Fire Lover (20 page)

He later denied that he'd agreed with Patterson's assessment of arson, but that he was tired and hungry and "placated Steve, instead of arguing with him." They both agreed to call for Blanche, the FIRST organization's arson dog, to come the next morning and sniff for traces of any flammable liquid.

But Steve Patterson never did learn from his colleague that evening that Wanda Orr worked at Warner Brothers, or that he'd been to Warner Brothers many times. And Patterson didn't hear that Jack Egger, the studio's director of security, said he'd seen John Orr badge his way through the pedestrian gate sometime before 4:00 p. M., when the fire was still raging, and that for a few minutes John had watched it burn.

When the task force learned about the Warner Brothers fire that burned down John Boy Walton's house, barn, sawmill, and chicken coop, and that John Orr had been there, somebody said, "So now our John Boy's a TV critic?"

But the task-force supervisors weren't laughing. This was the first suspicious blaze at which they could place him since the inception of the Pillow Pyro Task Force. And the Teletrac hadn't been very helpful. The printout showed him in the Warner Brothers parking lot at 6:18 p. M. when he came to assist Steve Patterson. It did not show him there prior to the fire's ignition at about 3:30 p. M., but only in the vicinity.

Had the Teletrac malfunctioned? Or did he have two cars? Did he drive his girlfriend's car there at 3:10 p. M., set a delay device, leave for a quick run to the girl's school one mile away, then return to be seen by the security director prior to 4:00 p. M.? If so, why two cars? Did he guess there was some sort of tracking device on his city car once again? Or had he gotten in and out between the raindrops, during the fifteen-minute window in Teletrac "hits"?

They had many questions, but one certain answer: he was dissembling. He pretended to Steve Patterson that he didn't know the way, and yet he had been there two hours earlier when the fire was burning, according to the director of security.

The day after the Warner Brothers fire, while certain members of the task force were just hearing about it and trying to get their hands on Captain Steve Patterson's report, Gary Seidel, a past captain of the LAFD's arson investigation section, was driving east on the Foothill Freeway in his red-and-white city car. He was getting ready to turn off on Ocean View Avenue when he saw a white car next to him, driven by John Orr. Seidel had his son and three other kids with him when he honked at John, who honked back.

Seidel happened to be one on the growing list of people who knew that John Orr was the suspect in the task-force investigation, so he watched John turning south. Fifteen minutes later, Seidel saw a column of smoke, and saw fire engines heading toward the Foothill Freeway. He asked his son to jot down some notes regarding the time and location of John Orr's sighting. It was 2:25 p. M.

A minute or two before Seidel asked his son to record the time, a dispatcher at the Verdugo Fire Communication Center had received a call regarding smoke in the area of San Augustine Drive. The call was dispatched to Engine 23, but after additional calls came in, the fire was upgraded to a full brush-fire response that called for additional engines and a battalion chief. With all brush fires, the Glendale arson team was automatically notified, and as the dispatcher was in the process of paging him, John acknowledged the San Augustine dispatch on his radio.

Then the dispatcher received another fire call, but this was at a different location, on Hilldale Avenue. The dispatcher redirected Engine 29 to the Hilldale fire and did not redirect any other units to Hilldale, but one unit rerouted himself, the arson investigator, John Orr, who did not inform the communication center.

A firefighter from Engine 31 in Pasadena, Denis Imler, responded to the first brush-fire call on San Augustine Drive, but he never made it there. His engine spotted the fire at a different location. It was on Figueroa Street, down slope from the house on San Augustine Drive that was threatened. The fire had burned from the edge of the road and was running up the hill, but Engine 31 managed to suppress it within three minutes.

During that three-minute interval the Glendale arson investigator arrived on the scene in his city car. Imler was surprised to see John Orr because the closest Glendale engine to this fire had been dispatched to the wrong location on San Augustine, so how did he find it?

On Truck 29 that afternoon was Engineer Glenn Brink. After Brink and the crew were rerouted to a second brush fire on Hilldale Avenue, the Glendale arson car was behind him, siren howling. The engineer was surprised that John Orr could be behind them already because he'd heard the arson investigator broadcasting on the radio, supposedly from San Augustine Drive.

Ronald Ablott, an arson investigator from the L. A. Sheriff's Department, was sent the next day and determined the area of origin for the Hillside fire to be off the road by twenty feet, near the base of a fallen tree. The area was obliterated by mud from the fire suppression, so he couldn't tell if it was a "hot set" or if the fire had been caused by a delay device, but he deemed it to be an arson fire set at or near the crotch of the tree. It seemed possible that one fire was diversionary to draw away the closest engine company, so the other fire could be allowed time to burn before engines would arrive.

The Warner Brothers fire report worried the assistant U. S. attorneys and the supervisors of the task force. John Orr had been at the scene. And now, a day later, he was all over the place at a pair of arson fires in Glendale. They couldn't continue to hope that he had lost his nerve upon hearing of the task force's existence. It was looking as though he may have regained it, perhaps not for retail stores, but how about movie studios? How about brush fires? Some of those on the task force and in the U. S. Attorney's Office were saying that another College Hills disaster could happen.

Mike Matassa phoned Ken Croke at the academy and told him he was sorry, but they couldn't hold off until Croke returned to L. A. This was the end. An arrest had to be effected within days. Events had tapped into one of mankind's two primal fears, of dark water and bright flame, ominously expressed in the spiritual:

The Lord gave Noah the rainbow sign.

No more water the fire next time.

Chapter
9

John Orr himself chronicled the events of December 4, 1991:

At 7:10 a. M. I walked out of my house to find a cool clear day and a man crouched behind a neighbor's juniper bush. Odd sight. Even odder was the fact that he had a gun. My first thought was to reach for my own off-duty gun, a Walther PPK/S .380 strapped securely to my left ankle ... I also had a Ruger .41 Magnum in my hand, but it was in a zippered case . . . An LAPD black-and
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white pulled halfway into my driveway . . . I looked back at the juniper and saw I recognized the man. He was an LAFD arson investigator and a friend.

"John . . . John! Don't move! Stay where you are!"

The shouts came from behind a camper parked in front of my house . . . I recognized Larry Cornelison, head of the L. A. area ATF office, who was holding a gun as he jogged toward me. He repeated, "Don't move! You're under arrest!"

"Wanda, step inside!" I heard myself say, as Cornelison ordered me to put my hands on top of the car.

"John, you're under arrest!" he repeated.

"For what?"

"Arson, John."

Arson? I couldn't believe it! I was quickly handcuffed and led to a plain Ford parked on the street. I counted at least five undercover cars and saw people I'd worked alongside for twelve years. Rich Edwards and Walt Scheuerell of the LASD arson unit, Tom Campuzano and Glen Lucero of the LAFD arson unit, and Mike Matassa of ATF. There appeared to be more than ten investigators in front of my house.

Glancing over my shoulder I took a last look. Wanda was being shown paperwork at the front door where Domino joyously barked at all the attention he received. A piece of paperwork now in Wanda's hands was a search warrant. I was sure. I wasn't worried, however. I'd done nothing wrong. We didn't even cheat on our taxes.

John Orr's black canvas bag was taken away along with his guns. Inside the bag were a tape recorder and a wine opener, small binoculars, seven brown paper bags, a pack of unfiltered Camel cigarettes, two books of matches, a plastic baggy containing rubber bands, and a cigarette lighter. In his city car, behind the driver's seat and under the floor mat, was a steno pad of yellow lined paper. Camel unfiltered cigarettes were used in the delay devices found both in North Hollywood at Builder's Emporium and at Stats Floral Supply in Redondo Beach. And similar notebook paper had been found at a number of the fires.

The ride to the LAPD station was silent except when John Orr asked, "Are you guys gonna tell me what this is all about?"

Mike Matassa's boss, Larry Cornelison said, "We'll talk when we get to the police station, John."

John Orr also chronicled the moments subsequent to his arrest.

Larry Cornelison rode in the backseat of the Ford with me, as I was driven by Mike Matassa to the LAPD Northeast Division. There I was paraded past several uniformed officers while being taken to an interview room. "How's it goin', John?"

I looked up to see Officer Will, the beat cop who worked the day watch in my neighborhood ... I shook my head as I passed him, not knowing what to say. His query was neither contemptuous nor probing, just a greeting. I don't think he knew I was handcuffed ... I was outraged and confused, and prepared to strike out at anyone handy, particularly the ATF idiots.

Mike Matassa later said, "Serial arsonists are the hardest people to interview. They're convinced that any real evidence has burned up in their fires."

After the three men had been settled in the interview room, and John Orr was Mirandized, the preliminaries did not last long. The prisoner was informed that the case against him for serial arson was built on many things, including a fingerprint.

John Orr asked, "How many points does your print have?"

Mike Matassa answered truthfully, "Thirteen."

And then their prisoner asked, "How many prints?" But they chose not to answer. "You guys are on a fishing expedition,"

John Orr said. "You're running a game on me. Find me a motive!"

The detectives at LAPD's Northeast Station had switched on the taping equipment when the ATF agents took their prisoner into the interview room. The tape recording of the conversation is not inconsistent with John Orr's version:

The interrogation was brief and inept. I was shown an affidavit supporting the search warrant . . . Matassa took the lead, obviously the case investigator. Cornelison didn't allow it for long though. Matassa faltered somewhat, expecting an immediate confession ... A lack of response baffled Matassa, and Larry attempted to gain some headway by making a half-assed compliment about my reputation.

He added, "When we developed you as a suspect, none of us believed it. We didn't want to believe it, but you did it all."

His blatant declaration, not just an accusation, pissed me off enough to have decked him had I been uncuffed . . . I couldn't understand what he meant by "all."

The affidavit mentioned three different retail store fires in the greater Los Angeles area. I was aware of only one of the three. It had occurred at the People's Department Store in nearby Highland Park.

I looked at Cornelison and Matassa and said, "You're fucking crazy. This is fantasy! This has got to be a joke."

Overwhelmed by the situation and afraid to say anything, I limited my responses and let Cornelison rattle on. An old interrogation trick is to maintain silence and let the other person fill the void. I let Larry do his trash talk.

I said, "Larry, I haven't done a fucking thing. This is all bullshit!"

This was followed by a feeble good cop/bad cop routine straight out of Police Academy III.

Cornelison saw me ready to clam up and ask for a lawyer, and reverted to another textbook maneuver.

"All right, John," he said. "This is as hard on us as it is on you. Let's talk off the record for a minute."

Matassa chimed in, "John, you're the last person we wanted to arrest. We just need you to help us to understand why."

I saw Larry grimace at Matassa's intrustion that effectively diluted the original off-the-record offer. While watching Matassa, I missed Cornelison's eye or head jerk, but I expected it anyway. Matassa mumbled something to his superior and stepped out.

Cornelison looked back at me. "Off the record, John. Why?"

Tempted to jump into his face with a comeback, I felt pity for this middle
-
aged man who, by his lack of interview skills, confirmed my theory of ATF as Keystone Kops. I was disappointed as well as angry.

I said, "I don't want to talk to you anymore. I didn't do anything, so let's just get the procedure moving."

Cornelison stepped outside. While he was gone I scanned the affidavit and the support information attached. I found several pages and maps listing two or three series of fires that occurred in Central California. I then realized the scope of the ATF's investigation. I was aware of the 1987 Fresno series but never heard about the discovery of a fingerprint associated with one of the fires. The documents relating to the fingerprint indicated it was mine. I'd never been in Bakersfield in my life. Through it, yes, but never in it. The accusation seemed indefensible.