
Speaker 5: times they couldn't stand him because he was insufferable. And yeah,
Speaker 5: and all this, you know, combines to you know, there's
Speaker 5: a reason why John Or is the most prolific serial
Speaker 5: arsonist of the twentieth century. And and for many reasons,
Speaker 5: and you know, and they're all wrapped up in this
Speaker 5: person who you know, didn't live up to what he
Speaker 5: thought his expectations would be, you know, casting himself as
Speaker 5: a hero when he's a villain, you know, casting himself
Speaker 5: as a good family man when he's a serial philanderer
Speaker 5: and a bad father. You know, casting himself as this
Speaker 5: you know, great arson investigator when he's really just you know,
Speaker 5: a fire starter, who, by the way, is not really
Speaker 5: very good at it. You know, you they say, you know,
Speaker 5: you talk about this kind of you think about it.
Speaker 5: He set a lot of fires, but only two, you know,
Speaker 5: I mean two or three of them were signific deiquantly destructive,
Speaker 5: you know, So I mean there must have been some
Speaker 5: you know, motivation at that. Of course, you know, his
Speaker 5: goal of becoming the next Joseph Bomba, you know, complete
Speaker 5: failure there. And yeah, I mean it's just it's an
Speaker 5: it's an interesting study in psychology, right, in forensic psychology.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and he led a lot of devastation
Speaker 8: in his wake. I want to thank you very much
Speaker 8: Frank for coming on and talking about burned pyromania, murder
Speaker 8: and a Daughter's Nightmare for those that might want to
Speaker 8: take a look at some other of your work. And
Speaker 8: this is a wild Blue Press. So could you give
Speaker 8: us the Facebook page or the website that they might
Speaker 8: refer to?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 5: Yeah, actually you can go to Frank, I'm sorry, you
Speaker 5: can go to facebook dot com word slash crime scene.
Speaker 5: Uh and uh, all my books are there, and uh,
Speaker 5: I really I got to tell you, I really appreciate
Speaker 5: you having me on the show today. Uh, it's really
Speaker 5: it's great to be able to talk about this book
Speaker 5: and hopefully it will lead to, you know, something good
Speaker 5: for Laurie down the road, at least some healing for
Speaker 5: her and her daughter.
Speaker 8: It's a fascinating book and it's been my pleasure speaking
Speaker 8: with you. Frank. An excellent job once again with Burned,
Speaker 8: and I hope people do go check out this book.
Speaker 8: It's again a very very fascinating story. You want to
Speaker 8: get inside the mind of this guy. You've achieved that certainly.
Speaker 8: Thank you very much.
Speaker 5: You can get it on Amazon, don't forget Amazon and
Speaker 5: kindle Fold, Blue Press.
Speaker 8: Thanks absolutely, thank you. Good night, Frank, thank you, good night.
Speaker 5: B