John Leonard Orr

Introduction

• California is a magnet for firestarters due to its dry environment and vast natural areas.
  • But none of them have achieved the magnitude of flaming destruction John Leonard Orr inflicted on lives and property.
• Early in the 1980s, the Los Angeles region had a string of fires, up to three of them per day at times.
• One event left 65 dwellings in a state of smoldering ash. But it wasn't until October 10th, 1984 that the flames claimed the lives of people.
• An emergency alert was broadcast over the public address system at Ole's Home Center in South Pasadena at seven o'clock.
  • Cashier Jim Obdan was seriously burnt while attempting to assist customers evacuate the shop after seeing smoke coming from the hardware section. Fortunately, he was still alive to tell the story.
  • Jimmy Cetina and Carolyn Kraus, both coworkers, had less success.
  • Ada Deal and Matthew Troidl, a kind grandma and her little grandson, weren't lucky either.
• In order to identify the source of the fire, arson investigators combed the burned-out wreckage the next morning.
  • Inability to find it led them to the conclusion that it was an electrical accident.
• The Bakersfield Fire Department's Captain Marvin Casey, a seasoned arson investigator, was certain that the fire had been deliberately started in a stack of combustible pillows.
• A spate of unexplained fires occurred in Bakersfield in January 1987, a city located north of Pasadena.
  • In a bag of dried flowers at a craft store, Marvin Casey found an explosive device.
  • It was simple but effective—three matches were wrapped in a yellow-lined piece of paper and secured with a rubber band in the center of a cigarette.
  • The person who lit the cigarette would have plenty of time to depart the area before it burnt down to the point where it would ignite the matches and start a fire.
• Later on the same day, a second fire broke out in a container at the Bakersfield Hancock Fabric shop that included pillows and foam rubber.
  • One fire in Tulare was followed by two others in Fresno as the trail of arson spread quickly.
  • Casey discovered that every fire had started in a pile of pillows, with the exception of the craft business in Bakersfield.

An audacious theory

• Casey noticed that the fire assaults had gone sequentially from Los Angeles north along Highway 99 to Fresno, thus this modus operandi (MO) did not escape him.
  • Neither did the alarming knowledge that the fires had happened just before and just after a yearly meeting for arson investigators in Fresno.
• Casey started formulating a controversial idea, according to which one of the 300 arson detectives who attended the Fresno symposium started the fires.
  • He was able to narrow down the list of suspects to the 55 people who had driven by themselves on Highway 99 through Bakersfield after obtaining a list of the attendance.
• Unsurprisingly, Casey was either ignored or shunned by his colleagues arson detectives when he voiced his views.
  • He persisted however, eventually persuading the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) to do an experiment on the yellow paper retrieved from the craft shop.
  • On the off chance that it might react to amino acids from fingerprint residue, the ATF lab put ninhydrin (a substance designed to detect ammonia) to the paper.
  • A partial fingerprint surfaced, surprising both the technician and Casey.
  • The technician produced an acceptable print by enhancing the contrast and revealing the ridge detail using a special photography filter.
  • It was put into the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS), where it was matched to the fingerprints of offenders from all throughout the nation.
  • When the AFIS was unable to find a match, Casey requested that the ATF check the print to the list of 55 conference registrants. His appeal was rejected.
• The situation was unresolved for two years.
• In March 1989, a string of fires started up once again, this time along Highway 101, which went straight to Pacific Grove, the location of the annual arson investigators' conference.
  • Re-energized, Casey reduced the number of his suspicions to 10 by comparing the attendance of the Pacific Grove conference to the prior list.
  • He persuaded Fresno ATF officers to stealthily get the fingerprints of his ten suspects so they could be compared to the partial print since he was certain the arsonist was one of them.
  • The findings were unfavorable, shocking and disappointing Casey.

Catching a break

• The "Pillow Pyro Task Force," named for the perpetrator's method of operation, was created in response to a string of fires that began in Los Angeles in late 1990.
  • The fires had been started in retail establishments during business hours, similar to the past incidents.
• A brochure regarding this MO was sent to the Fire Investigators Reaction Strike Team (FIRST), a group of fire departments without an arson investigator on staff, by the task force's leader, Tom Campuzano, in March 1991.
  • Campuzano was informed about Marvin Casey and his infamous notion by Scott Baker of the California State Fire Marshal's Office after reading the brochure.
• Casey had, at long last, discovered a powerful arson investigator who shared his concerns.
  • Casey gave the taskforce a copy of the partial fingerprint during their meeting to discuss the matter with Campuzano.
  • This time, they hit pay dirt when they ran the print through a registry of every applicant to the LAPD.
• John Leonard Orr, one of the ten people on Marvin Casey's list, had a partial print that matched his left ring finger.
  • Orr dodged being matched in 1989, either via pure chance or a lack of skill on the job.
• Orr, a fire captain aged 41, has spent several years looking into arson.
  • He had a renown for always being the first to arrive, was highly loved, pleasant, and had a reputation for it.
  • But as a consequence of Casey's discoveries, Orr was under observation, and a monitoring gadget was covertly affixed to the bumper of his automobile.
  • After Orr took his car in for servicing, cops had already fixed another when he had discovered and removed the first one.
• Teletrac showed Orr leaving the fire site at 3:30 in the morning to get the dispatcher's report as the set of the well-known television program The Waltons went up in flames on the afternoon of November 22, 1991, in Burbank.
  • It's interesting to note that Orr managed to reach the right place despite the dispatcher giving the wrong address for the incident.
• The team understood that human lives were at danger as long as Orr remained at large, despite the fact that they lacked the proof needed to make an arrest.
  • To search his house, they swiftly requested a warrant.
  • Investigators discovered a stash of smokes, rubber bands, and matches in a briefcase, and lined yellow paper was discovered in his automobile.
• More incriminating perhaps was a film that Orr had taken of a Pasadena hillside home on March 14, 1990, followed by video of the same house on fire on October 2, 1992.
• Importantly, Orr had written the manuscript for the book Points of Origin, whose protagonist, Aaron Stiles (whose name is an anagram of "I Set LA Arson"), lead a double life as an arson investigator and firestarter.
• Along with using the same explosive as the "Pillow Pyro," Stiles also ignited fires while traveling to arson conferences and destroyed a hardware shop, killing a little kid called Matthew.

Frightening revelations

• On December 4, 1991, John Leonard Orr was taken into custody and charged with five charges of arson.
• However, his ultimate day of judgment came on June 25, 1998, when the California State Court found him guilty of four charges of first-degree murder connected to the Ole inferno of 1984 and sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of release.
• Because it was accompanied by other particularly psychopathic features, such as manipulativeness, narcissism, and lack of remorse, Orr's personal appeal was eventually linked to psychopathy.
• Although Orr continues to claim his innocence, there were only one large fires in the region following his arrest as opposed to the 67 on average every year.
• Orr probably had a sixth feel for flames because he caused them, given that he had been a covert serial arsonist.
• As a result of this suspicion, Deputy District Attorney Michael J. Cabral calculated that Orr was one of the most prolific arsonists in US history, having started more than 2,000 fires over a 30-year span.
• Points of Origin ends on a grisly note with a sequence in which Aaron Stiles sexually rapes and kills a young girl in a car that is later set ablaze.
• Although the case has allegedly been located, there is no concrete proof of Orr's participation.
• There are still two unsolved fatalities from fires that were mentioned in Points of Origin.
• If these horrifying paragraphs are accurate, Orr is a serial sexual killer in addition to an arsonist and a mass murderer.

Pyrophilia

• The great majority of arsonists are either insurance fraudsters or attention seekers, however there is a special type of arsonist known as a pyromaniac who is so obsessed with fire that they cause it on purpose.
• A person who is sexually attracted by flames, the smell of smoke, the great heat, and (sometimes) the whirr of sirens hurrying to put out the inferno is known as a pyrophile, which is even more uncommon than the pyromaniac.
• Aaron Stiles, the main character and Orr himself, was shown to have this deadly paraphilic disease in several passages in Orr's primarily autobiographical Points of Origin.
• In his book Fire Lover, Joseph Wambaugh, who spent 20 years as a detective sergeant in the Los Angeles Police Department before becoming a well-known novelist, detailed Orr's life.
• Wambaugh said that the continual association of fire and sex in Orr's book is a significant aspect of his motivation, which is also the idea put out by researcher Marvin Casey.

\

Related Crimes

• 1979–80: Bruce Lee, born in the name of Peter Dinsdale, committed 11 acts of arson in and around his place of Hull, Yorkshire, UK.
• 1985–2005: Thomas Sweatt, a well-known American arsonist started almost 400 fires, with the bulk of them in the vicinity of Washington, D.C.
• 1992–93: Paul Kenneth Keller, a serial arsonist from Washington, brought 76 fires in and around Seattle during a six-month period.

\