Saying that his crimes showed “great violence and sophistication,” a judge sentenced former Glendale arson investigator John Leonard Orr to life in prison without the possibility of parole Thursday for setting a fire that killed four people at a South Pasadena hardware store.

Superior Court Judge Robert J. Perry ordered the 17-year firefighting veteran to spend four consecutive life terms in prison for the 1984 fire at Ole’s Home Center, in addition to 20 years for other fires that damaged or destroyed dozens of homes in La Canada and Glendale in the early 1990s.

“The enormity of the defendant’s crimes should not be understated,” the judge said in handing down the maximum sentence. “He embarked on a campaign of setting arson fires that is remarkable in the number of fires he set and in the expert way he set them.”

As he had throughout his five-week trial, the balding grandfather and Air Force veteran showed no emotion during the brief hearing. Orr also declined to address the court.

Orr’s silence prompted outrage from the brother of a victim, who called Orr “a coward” who “showed no remorse throughout his trial.”

Relatives of the victims criticized the judge’s decision to prohibit them from looking at or directly addressing Orr during the hearing.

“He’s a shell. He fails to be human,” Luis Cetina said of Orr. “He’s sentenced our families to a life of pain and grief.”

Last June, Orr, 49, was found guilty of more than two dozen crimes, including the Oct. 10, 1984, fire that killed Jimmy Cetina, 17, fellow employee Carolyn Kraus, 26, Ada Deal, 50, and her 2-year-old grandson, Matthew Troidl.

Orr also was convicted of 20 arsons, including a devastating firestorm that damaged or destroyed 67 homes in the College Hills section of Glendale in June 1990.

Jurors later deadlocked 8-4 in favor of sentencing Orr to death. State law requires a death penalty recommendation to be unanimous.

“We felt that we had about as good a jury as we were likely to get in that first jury,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Cabral, who decided last month not to try Orr again on the death penalty issue. “We felt that the likelihood of getting a different verdict from a new jury was very slim.”

During the five-week trial, Cabral and Deputy Dist. Atty. Sandra Flannery presented evidence that Orr engaged in a distinctive pattern of criminal behavior, setting fires during daytime hours in polyfoam materials in the back of occupied businesses, using a “signature” time-delay device consisting of a cigarette, matches, a rubber band and a piece of legal paper.

To back up their case, prosecutors presented “Points of Origin,” a manuscript Orr wrote detailing the activities of a firefighter-turned-arsonist who uses his knowledge to outwit authorities. The novel’s protagonist, named Aaron, uses a slow-burning incendiary device to set fire to a Pasadena hardware store called “Cal’s,” in which several employees die, as well as a woman and her young grandson.

“Aaron wanted the Cal’s fire to be called arson. He loved the inadvertent attention he derived from the newspaper coverage and hated it when he wasn’t properly ‘recognized,’ ” Orr wrote in the manuscript. “The deaths were blotted out of his mind. It wasn’t his fault. Just stupid people acting as stupid people do.”

Defense attorneys Edward Rucker and Peter Giannini argued that the South Pasadena blaze was an electrical fire and dismissed Orr’s manuscript as “pure fiction,” comparing it to the 1991 movie “Backdraft,” which also was written by a firefighter.

Giannini cited testimony by a UCLA forensic psychiatrist, who said Orr was driven to torch buildings by a compulsion he was powerless to control. “He had no choice in the matter,” the lawyer said.

Orr, who has been in custody since 1991 and is serving a 30-year federal prison sentence, was convicted in 1992 of federal crimes stemming from a series of hardware store blazes in the San Joaquin Valley around the time of a state arson investigators convention in Fresno.

The next year he pleaded guilty to setting three additional blazes, including a 1990 fire at a Builders Emporium in North Hollywood and two others near Atascadero in 1989.

Prosecutors said he will be transferred from federal to state prison in 2002. He was ordered to pay $90,000 in restitution.

“The lesson that this case teaches us is that no one should be above suspicion when it comes to criminal activity,” Cabral said. “There were many instances where other investigators felt that something wasn’t right, and for a long period of time overlooked it because of his position in fire service.”

Trial Starts for Former Firefighter Accused in Blaze That Left 4 Dead

May 7, 1998

The murder trial of John Leonard Orr, a former Glendale fire captain turned arsonist, got underway Wednesday with defense lawyers arguing that faulty wiring–not arson–was to blame for a fire that killed four people in South Pasadena.

Although acknowledging to jurors that Orr, a former arson investigator, had pleaded guilty in 1992 to federal charges stemming from a series of arson fires in Bakersfield, attorney Ed Rucker said the blaze at Ole’s Home Center in 1984 was not Orr’s handiwork. The fire began in the store’s ceiling as a smoldering electrical fire before exploding into the aisles below, he said.

“He has admitted he set fires,” said Rucker, referring to San Joaquin Valley blazes Orr set while attending a 1987 arson investigator’s convention in Fresno. However, Rucker said, “Mr. Orr is not responsible for this [Ole’s] fire… . Nobody is responsible for this fire, because it’s not an arson.”

In the state trial–which was delayed by the federal case and civil actions–Orr is accused of more than two dozen felonies. These include four murder counts for allegedly causing the deaths of Ada Deal, 50, her 2-year-old grandson, Matthew Troidl, and hardware store employees Carolyn Kraus, 26, and Jimmy Cetina, 17.

A key prosecution exhibit is the manuscript of a novel Orr wrote about a firefighter turned arsonist, in which the protagonist sets a hardware store ablaze, killing a woman and her grandson.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Sandra Flannery told the jurors that Orr ignited the Ole’s fire, as well as others at a nearby Vons and Albertson’s grocery stores to create a diversion.

Prosecutors said Orr arrived at the scene with a 35mm camera, telling a fire official he was “just passing by,” Flannery said.

“John Orr claimed the Ole’s fire was arson … that he knew the identity of the arsonist,” Flannery said. “He was speaking from first-hand knowledge.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Cabral briefly summarized three other fires Orr is accused of setting, including a Nov. 22, 1991, blaze in the Warner Bros. back lot in Burbank–which destroyed the set of the television show “The Waltons”–and the 1991 brush fire that engulfed 67 homes in the College Hills area of Glendale.

Cabral said Orr displayed a knowledge that went beyond his 17 years of experience with the Glendale Fire Department.

Orr theorized that an arsonist ignited the Glendale brush fire with a lighter, Cabral said, but “no one in any position of authority saw the device” that Orr said he found at the point of origin.

Cabral also told jurors he would introduce numerous videotapes and audiotapes of fires at which Orr was present, including video Orr filmed of a Glendale blaze before firefighters arrived.

The prosecutors’ presentation made no mention of the most dramatic evidence, Orr’s unpublished manuscript for a novel called “Points of Origin,” which tells the story of a firefighter-arsonist as he sets fires across California.

Nevertheless, defense attorney Peter Giannini launched a preemptive strike.

“There’s no question John Orr had access to information contained in the book. He was the investigator,” Giannini said.

“The fact the information is in the book does not mean he set [the fires].” A firefighter also wrote the story that became the movie “Backdraft,” the lawyer said, but that “doesn’t mean he set the fires any more than John Orr would.”

Giannini also attacked prosecutors’ contention that Orr used a signature device to set the fires, consisting of a cigarette, matches and a rubber band.

“There’s nothing particularly unusual about it,” he said.

Such a device was not found at any of the fires specified in the charges, Giannini said. “Not a single one.”

Manuscript Adds Fuel to the Fire in Murder Case

April 27, 1998

The manuscript reads like pulp fiction or a psychological thriller.

For nearly a decade, a serial arsonist sets brush fires and torches businesses across California. Authorities believe the culprit is a firefighter but can’t pin an individual to the crimes. In the midst of the spree, the elusive arsonist sets a Pasadena hardware store ablaze. People perish in 800-degree flames, including a woman and her young grandson.

This week, seven years after scripting this elaborate tale, nationally recognized arson expert and former Glendale Fire Capt. John Leonard Orr, 49, is scheduled to go on trial in a downtown Los Angeles Superior Court, accused of virtually the same crimes he detailed in his work of supposed fiction.

Orr, in custody since 1991 and already serving 30 years in federal prison for arson, has pleaded not guilty to more than two dozen state charges of arson and murder.

Four first-degree murder counts stem from a 1984 blaze at Ole’s Home Center on Fair Oaks Avenue in South Pasadena that killed 50-year-old Ada Deal, her grandson, Matthew Troidl, 2, and two employees, Carolyn Kraus, 26, and Jimmy Cetina, 17.

If convicted in the killings, which bear a striking resemblance to Chapter 6 of his novel, “Points of Origin,” Orr could be sentenced to death.

Orr, a 17-year veteran of the Glendale Fire Department, also faces 21 counts of arson in connection with fires in Burbank, Glendale and La Canada Flintridge in 1990-91.

Included in those charges are a Nov. 22, 1991, blaze in the Warner Bros. Studios back lot in Burbank, which destroyed the set of long-running 1970s television series “The Waltons,” and a June 27, 1990, brush fire that destroyed 67 homes in the College Hills area of Glendale.

The trial–delayed seven years by the federal trial, pretrial actions and civil suits by the families of fire victims–is expected to last three months.

The 350-page manuscript for Orr’s novel was seized by federal investigators when Orr was arrested. Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Cabral said last week that the unsold novel will be only a small part of the prosecution’s evidence, which will include 40 videotapes and 70 audiotapes made at dozens of fires, communications with law enforcement authorities, queries to literary agents and testimony from more than 100 witnesses.

Over vigorous defense objections, Superior Court Judge Robert J. Perry also ruled the state can use evidence and witnesses presented by federal prosecutors in two previous trials.

Defense attorney Peter Giannini attacked the state’s case by asserting in court documents that there was no direct evidence to connect his client to the deadly South Pasadena fire.

“They have taken isolated actions by a man who had a distinguished career as an arson investigator and twisted them in an attempt to make them look like he started the Ole’s fire,” Giannini said last week. “There’s no physical evidence and no eyewitness evidence to put Orr at the scene of [the] Ole’s [fire] until he was supposed to be there as an investigator for the regional arson strike force team.”

Giannini fought the prosecution’s effort to introduce evidence from the federal trial into the state case, court documents show.

“No combination of the proffered uncharged fires establishes any kind of unusual pattern,” Giannini argued.

He also disputed the contention of federal prosecutors that Orr used a device to set off fires, a simple time-delay fuse made from a rubber band, cigarette and matches.

Giannini declined to discuss specific incidents or elaborate on his client’s federal arson pleas and convictions and their role in the state trial. But it appeared from pretrial discovery motions that some of the most damaging evidence will come from Orr’s own words.

In the manuscript, Orr details the activities of a serial arsonist named Aaron who “favors large brush fires but graduates to burning businesses.”

The manuscript describes a fire set at a Pasadena hardware store called Cal’s in which Aaron puts a slow-burning incendiary device–made from a cigarette and a rubber band–into polyurethane foam cushions, setting off a fire that traps several employees and two characters, Madeline Paulson and her 3-year-old grandson, Matthew.

“The last thing she heard was a tremendous roar as the fire burned through the roof and vented to the outside,” reads a passage from the text. “The smoke momentarily lifted but was then replaced by solid fire as the entire contents of the annex exploded into flames. Their last breaths were of 800-degree heat that seared their throats closed … ”

Pitching his novel in a 1991 letter to the L. Harry Lee Literary Agency, Orr called it “a fact-based work that follows the pattern of an actual arsonist that has been setting serial fires in California over the past eight years. He has not been identified or apprehended, and probably will not be in the near future.”

“As in the real case,” he continues, “the arsonist in my novel is a firefighter.”

It is those words and others that prosecutors contend were the product of more than just an active imagination. Collectively, the manuscript and the letter “tends to prove Orr’s identification as the arsonist” as well as clarifying a motive, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors also argued the pattern of arson fires described in the novel “bears striking similarities to the pattern of charged and uncharged fires alleged in this case. These similarities reflect knowledge beyond that which Orr could have reasonably obtained as an arson investigator.”

Evidence will be admitted in the state trial from 13 other blazes. If Orr is convicted and the trial goes into a penalty phase, Cabral said, as many as 40 more fires will be considered.

Orr was arrested in December 1991 after federal investigators, suspecting his link to fires, began to track his movements. A task force of federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents and local law enforcement officers noted that fires had started near the sites of conferences Orr had attended.

“This guy was sought after for conferences and arson training across the country,” said an official familiar with the investigation who asked not to be named. “His presentations were educational and he was knowledgeable. Perhaps too knowledgeable.”

Evidence shows he volunteered to assist in the investigation of those fires, the official said.

In 1992, Orr was convicted on three federal counts of arson for setting a series of hardware store blazes in the San Joaquin Valley about the time of a state arson investigators convention in Fresno. The following year he pleaded guilty to setting fires at a Builders Emporium in North Hollywood in 1990 and a hardware store and home improvement center near Atascadero in 1989.

Since then, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, with help from local firefighting agencies, reviewed records of more than 1,100 fires, Cabral said.

By the time of his arrest, Orr had 21 years’ experience as a firefighter in Glendale and elsewhere. He commanded an eight-man Arson/Explosives Investigation Unit and claimed to have personally trained more than 1,200 firefighters and investigators.

In one of his letters to a literary agent, Orr said an arsonist “not only stays close by, but sometimes even participates in the discovery and extinguishment of ‘their’ fire.”

That’s a good description of one particular type of arsonist, said Dian Williams, an arson profiler and president of the nonprofit Center for Arson Research Inc. in Lafayette Hill, Pa.

“There are multiple reasons for setting fires, and there are seven recognizable subtypes, including delinquents, revenge setters and fire bombers, accidental or curiosity seekers, deliberate fire setters, fraud arsonists, psychotics and thrill seekers,” Williams said.

Orr’s description of his central character fits into the thrill-seeking category, Williams said. “It’s the fire setters who return to the scene, often make videotapes of their work, frequently collect souvenirs and are drawn to the fire service.

“Perhaps most importantly, it’s a game [for them] in which they are proving that they are smarter than the investigator,” she said.

In his manuscript, Orr wrote: “The investigating agency termed the fire arson, but no correlation was made to the Cal’s fire. Aaron wanted the Cal’s fire to be called arson. He loved the inadvertent attention he derived from the newspaper coverage and hated it when he wasn’t properly ‘recognized.’ ”

That describes a typical thrill-seeking arsonist, Williams said. “They want acknowledgment of how clever they were. They truly feel smarter than everyone else. They don’t think they are going to get caught.”

If an investigator volunteered to investigate his own fires, she said, “that’s the arrogance of it.”

977 F.2d 593

United States of America, Plaintiff-appellant,
v.
John Leonard Orr, Defendant-appellee

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted Aug. 21, 1992.
Decided Oct. 14, 1992

Before WILLIAM A. NORRIS, REINHARDT and TROTT, Circuit Judges.