Cold Case Files - Fire Flicks

Episode Date: April 9, 2024

A home video found wrapped inside a coat along the side of a California freeway documents a teenager’s disturbing crimes and breathes life into the hunt for a serial arsonist.  Sponsors: Progressive: Progressive.com  Rosetta Stone: Cold Case Files listeners can get Rosetta Stone’s lifetime membership for 50% off when you go to RosettaStone.com/coldcase

I'm Brett. And I'm Alice. And together we host a weekly true crime podcast called The Prosecutors. In every episode, we bring our unique perspective as full-time prosecutors to the most famous and debated true crime mysteries. Whether it's Maura Murray, Scott Peterson, or the Delphi murders, Brett and I dig deep to bring you details you won't hear anywhere else. Our podcast is about more than just a story.

We will walk you through the legal problems lurking behind every case, breaking down the complexities of the criminal justice system with humor and a personal touch. And it's not just true crime. We bring the same training and approach we've learned as prosecutors to classic mysteries like the Dyatlov Pass incident and the ghost ship Mary Celeste. So if you're looking for a true crime podcast with a different point of view, The Prosecutors is the one for you. Find us wherever you get your podcasts. Look at the flames.

Listen to the coyotes yell. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files, the podcast. A young boy spies an army jacket wrapped up and abandoned along the side of the road. He kicks at it, and a videotape shakes loose. The boy picks up the tape, not yet realizing he holds the key to a cold case, some 50 miles distant. Our story begins in San Mateo County, California. Just south of San Francisco sits the county of San Mateo, home to the wealth of Silicon Valley.

Here, land is gold with million-dollar homes shoehorned onto tiny lots, each lot part of another block, each block eating away at the natural beauty of Northern California. John DeLinges is an arson investigator for the Woodside Fire Department. This was really an open land area, a lot of farms and horses and sheep up here. They were like little ranches, country-type homes. And now all of a sudden, the area's being built up with brand new big homes, 4,000 to 6,000 square foot.

As the hammers fall and the wood is cut, resentment builds in the area and new housing starts to burn. All of the houses were under construction. We had a total of 11 fires that were all similarity in sets, and all in the same vicinity, some on the same street. Seven new homes in the span of 12 months burnt to the ground. Fortunately, no one is hurt, but losses are in the millions. DeLinges videotapes each of the fires and studies them, hoping to discern a pattern.

Messages scrawled on the walls provide him with his first clue. There were handwritten messages written on the walls, neighbors revolt, no more homes, experienced arsonists, number one, they don't leave clues. And there were a lot of things that were left at the scene that indicated to us that juveniles were involved in it. A task force of state and local officials is formed. DeLinges begins nightly stakeouts of the neighborhood. Kirk Landute from the California Department of Forestry provides backup. We kind of felt that it was taking on a little bit of a dangerous tone. I mean we had somebody that was very open about burning these homes down and was straightforward about it.

You know, they just stepped up and burned these places. In 1988, the spree continues. Four more homes set on fire, bringing the total to 11 destroyed in the area. One of the houses that was under construction that was set on fire was occupied. People were asleep, smelled the smoke, called us, we got there, that was under construction that was set on fire was occupied. People were asleep, smelled the smoke, called us. We got there, and the owners had extinguished the fire. As neighbors watch their homes burn, fear ripens into suspicion,

and a community begins to turn on itself. Everybody was suspicious of everybody, and everybody was saying, I think my neighbor might be doing this. There was a lot of pressure put on everybody to get something going here, and we just weren't able to really identify something. We kept up the patrols and the nighttime surveillance work, but we're still unable to find anybody that was responsible for setting these fires. After three years of investigation,

the team is still no closer to finding their arsonist. Frustration takes root, and fresher cases are given priority. By May of 1990, the task force has dwindled to a precious few, and the San Mateo fires case goes cold. Highway 205, some 50 miles north of San Mateo County, a truck breaks down, a father and son

got out to make repairs. The fellow broke down about where that pickup is, and he was gonna come to this house that's over here to use the phone. The boy sees an army jacket bundled in some bushes along the side of the road. And he kind of come in here and he kicked it. And when he did, the cassette tapes and the videotape

fell out of the jacket. The boy picks up the tape and brings it home. This is the tape the family sees and hears. Look at the fire. Isn't it beautiful? Look at it. When they got home, the father was viewing the videotape

and he stated that it scared him to death. The family takes the tape to police and eventually to George Wells, the fire investigator for San Joaquin County. When I first saw it, I immediately thought that we were dealing with somebody that was very disturbed. This is hell.

My hell. The whole sky is black with smoke. The house captured on the video is fully engulfed with fire. The narrator and person making the tape claims to have also set the fire. I told you I'd do it. Wells concludes the blaze is not one his department is investigating. The mysterious tape is then sent out to fire conferences across the state

and eventually to San Mateo County and investigator John DeLinges. An investigator called us from Santa Clara County saying, hey, we have this tape, we want to bring it to your task force. I went to Sacramento, retrieved the tape, brought it back to San Mateo County, and early in the morning we viewed it and went from there. Look at it. Look at it. Look at it. This is hell. At first, the task force has little luck in identifying the house or fire as one of the San Mateo fires. Engine 7, battalion 2, command.

Then DeLinges remembers the videotapes he had made as part of his investigation into each of the fires. Frame by frame, he compares his tapes against the mysterious video. What I did was I took their tape, I set it up on a TV screen, and I set my tape, the fire department tape, on a TV screen and looked at them both. He viewed a lamp post, a PG&E power pole, a trailer that began to pop up. The telephone and trailer highlighted in these frames of video are the keys for DeLingis, who pinpoints the house as one of the first to burn in Redwood City.

DeLingis revisits the site and comes to a chilling realization. Whoever videotaped the blaze had stood behind a screen of bushes less than 50 feet from Dalingis on the night of the fire. The fire department is trying to put it out. To have somebody who was setting fires and hiding up in the bushes behind me filming the same fire that I'm filming, and I've never ever had this happen to me before. Look at the flames!

Listen to the coyotes yell. After three years, this bizarre tape has given cold case investigators their first real break in the case. They believe whoever made the video either set the San Mateo fires or knows who did. Next, the investigation goes public. I often dream of traveling the world to experience new cultures, but I worry about not speaking the local language.

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That was a pretty amazing thing in itself. I said I'll do it. I said I'll do it. The narrator on the tape appears to be claiming responsibility for setting the fire. Cold case investigators reach out to the public in an effort to put a name to that voice. We had another task force meeting. We said we know where the fire was, and it's tied into all of our other fires. So therefore, we decided we were going to put it on television. On September 9th, Unsolved Mysteries airs the mysterious video.

San Joaquin fire investigator George Wells is in Los Angeles, where they field more than 1,800 phone calls. Phone calls came from all the way from Australia, Canada, throughout the United States. A lot of weird phone calls, psychics and all this. During the last 30 minutes of the show's feed, the team gets five calls, all from San Mateo County. It was either the third or the fourth call

where somebody called in, and they even described a young man. That caller is Doris Lance, a neighbor in the area. We were sitting watching Unsolved Mysteries. I was looking at it and looking at it, and it looked just like the fire we watched burn, you know, a year or so earlier. Dare I see it, Omar? I told you I'll do it.

Lance believes the name mentioned might very well belong to her 17-year-old neighbor. Look at it, Omar. She said it was a kid that lived across the street whose name was Omar. So that name was a concern to us because that was a name that was used on tape. Cold case investigators decide to talk to Lance's 17-year-old neighbor

to discover if he is the person mentioned on the video. And if so, why? Redwood City Police Detective Mark Palio questions the boy. Initially, this youth denied any knowledge or involvement in the arson or the taping of the fire. The 17-year-old is brought into the police station and questioned further.

In short order, his story begins to crumble. We pressured him a little more, and eventually he did admit that he did know about it. Had not seen the tape until it was aired on TV, though, but his friend who burnt the house had told him he did videotape it. The boy gives Palio the name of a second youth, an 18-year-old who investigators believe

actually made the video and perhaps set the house on fire. Police put the second youth under surveillance. Before they can act, however, the suspect's garage goes up in flames, providing DeLinges and Landute with a free look inside the suspect's house. And while investigating that particular fire, we came across some evidence that was disturbing to us. We found animal parts. We found what appeared to be, you know, I hate, I don't want to say sacrifices, but we found things that led us to believe that

animals were being cut apart, were being sacrificed. We found a cutting table with a big blade. We found knives with blood on them. We found a Freddy Krueger mask, Freddy Krueger fingers. It was a concern to us at this time that the kid that lived here needed some help. Definitely put him as the number one suspect. On September 27, 1990, they bring the 18-year-old into the station for questioning. He broke down and cried and eventually started admitting that he had committed this one arson. Inside the boy's home, they find more tapes and more evidence that he may have been involved in more than just one fire.

The arsonist's message is spray painted on the wall. Home video documents the boy's fascination with television coverage of the fires. There's also a scrapbook of sorts, a collection of newspaper clips on the fires. What we find in serial arson type cases is the suspect will document his acts in some way, keep newspaper articles, write a diary, what have you. But in the age of the video camcorder, we're finding that more often suspects will use that to videotape their feats. And in this case, I believe the suspect just wanted to document what he was doing to maybe perhaps relive it later or just just have fun. But his fun appears to extend beyond a mere video diary. Sifting through the collection of tapes, cold

case investigators happen upon a fascination with violence and satanic images. I'm on my way to get that fat son of a bitch, and I'm gonna kill him. He had videos of him wearing bizarre outfits. One in particular was he was dressed up as Dracula, and he had a picture behind him looking at it saying, you're next. I'm hungry tonight because tonight is the night where all evil and satanic worshippers come. Where Satan rises again and fulfills the destiny of hatred and evil and sin.

The kid was, definitely needed some help. And now, to finish the job. This final tape provides police with what they believe to be a motive for the fires. A home video of two of the boys questioned in the case, playing army in Edgewood Park near the scene of the fire. According to cold case investigators, it was this park that the 18-year-old felt compelled to protect and in doing so, almost burned a neighborhood to the ground. This was their neck to the ground.

This was their neck of the woods. This was their area. They had played in there. They had done military games. They had done sacrificial kinds of ceremonies out there. They pretty much didn't like this area being developed and that is the reason for him setting these fires. This is my domain. Although investigators feel certain the 18-year-old was responsible for the string of fires in San Mateo County, they allow him to plead guilty to a single count of arson. They're focused more on rehabilitation than punishment. We also felt that the way the kids were going and the road that they were going down could easily have escalated to something else. Your house is next!

In this case, we were able to identify him, stop him, and get him treatment. So hopefully it will never happen again. Today, this section of San Mateo was quiet. The development boom has slowed but not subsided. For fire investigator John DeLinges, this area has been home for most of his adult life. He's seen it change, seen it grow, and seen the pains that come with growth. DeLinges views his job as a simple one, to serve and protect. In the case of the San Mateo arson fires, it was a responsibility he did not take lightly, nor relinquish easily. Our agency attributes the success of the case to Captain DeLinges out of Woodside, and

he refused to let go of it. It was an investigation I wasn't going to close, and my job was to stay on as long as I had to in order to solve it. It was an investigation I wasn't going to close, and my job was to stay on as long as I had to in order to solve it. A postscript to the strange story of the San Mateo fires, the 18-year-old who made the video told detectives he had given the tape to a relative who, for some unknown reason, wrapped it up in an army jacket and left it alongside a California highway. That single slip-up was the 18-year-old's downfall, providing cold case detectives with enough of a trail to lead them back to the young man's very doorstep. Cold Case Files is hosted by Marissa Pinson, produced by Jeff DeRay, and distributed by Podcast One.

The Cold Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and hosted by Bill Curtis. Check out more Cold Case Files at A&E TV dot com. Pluto TV has over 300 channels and thousands of TV shows and movies for whatever mood you're in. Just open the app and something good will already be playing because it's curated by people who love TV as much as you do. So if you're in the mood for comedy,

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