Infamous America - ARSONISTS Ep. 3 | John Orr: “The Task Force”

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

After the devastating College Hills brush fire in June 1990, and series of fires in December 1990 and March 1991, the ATF and the LAFD form a task force to catch the serial arsonist who has plagued California for years. The task force believes Glendale arson investigator John Orr is the suspect, and the task force begins a long and difficult investigation to catch him. 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

Captain Marvin Casey, an arson investigator for the Bakersfield Fire Department, an hour and a half north of Los Angeles, felt an odd sense of excitement in March 1989. He had been searching for a serial arsonist for two years, though his search had been reduced to nothing but waiting and watching shortly after it started. Over a three-day period in 1987, an arsonist had set seven fires in three different cities in Central California, the third of which was Bakersfield. Captain Casey had developed a scary theory. He thought it was very possible that the arsonist

was a member of law enforcement or the fire service. The seven fires had coincided with an arson investigation conference in Fresno, California, and Casey had collected a fingerprint from one of the homemade devices that had been used to set the fires. When Casey examined all the available data from the fires, he narrowed the list of 242 people who had attended the conference down to 55 possible suspects.

He wanted to compare the fingerprint in evidence to the prints of those 55 people. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms was coordinating the investigation of the fires, and Captain Casey took his idea to the special agent in charge. The agent didn't dismiss the idea, but he said there was no way he was launching an investigation into 55 well-respected members of the public safety sector. Casey needed to narrow his list to a much smaller number. At the time, Casey had no way to do that, so his search fizzled out for two years. In March 1989, it happened again.

An arsonist set six fires over a six-day period in conjunction with an arson investigation conference. Once again, the same type of device was used to set the fires. and the locations of the fires strongly suggested the arsonist was from Southern California. When Captain Casey compared the names of the attendees at both conferences, he was able to narrow his list of potential suspects from 55 to 10. On that list was John Orr, the senior arson investigator for the City of Glendale Fire Department in the Los Angeles metro area. Casey went back to the ATF agent with his new list, and the agent agreed to help.

help. The agent sent a photo of the print to a fingerprint expert at the Department of Justice. The expert compared the print to the fingerprints on file of the ten possible suspects, and none of them matched. Captain Casey was surprised and disappointed. He had grown confident in his theory, even if it meant suggesting something as blasphemous as the idea that a respected arson investigator was also a serial arsonist. As it would turn out, Captain Casey had good reason to be confident. He was right, but it would take two more years to prove it. In the meantime, Casey was stuck waiting and watching again.

On May 1, 1989, one month after Casey received disappointing news, John Orr received wonderful news. He had earned a promotion to captain, while having no idea that he was on a list of 10 possible arson suspects and had somehow escaped a fingerprint match. For the next year, John Orr was on top of the world. He had his promotion. He had a salary increase.

His fourth marriage was going great. He bought a new car, and he started taking classes in creative writing at a local community college. In June 1990, there was another conference of arson investigators in Fresno, California. It had been three years since the arson spree in association with the conference in Fresno. Three years since Captain Casey became suspicious that an arson investigator might also be a serial arsonist. John Orr chose not to attend the conference. He stayed in Glendale, and it was no coincidence that Glendale suffered the worst fire in its history. From Black Barrow 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 three, John Orr, the Task Force. By 3 o'clock in the afternoon of June 27, 1990, the temperature in Glendale was 110 degrees Fahrenheit, 43 degrees Celsius. That wasn't a record, but it was close. Hot winds were blowing in from the desert and gusting 35 to 45 miles per hour. There had been no rain, so the grass, brush, and trees were bone dry. It was the perfect combination for a devastating wildfire, and that day, the Glendale Arson Investigation Unit was short-handed.

John Orr, respected senior investigator, sent his partner, Don Yeager to the Arson Investigation Conference in Fresno, four hours north of Glendale. John was usually the one who went to the conventions, but this time, when conditions were perfect for a brushfire, he stayed home. Wednesday afternoon, June 27th, just before 3.30 p.m., a resident in the College Hills neighborhood of Glendale spotted a small fire in the brush near the junction of two streets. The fire started crawling through the dry grass, brush, and trees which cover the portions of the hill that are not occupied by homes. It took no time at all for the strong winds to grab the embers from the flames and start throwing them everywhere. Frantic 911 calls. started almost immediately, and they were different than in years past. For the last 10 years or so,

small brush fires had plagued the region. Most were put out quickly and did little damage, but the College Hills fire of 1990 was different. The blaze started near the junction of Sweetbrier Drive and Kaye Vaccaro and quickly tore through the strip of land between the two streets. After the fire crossed that strip, rows of homes were at its mercy. Some of the homes caught fire within minutes. The flames hot-scotched from brush to brush and tree to tree as the wind swirled the embers through the narrow ravines toward the top of the hill. The Glendale Fire Chief later compared the heat and the rush of the fire to a flamethrower. Fire crews raced to the scene from all over Los Angeles, which was an exercise in madness for those who had to battle L.A. rush hour traffic to reach Glendale.

When the second truck arrived, just a couple minutes after the first alarm, a rookie firefighter was surprised to see that John Orr, the arson investigator, was already at the scene. Orr asked the captain of an arriving company if the captain needed help. The captain asked Orr to grab a hose and douse some flames which were creeping toward a wooden fence behind a house, while the captain ran to the house next door and battled a blaze on the roof. A few minutes later, the captain returned. and saw John Orr driving away. Orr had gone inside, thrown a protective blanket over some of the stuff in the living room, and then left without doing anything to help fight the fire. Water-dropping helicopters circled the area, and firefighters worked well into the night to contain the inferno. That evening, while the fight continued, investigators went door-to-door

in the neighborhood to ask if anyone saw anything suspicious. A Glendale police detective found a potential witness and he called the arson investigators. John Orr and an investigator from the California State Fire Marshal's office joined the detective to interview the woman in question. The woman had looked out a window of her home and spotted a man acting suspicious in the area where the fire started. She only saw the man from behind, but her description was a dead ringer for John Orr. She had described John Orr without seeing his face while he was standing in the room. It was laid into the night before fire crews gained control of the situation. 74 companies, totaling more than 300 firefighters,

battled the fire for more than 12 hours before they could call it contained. Later, when the damage was assessed, the College Hills Fire would be declared the worst fire in Glendale history and one of the worst in California history. The College Hills Fire destroyed or damaged 66 homes and caused an estimated $50 million worth of damage. It was one of the most destructive fires in California history until it was dwarfed by the twin catastrophes in January 2025.

The Eden fire, which was centered in the community of Altadena, was only seven miles from the College Hills fire 35 years earlier. The Eden fire damaged or destroyed more than 10,000 structures and killed 18 people. The Palisades fire along the coastline between Santa Monica and Malibu, damaged or destroyed more than 9,000 structures and killed 12 people. Those numbers would have been as shocking in 1990 as they are today. The cause of both fires in 2025 is still under investigation,

and in 1990, the investigation into the cause of the College Hills fire fell to John Orr. The two most important questions were, who did it, and why. The investigator from the California State Fire Marshal's office, who had partnered with John Orr for several hours on the day of the fire, believed he would have some early indications from Orr very soon. Orr had promised to call the investigator the day after the fire, but he didn't. Orr had promised to send the investigator a copy of his report, but he never did. And when John Orr's partner rushed back from the convention in Fresno, he unknowingly landed in a tense and confusing situation. Don Yeager, John Orr's third partner, found out about the fire at the end of his day at the convention. He left the conference first thing the next morning and hurried back to Glendale.

When Yeager arrived, Orr seemed angry. He told his partner he had the situation under control. Yeager became frustrated and took his concerns to the battalion chief. In short order, John Orr used the situation to get rid of his third partner. Orr wanted his partner to see him. dismissed immediately, but the chief decided to keep Yeager on board until the end of the year. John Orr succeeded in getting Don Yeager transferred early in October, and then Orr received his fourth and final partner.

John Orr was finally satisfied. His young partner was eager to please and would do as he was told. And soon after they'd settled into a routine, the fires started. For a three-month period from December 1990 to March 1991, a series of fires hit LA like the city had never seen. It was a two-part event, and part one started on December 10th when a fire gutted People's Department Store in the community of Eagle Rock, where John Orr lived. Three days later, Mort's surplus store in Burbank went up in flames.

The next day, a fire broke out at Builders' Emporium in North Hollywood. the same store that had been hit by an arsonist in 1984, a few days after the fatal fire at Oly's Home Center. Three days later, on December 17th, a fire started at a store called J.J. Newberry on Hollywood Boulevard. On December 26th, three fires started on the same day at Bed Bath and Beyond, Pier 1 imports, and Strouds Lennons, all of which were on Ventura Boulevard in the Sherman Oaks neighborhood.

Four days later, on December 30th, the spree continued. A fire erupted at a store near Dodger Stadium, and then, less than an hour later, a fire started a few miles away at a store on Sunset Boulevard. Those two fires were the end of Part 1 of the series. There had been nine fires in 20 days in northern communities of Los Angeles. There was a two-month pause, and then part two started in communities on the southern end of Los Angeles. At 1.30 in the afternoon, on Sunday, March 3rd, a fire exploded in a thrifty drug store in a neighborhood called Wilmington. There were more than 100 people in the store at the time, and luckily they all made it out alive. Less than 45 minutes later, a fire started at another thrifty drug store, that one in San Pedro.

Two weeks later, the fires cranked back up again in North Hollywood. There were three fires in two days at a Goodwill store, a house of fast, fabrics and another Pier 1 imports. There was another pause of several days, and then the grand finale happened. The series on March 27, 1991, finally led the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to dedicate full-time resources to stopping the serial arsonist in L.A. On March 27th, there were five fires in one day, all in South L.A. communities, and all within two and a half hours of each other.

The series started at 11.30 a.m. at a. at a. Fabric store in Laundale, the community that is just inland from Manhattan Beach. The fire destroyed the store, and that was the one that led to the involvement of the ATF. 30 minutes later, a floral supply store in Redondo Beach was the next target. 20 minutes after that, it was a thrifty drug store in Redondo Beach. Then it was a J.J. Newberry store in Englewood, and the final stop was a discount store. also in Englewood. Fire companies in South L.A. ran around like mad that day,

though they were fortunate that most of the fires did minimal damage. It was that first one, the one at D&M Yardage Fabric Store in Laundale, that led to a nine-month investigation of John Orr. The ATF and the Los Angeles Fire Department had an agreement that they would work together on cases of devastating fires

at large commercial businesses. In such cases, when arson was heavily suspected, there was a good chance the business owner had burned down the business to collect insurance money. Or an organized crime group might be involved in the arson fraud. Or the group might simply have burned the business as punishment or to send a message. The fire at D&M Yardage qualified as a classic case for a joint ATF-L-A-FD investigation. The fire was estimated to have caused more than $1 million. worth of damage, and it was suspected to be an arson case.

On March 27th, while a pair of investigators, one from the ATF and one from the LAFD, sifted through the rubble at DNM yardage, they heard reports about the other fires in the area. The LAFD investigator, Glenn Lacerro, noticed immediate similarities between the fires on that day and some of the fires back in December. The key similarity was the incendiary device that had done. survived some of the fires. It was always the same type, a cigarette, three matches, a rubber band, and a piece of yellow notebook paper. The brands of cigarettes and the matches might change, but the formula was always the same. Very quickly, Glen Lacerro became worried. If the fires over the past

two months were connected, then they weren't the work of a person who went on a random spree. They were the work of a genuine pyromaniac, a person who had an uncontrollable urge to set fires. Glenn Lucero of the LAFD joined agents Ken Croke and Mike Matassa of the ATF to create a task force right after the fires in March. Lucero and Croke examined the incendiary device that had been found at one of the Redondo Beach fires. They welcomed a third member to the team, Special Agent April Carroll of the ATF. Lacerro dubbed the group the Pillow Pyrot Task Force, because many of the fires in recent months had started in groups of pillows in retail stores. There was a list of 17 suspicious fires under investigation. Two days after the fires of March 27th, one of Lacerro's colleagues learned a valuable tip from an investigator up in the Central Valley.

There was a fire captain named Marvin Casey in Bakersfield, who had made some interesting connections about suspicious. fires a couple years ago. He had an intriguing theory about the suspect, and most importantly, he had a fingerprint of the suspect which had come from the same type of signature device that was found in L.A. Glenn Lacerro, Ken Croke, and April Carroll hurried up to Bakersfield. Captain Casey regaled them with his info about the series of fires in the Central Valley in 1987 and the series in coastal communities two years later, both of which coincided with arson investigation conferences. He told them his theory that the arsonist was an arson investigator, and he gave them a copy of the suspect's fingerprint. But the fingerprint had been run through

multiple databases, and it had not produced a match. The task force thought the information was interesting, but its response was muted. Since there was no fingerprint match, there was nothing they could do with it. When the crew returned from Bakersfield, Special Agent Matassa thought they should run the print again. Maybe they'd get lucky. Maybe the suspect had been arrested for something in the two years since the print was last searched. Glenn Lacerro took the print to the L.A. County Sheriff's Lab. Two weeks later, the task force received stunning news. The lab's computer identified a likely match to a man named John Orr, the senior arson investigator for the Glendale Fire Department. The task force was excited but puzzled. How was it possible that they now had a match

for John Orr when he had been cleared by a fingerprint expert two years earlier in 1989? The answer was frustrating. It seemed to be human error. In 1989, the expert said the print was not a match for any of Casey's 10 suspects. But the print had not been submitted to computer databases for police or fire department employees. Now in 1991, the computer said it found a likely match to a print that had been submitted by John Orr back in 1971 when he had applied for the LAPD. But that certainly wasn't the end of the matter. It was just the beginning. The next step for the task force was to go back to Bakersfield to see. Captain Casey again. When the task force returned to Captain Casey's office in Bakersfield,

it was the captain's turn to offer a muted response. The task force hadn't been gung-ho about his theory two weeks earlier, but now they were back and they wanted more information. Clearly, something had changed. Something was happening that was related to Casey's theory, but the task force wouldn't tell him what it was. If anyone deserved to know the truth, it was Captain Casey, but he dutifully granted their request anyway. They needed to verify the chain of custody of Casey's fingerprint evidence. Without giving Casey the details, they needed to confirm that it was not possible that John Orr could have touched the signature device after the fire,

but before it was collected by the fire department, or that he could have touched it after it was collected. Casey called in his team and verified that the print had not been contaminated by John Orr in any way. If John Orr's print was on the device, it was because he touched it before the fire. The trio thanked Casey and left him to, once again, sit and wait to see if his hunch was correct. Now the task force had to do the tedious due diligence on John Orr.

They needed to examine his telephone records, his fire reports, and his movements to see if there were patterns which would sink up with the suspicious fires. To do that, they needed to have a difficult meeting. The task force sat down with Glendale Fire Department Battalion Chief Chris Gray and explained the investigation of John Orr. Gray had been John Orr's boss for years, and now Gray was being told that his senior arson investigator was the top suspect in dozens of arson fires up and down California.

Chief Gray was understandably rattled, but he agreed to provide information that was needed by the task force. In addition, he revealed a piece of information that seemed insignificant at the time, but would turn out to be massive in the long run. He said John Orr had been writing a novel. Orr had given the early chapters to Chief Gray, and Gray had not liked the material. The story had something to do with firefighters in LA, and the dialogue was vulgar, but that was about all Gray could remember.

The task force filed away the information and assumed they would never use it again. the chief verified the more urgent development. In a few days, John Orr was scheduled to go to a five-day training seminar in San Luis Obispo. Orr was going back to the region that was the epicenter of the series of fires in 1989. The task force organized a huge surveillance operation for the trip to San Luis Obispo, and they immediately learned that John Orr was no amateur. When John Orr left his house on Saturday morning, April 27th to start the drive, the There were six cars of undercover ATF agents waiting to follow him, and a small plane that would track him from the air.

John hopped in his car and drove to the 134 freeway, which would take him west toward the coast. The second he entered the freeway, he slammed down the gas pedal and rocketed through traffic. He pushed his speed up to 100 miles per hour and careened through traffic so that it was impossible for the surveillance cars to use any of their techniques. John drove so fast that he was miles down the road before the surveillance plane could even get off the ground. In essence, the task force just had to pray he didn't stop along the way. Luckily, John went straight to his hotel in San Luis Obispo. From that point forward, the task force hoped the job of tracking John Orr would be simpler.

A court order allowed them to attach an electronic tracking device to John's car. And in the middle of the night, agents fastened the device. to the underside of John's car near one of the rear wheels. In 1991, the tracker was a bulky metal device with an antenna that stuck out from one end. With that done, they settled in to monitor their suspect for the next few days. Sunday, the day before the conference, was pure boredom. On Monday, there was a little excitement when John bought a pack of cigarettes. He was a vehement non-smoker, so all the agents assumed they just saw him buy support,

applies for his signature fire starter device. And then John Orr did nothing for the next four days. He just attended the training sessions like all the other participants. On the final day of the conference, John left the hotel and drove to a car wash facility. When he was about to start washing his car, he found the tracking device, and the surveillance team went nuts. The magnetic tracker had fallen loose from its original position, and the antenna was hanging down in plain sight. John examined the device as the surveillance teams stared in horror from

various points in the distance. They thought their operation was blown, and they all started shouting into their radios. The task force had to make a decision, arrest John or now, or let him go and see how it played out. They let him go to see what he would do next. John sped directly to the San Luis Obispo Police Department and ran inside. Moments later, he spoke printed back outside, hopped into his car, and drove away. Surveillance units followed John while other agents ran into the police station to find out what had happened. In the station, the agents learned that John thought he had a bomb strapped to his car. Instead of waiting for the bomb squad to come to him, John was now driving to the bomb squad.

The explosives' ordnance disposal range was only two miles outside of the city of San Luis Obispo, so the task force had to act fast. Agents worked with the police department to call the bomb squad and explain the plan. Moments later, John roared up to the headquarters of the bomb squad like he was trying to outrun a tornado. He hurried inside and talked to a sergeant. The sergeant followed John out to his car, crawled under it, and removed the device. The sergeant followed instructions that had been provided by the task force. He told John, the bomb, was just a harmless fake.

Someone at the conference must have thought it was a funny joke. The sergeant kept the device, and he was pretty sure John believed the lie. But Mike Matassa was skeptical. John returned to the hotel and finished the conference as planned. The task force followed and watched, but John did nothing incriminating. Back in L.A., the task force was stuck. At the time, they were confident they could. could convict John Orr for one of the fires in Bakersfield in 1987, but that was it.

They only had thin, circumstantial evidence to connect him to dozens of other suspicious fires. The prosecutors who would handle the courtroom trials wanted more. They wanted hard evidence of John Orr planting his signature device in a business with the intent to start a fire. Even though the task force was concerned that its cover was blown, the operation had to continue. Throughout the month of May 1991, the task force continued its surveillance while also sifting through telephone records and other information which had been secretly provided by Battalion Chief Chris Gray to see if there were any noticeable patterns between John Orr's movements and the suspicious fires.

Agents snapped a photo of John Orr when he was out of uniform so they could put it in a photo lineup and show it to witnesses from some of the fires. Two witnesses from the The recent LA fires positively identified John Orr as a man who had been in their stores right before the fires. The legwork continued all summer. The task force followed John Orr. It re-interviewed witnesses, and it synced up Orr's movements with suspicious fires. That was another positive but circumstantial development.

Investigators discovered John Orr had been on duty, but alone and out of the office during every fire in December 1990 and March 1991. By September 1991, the task force knew it was close to arresting John Orr. An agent Mike Matassa needed to make the phone call that had been four years in the making. Mattassa called Captain Marvin Casey of the Bakersfield Fire Department and told Casey that he had been right all along. John Orr, the arson investigator for the Glendale Fire Department, was the worst serial arsonist in California history, and probably in American history. Captain Casey was validated,

and he would deserve a lot of credit when John Orr was arrested. The trouble was, the attempt to arrest John Orr while he was in the act of setting a fire would be costly. If Orr knew he was the subject of an investigation, he simply didn't care, and it didn't stop him from setting more fires. Next time on Infamous America, the task force uses a new type of tracking device to follow John Orr, and it produces less than stellar results. Orr is at the scene of a fire at a world-famous movie studio, and two more in Glendale. It becomes clear that he won't stop until somebody stops him, and the task force finally makes its big move.

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 to 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 Gera. Original music by Rob Valier. I'm Chris Wimmer. Thanks for listening.