John Leonard Orr

1984 South Pasadena fire

On October 10, 1984, in South Pasadena, California, a major fire broke out at an Ole's Home Center hardware store located in a shopping plaza. The store was completely destroyed by the fire, and four people died in the blaze, including a two-year-old child named Matthew and 17 year old employee Jimmy Cetina. On the following day, arson investigators from around southern California converged on the destroyed store, and declared the cause to be an electrical fire. However, John Orr, as an arson investigator, insisted that the cause was arson.

Investigations later showed that the fire started in highly-flammable polyurethane products, which caught fire very quickly, causing the fire to flashover very rapidly. After his arrest in 1991 and subsequent conviction for a series of other arson fires not related to the 1984 Ole's fire, Orr was charged with arson in the blaze by investigators due to a forensic re-evaluation of the causes of the fire, circumstantial evidence and a highly detailed description of a similar fire in his novel Points of Origin that bore several almost perfect similarities with the real-life 1984 fire. Orr was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 1998.

Investigation

In January 1987, a convention for arson investigators from California was held in the city of Fresno. During and after the convention, several suspicious fires were set in Bakersfield. This, combined with the recovery of a single unmatched fingerprint left on a piece of notebook paper as part of a time-delay incendiary device, led Captain Marvin G. Casey of the Bakersfield Fire Department (BFD) to suspect that an arson investigator from the Los Angeles area was responsible for these arsons.

During March 1989, another series of arsons were committed along the California coast in close conjunction with a conference of arson investigators in Pacific Grove, California. By comparing the list of attendees from the Fresno conference with the list of attendees at the Pacific Grove conference, Captain Casey of the BFD was able to create a short list of ten suspects. Orr was on Casey's short list, but all of the people on this short list were cleared of suspicion when their fingerprints were compared with the fingerprint that Casey had recovered from the piece of notebook paper found at one of the arson crime scenes.

In late 1990 and early 1991, another series of arson fires broke out in southern California, this time in and around the Los Angeles metropolitan area. As a result, a large task force, nicknamed the Pillow Pyro Task Force (a reference to the arson fires set in pillows) was formed to apprehend the arsonist. On March 29, 1991, Tom Campuzanno of the Los Angeles Arson Task Force circulated a flier at a meeting of the Fire Investigators Regional Strike Team (FIRST), an organization formed by a group of smaller cities in and around Los Angeles County that did not have their own staff of arson investigators. The flier described the modus operandi of the suspected serial arsonist in the Los Angeles area. Scott Baker of the California State Fire Marshal's Office was at that meeting and told Campuzanno about the series of arsons investigated by Captain Casey of the BFD and about Casey's suspicions that the perpetrator was an arson investigator from the Los Angeles area. Consequently, Campuzanno and two of his colleagues met with Casey, obtained a copy of the fingerprint that Casey had recovered, and matched it to John Leonard Orr on April 17, 1991 with improved fingerprint technology this time.

Orr then became a serious arson suspect and the subject of investigation and surveillance for several months. Orr was alerted to this surveillance effort on May 3, 1991, when he discovered and removed a tracking device that belonged to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) hidden under the bumper of the vehicle he was driving. However, Orr was apparently unaware of the fact that a Teletrac tracking device was later installed behind his dashboard when he brought his city vehicle for service on November 22, 1991. Meanwhile, a federal grand jury handed down an indictment, and shortly thereafter Orr was present at the scene of a suspicious fire, so a decision was made to end the surveillance, obtain an arrest warrant, and effect an arrest. Orr was arrested on December 4, 1991.

Trial

On July 31, 1992, a jury in a federal court convicted Orr of three counts of arson in a five count indictment, and the judge in that case sentenced Orr to three consecutive terms of ten years in prison. However, Orr maintained and still maintains his innocence, notwithstanding his subsequent guilty plea on March 24, 1993 to three more counts of arson pursuant to a plea bargain agreement for an eight count indictment that probably would have seen him paroled from federal prison in the year 2002.

On June 25, 1998, a jury in a California state court convicted Orr of four counts of first-degree murder from the 1984 hardware store fire with special circumstances in a twenty-five count indictment, deadlocking on only one of the twenty-five counts, which was subsequently dismissed at the request of the prosecution. When asked to sentence Orr to the death penalty, the same state court jury deadlocked eight to four in favor, and the judge in that prosecution sentenced Orr to life plus 20 years in prison without the possibility of parole.

After the trial, and legacy

Orr is currently serving his life sentence at California State Prison, Centinela. His CDCR number is P13502.

Some arson investigators and an FBI criminal profiler have deemed Orr to be possibly one of the worst American serial arsonists of the twentieth century. Federal ATF agent Mike Matassa believes that Orr set nearly 2,000 fires between 1984 and 1991. Furthermore, arson investigators cited that after Orr was arrested, the number of brush fires in the nearby foothill areas decreased by over ninety percent.

The story of John Orr has been chronicled by bestselling true crime author Joseph Wambaugh in a book titled Fire Lover. On several occasions, film and television have also presented the story of Orr's arson activities and eventual arrest and criminal conviction. An episode of the PBS science series Nova titled "Hunt for the Serial Arsonist" (aired November 14, 1995) chronicled the story of John Orr. In addition, the investigation that led to Orr's arrest and conviction was recounted on the episode "Diary of a Serial Arsonist" of the A&E Network's true crime series Cold Case Files. Most notably, a film titled Point of Origin starring Ray Liotta as John Orr was released by HBO in 2002. The film's title is a reference to Orr's novel, which tells the story of a fireman who is also a serial arsonist. Arson investigators believe the book chronicles real acts of arson due to similarities with fires they believe Orr himself had set. Orr states the novel is a work of fiction and has no relation to any actual events. In an interview, defending his manuscript, Orr expressly stated:

"The character of Aaron Stiles was a composite of arsonists I arrested."

However, a retired L.A. Arson Investigator informed Mr. Wambaugh that the name Aaron Stiles is an anagram for "I set L.A. arson".