Infamous America - ARSONISTS Ep. 1 | John Orr: “Point of Origin”

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

By the mid-1980s, John Orr is a respected arson investigator for the Glendale Fire Department in Los Angeles. He might not be the easiest person to like, but he has a good reputation in Los Angeles County. At the same time, a serial arsonist is setting fires across the metro area. On October 10, 1984, the worst case scenario finally happens: a fire at Ole’s Home Center in South Pasadena turns deadly. Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join   Apple users join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes, bingeable seasons and bonus episodes. Click the Black Barrel+ banner on Apple to get started with a 3-day free trial.   On YouTube, subscribe to INFAMOUS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: hit “Join” on the Legends YouTube homepage.   For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com. Our social media pages are: @blackbarrelmedia on Facebook and Instagram, and @bbarrelmedia on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

October 10th, 1984 was a typical evening in South Pasadena, a neighborhood in the greater Los Angeles area. It was a Wednesday night, and the entertainment on television was a little thin. It was the era of shows like Kate and Alley, Cagney and Lacey, the Jeffersons, the A-Team, the Dukes of Hazard, Dynasty, Dallas, Highway to Heaven, Magnum P.I., the Cosby Show, family ties, cheers, night court, and Hill Street Blues. On NBC that night, legendary baseball TV announcer Vin Scully was calling the second game of the World Series between the Detroit Tigers and the San Diego Padres. 19-year-old Jim Obdom had wondered why it was so quiet in Oli's Home Center that evening,

and then he remembered the World Series game. People who may have normally stopped by the store after work had probably posted poned the errand so they could watch the game. Oli's was a popular chain of home improvement stores that had more than 30 locations in Southern California in the 1980s. Oli's sold hardware supplies, electrical supplies, building materials, paint, decorative items, basically everything needed to design or repair a house. That Wednesday in October, 1984, Jim Obdom's quiet evening was about to come to an end,

and it would be replaced by chaos and terror. Around 8 p.m., customers and employees started noticing smoke in Oli's home center. For most, like Jim Obdom, they saw the grayish-white smoke that rapidly filled the huge store. For those who were near the aisle where patio accessories were stored, they saw the flames. A small fire had sparked in that aisle, and the flames erased through the highly flammable items with ferocious speed. Obdom was near the back of the store when the smoke became apparent. He hurried toward the hardware section to investigate, and when he turned a corner, he backpedaled from a wall of flame.

A fire alarm blared, and then the lights went out. People were already rushing for the exits, but those who were deeper in the store now faced near blackout conditions and a noxious blinding haze. Jim Obdom was one of those people. As he groped through the building toward a door, a 911 call alerted emergency workers. Mercifully, a fire station was just three blocks away. The first fire engine to arrive at Oli's found a scene that didn't look extraordinary, but firefighters quickly learned that looks were deceiving.

After just a few minutes, the fire inside the store had become a raging inferno. As truck after truck arrived to battle the blaze, the first fire captain on the scene, became frustrated when he learned that some of his resources were being sent away. When he shouted into the radio to ask why a truck was going in the wrong direction, he heard that there was a second fire happening at the same time just a few blocks away. The captain was astonished. There were two fires at the same time at big retail stores that were just a couple blocks away from each other. That was an incredible coincidence, unless it wasn't a coincidence. At the moment, he didn't have time. He didn't have to

time to worry about it. The fire at Oli's home center was a roaring, hissing monster that was devouring the building with remarkable speed. The captain would have to leave it to the arson investigators to make assessments about coincidence. As it happened, an arson investigator was already on the scene. The fire was only a couple minutes old, but John Orr, the arson investigator for the Glendale Fire Department, was already there. Orr's primary responsibility was to to investigate fires, not to fight them with a hose. But in an emergency, like the situation at Oli's, the fire captain still found it odd that John Oar

wasn't offering to jump in and help. Instead, Oar was standing near the captain's truck, taking pictures of the burning building. Fire crews were trying to fight their way into the building. Customers and employees like Jim Obdom were trying to fight their way out. Four people wouldn't make it. And outside, John Orr took pictures, like a man who visits at historic location or witnesses something life-changing and wants to preserve the memory forever.

From Black Barrel Media, this is infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season we're telling the stories of two of the most notorious arsonists in American history. John Orr and Paul Keller. This is episode one, John Orr, Point of Origin. John Orr didn't necessarily have a lifelong dream to become a firefighter, but it was clear that something drew him to the profession. Like most kids with natural curiosity, he had marveled at a couple fires that happened in his neighborhood of Highland Park

in the Los Angeles metro area. Three of his classmates, who were siblings, had accidentally set fire to a couch in their house, and the blaze had all but burned the house down. John and his two older brothers stood in a rainstorm and watched firefighters battle the fire. Another fire in an alley near his house had afforded him a closer opportunity to watch the firefighters' work. Those were in the 1950s, and as a child of the post-World War II era, he was coming of age during the Vietnam War. When he was 16 years old, his mother left the family without warning.

His father had struggled through two failing businesses, and they were obviously. deeper problems in the marriage than John had realized. John didn't see his mother for three years, and his parents never reconciled. His two older brothers were out of the house and starting their own lives by the time the marriage imploded. And as John navigated high school and the difficult situation at home, he began to realize what all young men of his age realized at the time. If he didn't go to college, there was a good chance he would go to Vietnam. In 1967, On his 18th birthday, he enlisted in the Air Force. John had met a captain with the Los Angeles Fire Department at Career Day at his high school,

and the captain had said that firefighting experience in the military was a great way to get started on a career with the fire service. John went to basic training in Texas and then to Jet Mechanics School in Illinois, before he wrangled a position at firefighting school. When he finished basic training in 1968, he married his high school suite, and she went with him to his first assignment, a two-year tour in Spain. After Spain, they spent two years at a base in Montana. In 1971, after four years in the Air Force as a firefighter, John Orr received an honorable discharge. Jody was pregnant with their first child, and John applied to the Big Four in L.A., the Los Angeles

Police Department, the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, the Los Angeles Fire Department, and the LA County Fire Department. Nothing happened for a while, but later in 1971 he heard from the LAPD and they invited him to do the tests to see if he would be a good candidate. He quickly passed the written test, the physical test, the interview, and the medical exam. The final test was a psychological evaluation and that was when the process fell apart. It revealed a lot of things that had been happening in the background. John John now had two young children, but his marriage to Jody was falling apart. He worked at the Sparklitz Bottled Water Company and spent most nights after work drinking until 2 a.m.

LAPD evaluators learned that John Orr's superiors considered him a lazy, immature, know-it-all employee. The LAPD officially rejected John Orr as a candidate, and the psychologist called John emotionally unstable. began John's lifelong love-hate relationship with police. He craved approval from the department and individual officers, but he rarely received it. The craving caused him to be known as a wannabe cop in the years to come. After John Orr was rejected by the LAPD, he was rejected by the Los Angeles Fire Department, and the next three years were rough. He quit his job at the Sparklets Bottled Water Company. He started working for two different fast food restaurants.

and then quit both of those jobs. He had no steady income, and his marriage to Jody was crumbling. In 1974, out of desperation, he applied to the Glendale Fire Department, one of the lowest-paying departments of the 55 in Los Angeles County. To his delight, he was accepted. He passed all the tests, completed the training, and the probationary period, and one year later, he was a firefighter. That same year, he divorced Jody,

left his family and started a new relationship. That relationship led to the first of three marriages he would have over the next 10 years, and at the time he fulfilled an urge to become a crime fighter as well as a firefighter. He took an off-duty job as a security guard at a 7-11 convenience store and then a Sears department store. He relentlessly pursued shoplifters and thieves of all kinds, which was how he became known as a wannabe cop. When he was on duty at the fire department, he requested a position in which he patrolled the hills above Glendale and examined the brush and the wealthy properties to prevent fires. Coincidentally, it was during that same time that a series of small, unexplained fires started in the brush-covered hills above Glendale.

Everyone suspected arson, but a suspect was never identified. Then came the series of fires at Webb's department store, and the trend that would be captured. cataloged over the next 15 years. In January 1977, two years after John Orr became a full-time firefighter for the Glendale Fire Department, an arsonist targeted Webb's department store in Glendale. Webb's was the first department store in the city. It opened in 1917, and it was celebrating its 60th anniversary in 1977 when the suspicious fires started. Over the course of three weeks in January, three fires started in the building.

The first two were relatively minor, but the third was devastating. On a Wednesday evening, one hour before closing, a fire erupted in a storage room on the second floor of the building. The fire alarm blared and all the customers and employees escaped. As luck would have it, John Orr had been working his off-duty job at Sears Department Store just a block away. According to him, he was driving home when he spotted the flames at Webs and quickly joined the fire crews who were battling the blaze. They fought the fire for two hours and successfully put it out, but the store was destroyed.

It was the beginning of the end for Webb's department store. An early estimate said the fire did $1 million worth of damage, which would be more than $5 million today. That hit, plus the rise in competition, forced Webb's out of business seven years later. Like the fires in the Glendale Hills, the arsonist was never identified. One of the men who was responsible for tracking the growing number of suspicious fires in L.A. County

was Dennis Foote, an arson investigator for the Los Angeles City Fire Department. Sometime around 1980, he began building a file on fires that were suspected to be arson. Soon, he saw similarities. All the fires had occurred in retail businesses, like grocery stores or home improvement stores or department stores. They had all happened in the late afternoon or early evening when the stores were guaranteed to have customers, which was the case at Webb's department store in 1977. In the department stores, the fires usually started in piles of highly flammable materials. In the home improvement stores, the most common point of origin was in the aisle that stocked foam products

like cushions for patio chairs. The chemicals that were used to make the foam were incredibly flammable. In grocery stores, the fires almost always started in the aisle that was crammed full of bags of potato chips. Soon, Dennis Foote nicknamed his file of suspicious fires, the potato chip file. John Orr himself would explain the potato chip strategy to a fellow arson investigator four years in the future, on a night that changed everything. But in 1980, as Dennis Foote was charting the suspected arson fires, John Orr was earning his dream. job. In his first five years with the Glendale Fire Department, and as an overly enthusiastic security guard on the side, he had earned a reputation as a zealot. He wasn't interested in the traditional

life of a firefighter. He didn't care about hanging around the firehouse until the bell rang and then rushing to the scene of a fire. John Orr was clearly passionate about fighting crime, even as a fireman. The one job in the fire department that blended the roles of firefighter and police officer was arson investigator. Arson was a crime. Arson investigations were criminal investigations. And best of all, for John Orr, arson investigators were allowed to carry guns like real cops. In California law, arson investigators were defined as law enforcement officers. In 1981, John Orr became the first official arson investment officers. official arson investigator for the Glendale Fire Department. He was partnered with an arson

investigator for the Glendale Police Department, and together they solved a number of cases. But like John Orr's marriages, his professional partnerships didn't last long. He could be abrasive and arrogant, but even with his difficult personality, he started to earn respect as an arson investigator. Before long, he was regarded as one of the go-to authorities on arson. And of course, all the time in the background, L-A-F-D arson investigator Dennis Foote was compiling his list of suspicious fires in and around Los Angeles. In a single night in 1984, he added three entries to the list. That was the night John Orr explained the potato chip strategy to a fellow investigator,

and the night Oli's home center burned to the ground. Wednesday, October 10, 1984 was a crazy night for the communities of Pasadena. and Glendale. They sit right next to each other in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. That evening, the second game of the World Series started at about 5.30 p.m. local time. The game kept many would-be shoppers at home. Many, but not all. There were three fires in two hours that night, and the third would end in devastation and tragedy. The first alarm was for an Albertson's grocery store in Pasadena. The fire likely started between 6 and 6.30 p.m.

It turned out to be a small fire that didn't cause much damage. And when the arson investigator Scott McClure showed up at about 645, he quickly found the point of origin, the spot at which the fire started. It was in an aisle that was packed with bags of potato chips. About an hour later, McClure requested the help of one of the most respected arsonation. investigators in the area, John Orr. Orr arrived a couple minutes later, so quickly that it was like he was already nearby. When Orr learned the situation, he said he believed the fire was arson, and he explained why. Orr said bags of potato chips were great fuel for fire. When the flammable

foil material of the bags mixed with the oils of the chips, it formed a combustible combination. After the brief tutorial and with the situation under control, or left McClure to wrap up the investigation. Within 30 minutes, McClure started hearing frantic radio calls about the dangerous situation that was unfolding just seven miles from his position. At Oli's Home Center, just before 8 p.m., people in the store started noticing smoke. Fear and panic didn't set in right away, but they intensified exponentially. Jim Obdom was in the back of the store when the smoke started filling the aisles.

He hurried toward the aisle that seemed to be the source of the smoke, and at about that time, a voice made an announcement over the speaker system in the store. No one could understand the words, but it was only a few seconds later when people started shouting, fire. Customers and employees tried to find their way to the exits through the thickening smoke. The fire alarm blared, and then the lights went out. In the darkness and smoke, the exits became difficult to find. Jim Obdom was disoriented. He was choking on smoke and his vision was limited.

He knew there was a fire exit in a room at the back of the store, but he decided he couldn't make it. Obdom bent low and touched the walls as he felt his way toward a different exit. He found the door and burst outside just before he feared he wouldn't make it. In another part of the store, an employee led a coworker and a few customers toward a fire exit in the electrical department. Flames raced toward them as they opened the door and ran outside. At that moment, a flashover happened in the store. Supercharged heat essentially exploded. The energy threw everyone outside like they had been shot out of a cannon,

and they were extremely lucky to survive the violent event. Inside, the fire tore through aisle after aisle of fuel, with racks of foam items like patio cushions and then hardware supplies, fabrics, paints, chemicals, and electrical supplies, the store was like one giant fuel tank. A fire station was only three blocks away, and the first crew was on the scene lightning fast. From the outside, the situation looked serious but manageable. Inside, the fire was completely out of control. When the first crew arrived, smoke hung lazily above the roof of Oli's home center. It wasn't billowing from the windows and doors, and flames weren't tearing apart the structure. As firefighters leapt down from the truck and prepared to go to work, they spotted their first flames. The flames were lunging

out of a door at the back corner of the building. The fire captain and his crew pushed through the door and instantly learned the full extent of the danger. The interior of Oli's, the interior of home center was an ocean of flame. Everything was on fire. It was a blinding inferno that would leave them baffled in the aftermath. They had arrived about as fast as was possible, since their station was so close. They had received the alarm probably less than five minutes after the fire had started. And yet, in that short space of time, the fire had engulfed the inside of the store. It had intensified with such frightening speed that firefighters found it hard to believe afterward. The group who had tried to enter the store were forced back outside by the power of the fire.

On the roof of the huge building, a firefighter cut a hole in the structure in order to release some of the energy and smoke that had built up inside. By essentially pulling some of the fire up through the roof, firefighters hoped to create space to work inside. But that didn't happen. A geyser of fire shot up into the sky, and the venting did nothing to help the situation inside. The fire roared and hissed as crews from all over the area started arriving to help the embattled men of the first fire company. By one account, 32 fire companies responded to the

blaze with 125 firefighters. But even with all the support, the first fire captain on the scene was furious when he heard an update on the radio. A fire engine was on its way to the wrong location. It was driving away from Oli's Home Center, and the captain shouted into the radio to find out why. The reason was that a fire was burning at a Vaughn's supermarket in the potato chip aisle, a few blocks from Oli's Home Center. That one wasn't nearly as serious, but it left the captain mystified. In addition to being curious about the speed and ferocity of the fire at Oles, he had to wonder, what were the odds of two accidental fires happening within a few blocks of each other and within a few minutes of each other. It sounded impossible that both fires could be accidental.

He didn't have time to ponder the answer, though he did take note of one other curious thing at around that time. Glendale arson investigator John Orr was standing near the captain's fire engine. That wasn't strange in and of itself, and yes, John was primarily an investigator, but he was still a firefighter. Instead of offering to help battle the blaze, John was holding a camera, and he asked if he could take some photos. The captain said, sure, and he quickly dismissed the odd question to continue mobilizing the small army of firefighters who were attacking the fire from all angles.

As John Orr snapped pictures, the roof of Oli's home center collapsed and spewed flames and sparks high into the night sky. The crews poured thousands of gallons of water onto the fire, and it still took hours to extinguish the flames. They rode ladders from their trucks, way up high to shoot streams of water down onto the crumbling ruins of the store. But it was clear that the scene was a disaster.

Oli's home center was completely destroyed, and four people had not made it out alive. A grandmother named Ada Deal had been shopping with her husband, Billy, and their two-year-old grandson, Matthew, when the fire started. Billy became separated from Ada and Matthew. Billy made it out of the store, barely, but Ada and Matthew did not. The other two victims were employees, 17-year-old Jimmy Satina and 26-year-old mother of two, Carolyn's sister-in-law worked for the Glendale Police Department, and she knew John Orr.

Several days after the fire, John showed up at the Glendale Police Department to speak to the sister-in-law. It appeared as though he was trying to offer a consolment in a roundabout way. He told her he believed the fire at Olies was intentional, and his visit was prompted by his deep disappointment over the lack of investigation and the quick rush to judgment that the fire was accidental. He noted another recent fire to illustrate his point. A few days after the Oli's fire, a home improvement store in North Hollywood called Builders Emporium suffered a small fire. Luckily, the sprinkler system put it out before any serious damage was done. And that luck gave investigators valuable clues. The fire had started in a mattress,

that was stuffed with the same type of foam that was in the cushions at Oli's Home Center. Just as important, investigators found the device that had started the fire. The device was categorized as a delay device, a simple system that allowed the arsonist to get away from the location before the fire started. Essentially, it was the timer on a bomb. In the case of the device at Builders Emporium, it was a device that arson investigator Dennis Foote had noted in his potato check. file. The device was easy and effective. Three matches were tied to a cigarette with a rubber band

and bundled inside a piece of yellow notebook paper. The device would give the arsonist about 15 minutes to leave the area after the cigarette was lit. When the cigarette burned down, it lit the matches. The matches lit the notebook paper and created a small flame. If the flame touched something highly flammable like a foam mattress or a foam chair cushion or a bag of potato chips, it quickly ignited a fire. If the fire started in a place that was packed with other foam products or similar types of fuel, it roared into an inferno with dizzying speed. The signature delayed device was not found at Oli's home center, but that doesn't mean it didn't survive the fire. Unfortunately, for arson investigators, they would never know. The man who controlled the investigation wanted to

wrap up the process quickly and cleanly. Sergeant Jack Palmer of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department decided to classify the fire as undetermined, which meant they didn't know exactly where or how the fire started. Investigators, including John Orr, had been at the scene at 7 a.m. the next morning after the fire. After about 90 minutes, Palmer had made up his mind. He knew that the other two fires that night had been deemed arson, but since they had both started in aisles of potato chips and not the types of things that were

available at Olies, he dismissed them as unconnected. Two men vehemently disagreed with Palmer's assessment. One was Jim Allen, an investigator with the California State Fire Marshal's Office, and the other was John Orr. Jim Allen had walked through the charred ruins of Olies with John, and Alan had marveled at the speed with which the fire must have moved. But Orr never mentioned the fact that stacks of foam products, which were great accelerants, had been stored in a corner of the building.

Nor did he mention that two more fires had happened that night, both of which were deemed arson. Jim Allen wouldn't learn those facts until much later. In the moment, Alan agreed with Orr. Palmer's investigation, such as it was, was too fast. But Palmer was a 25-year veteran of the powerful L.A. County Sheriff's Department. which had jurisdiction over the case. Palmer had essentially declared the fire an accident, and that was the end of it.

A few days later, a small fire burst to life in a foam mattress at Builders Emporium in North Hollywood. The signature delay device of the cigarette and the matches was recovered. It was clearly a case of arson. Two months after that, the same type of device was found in a partially burned stack of foam products

at a home improvement store in Pasadena. And wouldn't you know it, that fire was at another Oli's home center. The pattern was clear. A serial arsonist was targeting big retail stores with the intent of causing significant destruction and loss of life. But that didn't mean the arsonist would be easy to catch. The firebug, as firefighters called a serial arsonist, was clever. And investigators would have to wait more than two years to find their first usable clue.

Next time on Infamous America, John Orr has the perfect cover for his activities. No one suspects a serial arsonist might also be a firefighter, but that starts to change after a series of fires in 1987. A fire captain finds a clue and a pattern, and he promotes a theory no one wants to hear. After a second series of fires, John Orr becomes a suspect for the first time, but it will be a long and difficult road toward proving the suspicions. That's next week on Infamous America.

Members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week for new episodes. They receive the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials, and they also receive exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. Memberships are just $5 per month. This series was researched and written by myself and Ria Perra. It was produced by Joe Garrow. Original music by Rob Valier. I'm Chris Wimmer. Thanks for listening.