Prime Crime: Solved Murders - The Pillow Pyro

Episode Date: April 26, 2023

In the mid-1980s Los Angeles is in the midst of a serial killer boom. But that’s not all. A serial arsonist has been setting blazes across the area, leading to millions of dollars in damage and the deaths of four people. Most of the fires started in bins of pillows, cushion stuffing, or bedding — lending the “Pillow Pyro” moniker to the slippery culprit. This episode originally aired on Cold Cases. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Due to the graphic nature of this cold case, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes intense sequences and discussions of murder. We advise extreme caution for children under 13. It's 1984. In South Pasadena, California, Oli's hardware store is an inferno, belching black smoke into the sky. Pillars of flame 100 feet high stream from the roof. The night is alive with fire engine sirens as tragedy unfold.

A young man calls his brother's name over and over. A couple is searching for their grandchild. Hardly anyone notices a man standing apart from the crowd watching the fire. He points a camera at the flames, snapping photographs. He's close enough to feel the roiling heat on his skin. It fills him with obscene pleasure. The excitement of knowing this is his fire. The certainty he's going to get away with it.

because any evidence tying him to the crime is currently going up in flames. Welcome to Solved Murder's True Crime Mysteries, a Spotify original from Parcast. I'm Carter Roy. This week, we're doing things a little differently, featuring an episode of Cold Cases we think you'll enjoy. Every Monday on Cold Cases, I tell the story of a crime that went unsolved for years. Some weeks, forensic breakthroughs will solve long dormant cases. Others will still be left searching for the truth. Today, we set course for Southern California to find the cause of a man-made heat wave.

Starting in the mid-1980s, the Los Angeles area was plagued by a spree of arson fires. It became increasingly clear that the culprit was taunting investigators, and it was only a matter of time before someone got burned. Solved murders, we'll be back next week, but more on this case coming up. Stay with us. We gather here tonight to bring women back to their rightful place. The Testaments, a new Hulu original series

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with 20 rewards dollars in your loyalty account. At participating locations, terms and conditions apply. Southern California is no stranger to fire. Every summer and fall, a combination of low rainfall, hot winds and dry vegetation turns the region into a tinderbox. An ill-timed bolt of lightning can trigger a brush fire that, if uncontained, will turn into a deadly inferno. Still, most fires in the region are caused by human activity.

That was certainly the case in the mid-1980s, when the area was home to one of the most prolific serial arsonists in modern history. The culprit was known to investigators by many names, but one eventually stuck. This is the story of the Pillow Pyrot. It's January 14, 1987. Mary Dumler is shopping at the Hancock Fabric Store in Fresno, California, four hours north of Los Angeles. She's sifting through patterns at the cutting table when she looks up and sees a puff of smoke rising from the corner of the store.

Mary tries to get a clerk's attention, but before they can investigate, a fireball erupts out of the smoke. Mary watches momentarily frozen as the fire splits and transforms. It leaps from one aisle to the next with impossible speed, racing up the walls to the ceiling. The lights go out.

Someone shouts fire over the intercom. Mary hears screams all around her. Child calls for their mother. Only seconds ago, the store was brightly lit, safe, a haven for shoppers to spend a dull afternoon. Now it's a death trap. Mary Dumler and the other shoppers race for the exit, and the fire chases them. It rolls across the ceiling in a wave of heat, light, and smoke, acting on instinct, Mary closes the door behind her.

She tries to hold it shut, hoping to starve the fire, but it's already grown too powerful to contain. An enormous blast ripsed through the store, blows out the windows, and throws Mary Dumbler toward the parking lot with violent force. She struggles to her feet, dusts herself off, and takes stock of what she's just experienced. The fire spread so quickly,

like it had taken on a life of its own. How? The answer lies in the fire triangle. If Smokey Bear ever visited your grade school, you might remember it. It illustrates that every fire needs three things to keep burning. Fuel, oxygen, and heat. Hancock Fabrics was practically made of fuel with its aisles packed with highly flammable fabric, foam bedding, material, glue, and paint.

This fuel allowed the fire to build so quickly. As the flames spread, they rapidly devoured all the oxygen in the store. The moment the shoppers opened the front doors to escape, a fresh supply of oxygen rushed in, and the fire rushed out, growing even larger. The fire grew so hot it reached temperatures upwards of 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit. All of this explains why the fire moved the way it did, chasing the customers toward the exits. But the more important question is how did it start? What was the initial heat source?

What ignited the fire in the first place? As it so happens, while Mary Dumler is fleeing the Hancock Fabric Store, downtown Fresno is teeming with people whose job it is to answer those questions. The city is hosting a seminar for the California Association of Arson Investigators. For three days, firefighters, police officers, and federal agents gather to discuss the ins and outs of their trade. One of the attendants is Scott Baker, an investigator from the Senate, Central Valley Fire Marshal's office.

He's a middle-aged detective with a military background and a stellar reputation. When news of the fire at Hancock Fabrics reaches the conference, Scott and a handful of other investigators gather a makeshift task force and head to the scene. From the moment he arrives, Scott senses that this isn't a typical store fire. The big ones almost always start at night, not during the day while the store is open. Normally, shoppers would notice the flames and put them out before they spread out of control. But for some reason, this fire grew too quickly for anyone to stop it. To figure out what happened, the team looks for the fire's point of origin, the place it started.

It's not an easy job. Detectives have to size up crime scenes that are heavily damaged by fire, smoke, and the water used to put the blaze out. Despite these challenges, arson investigators like Scott Baker are skilled. at reading the movements of a fire. By examining scorch marks and other damage, they can trace the root the blaze took. The Hancock Fabric Store is barely standing, but fortunately, Scott has something that gives him a leg up,

a witness. He talks to Mary Dumler, who points him to the corner of the store where she saw the first plume of smoke. They check the spot and find a storage bin full of styrofoam pillow stuffing. This is extremely flammable material. the perfect fuel.

That explains why the fire got going before anyone had a chance to put it out. But Scott doesn't see anything that could have started the fire. There's no electric wiring, no heater, nothing to explain how it all began. And that worries him. Whatever ignited this fire just so happened to strike at the worst possible spot in the store. It could be an unlucky coincidence. But Scott Baker doesn't believe in coincidences. He believes in cause and effect.

He believes in patterns. And to him, this feels like the first spark of something much bigger. Friday, January 15th is the third and final day of the arson investigators conference. At 10.45 a.m., a fire breaks out inside a surplus city store in the small town of Tularee, an hour south of Fresno. The flame starts inside a display of sleeping bags. Fortunately, an employee manages to put it out before it can get out of control. But then, 45 minutes later, another fire starts at the nearby family bargain center, this time in a bin of foam pillows.

At 2 p.m., more flames spring up in the town of Bakersfield, halfway between Fresno and Los Angeles. At a craft mart, smoke is seen rising from a bin of dry floral arrangements. The manager grabs the fire extinguisher and puts it out before the whole thing goes up in flames. Captain Marvin Casey is at the Bakersfield Fire Department when the call comes over the radio. The other two investigators in his unit are in Fresno at the conference, but Marvin heads straight to the craft mart. He quickly zeroes in on the bin where the fire started. Inside, he spots something unusual, a partially burned up camera.

contraption made of a cigarette, matches, and a strip of yellow notebook paper. It's all held together by a rubber band. Marvin is as experienced as they come, with almost 20 years and hundreds of fires under his belt. He knows exactly what he just found. It's a delay incendiary device, a fire-starting tool that takes several minutes to ignite, giving the arsonist plenty of time to drop it off and flee the scene. The device Marvin found, is made of common household items, but it's somewhat sophisticated in its design. He immediately thinks that whoever built this thing knew what they were doing. He bags and tags it as evidence, but before he can do much else, he gets a call. A fire was just put out in yet another store

in South Bakersfield. When the dust settles, Marvin Casey connects with Scott Baker to swap information about their cases. All told, they're looking at seven fires in Fresno and the surrounding towns. They each occurred in the same three-day period as the Arson Investigators Conference. Most of the fires started in bins of pillows, cushion stuffing, bedding, or other highly flammable materials. Incendiary devices identical to the one Marvin found at Craft Mart are recovered at several of the scenes. The fires are clearly related, and they already span several towns. This is too big a case for the Bakersfield Fire Department to handle on their own.

So Marvin gets in touch with the ATF, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. It's the federal agency responsible for enforcing laws pertaining to arson crimes. He sends them the incendiary device and scrap of paper recovered from the Craft Mart fire. Maybe, if they're really lucky, the arsonist left a fingerprint. As Marvin waits for results, his mind runs over the case again and again. The proximity of the fires, the timing of the conference, the targeting of polyfoam pillows. This arsonist isn't trying to make their fires look natural. They want attention.

It's like they're thumbing their nose at the entire community of California fire investigators, saying, come get me, I dare you. Marvin gets out a map of the area. He plots the sights of the fires, marks the times they occurred, and draws a line between them. He takes a step back and is astonished by what he sees.

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responsibly. Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro. Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. You thought this was your run club era. Turns out it was more of a thinking about run club era. The good news? Someone's marathon training is about to start. Sell your workout gear. on Deepop. Just snap a few photos and we'll take care of the rest. They get their race day fit and you get a payout for trying. Someone on Deepop wants what you've got. Start selling now. Deepop where Taste recognizes taste. When Marvin Casey plots out the locations of the Fresno Bakersfield fires, they form a straight line down Highway 99. It's clear as day. Whoever set these fires left Fresno on the last morning of the conference and drove south towards Los Angeles,

almost as if they were in town just for the conference. Marvin is shaken by this discovery. He already suspects this arsonist knows a thing or two about fires, but now he considers the possibility that they're a firefighter or fire investigator from Los Angeles. Right on the heels of this discovery, Marvin received some surprising news, An agent at the ATF has finished processing the remnants of the incendiary device from the craft mart, and the arsonist left a fingerprint.

It's hard to overstate how big a deal this is. Arson cases are notoriously difficult to solve. In the U.S., 100,000 cases are reported each year, but only 15% lead to an arrest. Of those, less than 10% result in a conviction. The problem lies in the nature of the case. the crime. Since arsonists typically leave the scene before their fire is noticed, eyewitnesses are rare. More importantly, any evidence they leave behind, such as an incendiary device tends to be destroyed by the fire, which means prosecutors often have little more than circumstantial

evidence to work with. But in this case, Marvin has defied the odds. He hasn't just managed to recover the device. He's actually got the perp's fingerprint. Well, it's just a partial print, but it's complete enough that it should be possible to identify someone if they have a suspect to compare it against. But that's where the bad news comes in. The ATF has already checked the fingerprint against state and national databases and hasn't found any matches. It seems like the arsonist doesn't have a criminal record. While disappointing, this last part doesn't come as a huge surprise.

Marvin is already wondering if his culprit isn't your typical arsonist, but a member of the firefighting community. Driven by his hunch, he contacts the California Association of Arson Investigators and asks for the list of people who attended the conference. There are 242 names total. Marvin starts narrowing it down. He checks the list against the attendees' workplaces to figure out who would have driven South after the conference. He also eliminates anyone who carpool to the conference.

He knows from experience that most arsonists work alone. He whittles his list down to 55 conference attendees, then calls the ATF back and asks them to run the print from the Craft Mart fire against those names. The response he gets is less than enthusiastic. 55 is still a lot of people to cross-examine, and most of them are either receipts. suspected arson investigators or ATF agents. Marvin Casey is essentially asking the Bureau to question their own people based on his personal

hunch. It's a hard no. In the end, all Marvin has is a useless fingerprint and a map of fires leading straight out of his jurisdiction. The trail goes cold. For the next two years, the fires around the Fresno Conference linger in the back of Marvin Casey's mind. He knows whoever said them is a serial arsonist. There's no obvious revenge mode of it play, so the culprit is probably a thrill seeker, which means they're not likely

to stop. And while the Fresno fires didn't result in any casualties, they might not be so lucky next time. So Marvin Casey almost expects his arsonist to strike again. He just doesn't expect it to happen the exact same way. In 1989, two years after the Fresno conference, another seminar is held in Central California. It's called the Symposium IV Arson Conference, and it's set for March 5th in the coastal town of Pacific Grove. This time, the fires start before the conference even begins.

The first one is in Morrow Bay, two hours south of Pacific Grove, At 6 p.m. on the preceding Friday, an aisle display of pillows bursts into flames. A clerk manages to put it out before it can cause much damage, but the next day, another fire breaks out at the Woolworths in Salinas, 19 miles south of the conference. The building takes on extensive smoke and heat damage before it's extinguished. But it's not until after the conference that the spree really picks up. At 9.30 a.m. on March 8th, a fire is reported at a home improvement store in a Tascadero. Two hours later, a variety store in the same town gets hit.

At noon, it's a hardware store further down the street. Later that evening, a party supply store in San Luis Obispo catches fire. The people inside narrowly escape before the building burns to the ground. When all is said and done, the spree total six fires. all on their way to and from the conference. Most started in bins of foam pillows or other combustible materials. One incendiary device is recovered. It's almost identical to the one Marvin Casey collected back in 87.

And just like in 87, Scott Baker is an attendee at the Pacific Grove Conference. When he learns about the recent spree, he can't ignore the similarities. Scott calls his old pal, Marvin Casey, and asks if he still has that fingerprint on file. Marvin says, of course I do. He's excited about the news. The arsonist has struck again at another arson investigator's conference. His theory that the culprit is an investigator themselves doesn't seem quite so far-fetched anymore. Marvin asked Scott to get him a list of the Pacific Grove attendees.

He compares it to the fifth. 55 suspects from the Fresno seminar. This leaves him with 10 possible suspects who attended both conferences. It has to be a bit surreal for Marvin. He's known most of the people on this list for years. Scott Baker was at both conferences, for instance. And sure, Scott tipped him off about the second spree, but this arsonist does seem to want attention.

And there are other friends on the list, too, like John Orr, a fire investigator from Glendale. He trained Marvin when he was studying for his state certification. Orr was almost a legend amongst California fire investigators, renowned for his ability to spot a fire's point of origin. The idea that Scott Baker, John Orr, or any of the investigators on the list could be responsible for setting 13 fires is almost unthinkable. But Marvin Casey has harbors.

his suspicions for two years. He's not putting them away now. He calls his contact at the ATF and gives them 10 names. This time, they're on board. Probably because investigating 10 of their own people is easier to stomach than 55. But it's also possible that they're feeling the heat after a second disastrous conference. And it helps that the 10 names are all investigators with official public safety jobs, which means the state already has their fingerprints on file.

The ATF has the 10 prints analyzed and compared against the one taken from the Craft Mart fire. Marvin Casey waits on pins and needles, eager to find out which of his colleagues is secretly a prolific serial arsonist. Finally, he gets the call. The analysis is negative. None of the people on Marvin's list match the fingerprint from his fire. He's dumbstruck. He was so sure the culprit was at the conferences, but it looks like he was wrong all along.

He has no choice but to move on. But Marvin knows this isn't the end, because the culprit is still out there, and it's only a matter of time before they turn up the heat. On March 27, 1991, five stores in South Los Angeles catch fire within hours of each other. The worst one, is at DNM yardage on Hawthorne Boulevard.

An employee spots the flames rising from a display of polyfoam-backed drapes and attempts to put them out. But they spread so quickly that she's forced to flee, and the fire rages out of control. The entire building is destroyed. The ATF conducts an investigation. Based on their close proximity and timing, they conclude all five fires were likely set by the same arsonist.

Pretty soon, they make a connection to a larger spree of suspicious Los Angeles fires stretching back to Christmas. Many of these were set with similar incendiary devices made of matches, cigarettes, and a rubber band. And many originated in stacks of pillows or similar polyfoam bedding. The similarities between these cases have been overlooked for months because they occurred in different jurisdictions. But now, the ATF is finally putting two and two together. They create a task force whose sole aim is to catch the arsonist behind these fires. They dub their culprit, the pillow pyro. Their first step is to examine old fires from all over California to figure out just how

expansive this case is. They look for ones that match the pattern. Similar incendiary devices, set in bins or displays of polyfoam stuffing, inside stores while they're open to the public. They come up with 29 fires they think may have been started by the Pillow Piro. They're predominantly in the Los Angeles area, but some are all over California. They also stretch back over 10 years and account for millions of dollars of damage. Only a few weeks later, three members of the Pillow Piro Task Force head north to meet with Captain Marvin Casey of the Bakersfield Fire Department.

By this point, the Task Force has learned about the Pacific Grove arson fires in 1989 and the Fresno fires in 87. More importantly, they've heard that Marvin has a fingerprint. As he fetches the print, Marvin seizes the opportunity to tell the trio about his theory, that the fires were set by a firefighter or arson investigator from L.A. who attended both conferences. The task force members smile and nod, but don't give Marvin's theory much. thought. The ATF already looked at the fingerprints of the ten people who attended both conferences, and none of them matched the one from the Craft Mart fire. So they thank him, take the print, and head back to L.A. They're not expecting much to come of it, not until they have an actual suspect

in custody. Remember, the print was already checked against state and national criminal fingerprint databases to no avail. But that was back in 1987. A lot could have changed since then, so just to be safe, they have the print scanned, analyzed, and compared against all fingerprints in the Los Angeles database. And this time, they get a match. Ryan Reynolds here for MintMobil. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities, so do like I did and have one of your assistants assistants to switch you to MintMobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com slash switch.

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Task performance does not guarantee future results. When the fingerprint analysis comes back, the ATF agents on the Pillow Pyrot Task Force are shocked to learn that the culprit isn't a criminal offender, but one of their own colleagues. The fingerprint belongs to Captain John Orr of the Glendale Fire Department. I mentioned John Orr earlier. He's the legendary fire investigator known for his preternatural ability to find a fire's point of origin. He trained Marvin Casey for his state certification, along with countless other arson investigators. He was also present at both the 1987 Fresno Arson Conference and the 1989 Pacific Grove Symposium 4. And he was one of the ten names on Marvin Casey's shortlist.

When you hear that, your first thought is. probably Marvin Casey was right, 100% on the money, all the way back in 87 when no one at the ATF would listen to him. Your second thought might be, there's a problem here. They already checked John Orr's fingerprints in 1989, so what happened? The answer, frustratingly, is human error. The first time the print was submitted, a human technician compared it by eye to the prints of the ten people on Marvin Casey's list.

They didn't think any matched. But the second time around, a computer compared it against a database of thousands of prints. It quickly found a match in John Orr's fingerprint, which happened to be in the system as part of a 20-year-old application to join the LAPD. It's interesting to note, that application was not successful. John Orr was turned away after failing the psychological evaluation. But the ATF hasn't seen that application. They have no reason not to trust John Orr.

When the fingerprint is matched to him, their first response is that there's been a mistake. Maybe John Orr touched the evidence as part of the investigation. Maybe he was at the conference, heard about the fire, and stopped by to assist. But it doesn't take long for the task force to rule out this possibility. As they look closer at John Orr, glaring coincidences appear. Like the fact that he was always. often one of the first people to respond to suspicious arson fires because he just happened to be in the area, or that his partner was out of town when those fires hit, so he happened to be

alone, or that he always seemed to be able to identify the point of origin of those fires before anyone else, the skill that he'd built his reputation and career on. As they examine the evidence, the task force goes from incredulity to accept. acceptance to anger. This is a deeply personal betrayal. John Orr is one of their own, someone they looked up to and respected, someone they propped up when swapping hero stories around the office, a public servant who swore to protect his community from fires.

And all along, he had been the one setting them, not just a handful, but thousands, putting lives in danger and causing millions of dollars of damage. He was a wolf in sheep's clothing, and he pulled the wool over all their eyes. The ATF realizes this has massive implications for their investigation. Once word gets out, there's going to be a media storm. Public trust in California firefighters will tank. Their own agency will be a laughing stock for letting ore get away with it for so long. They can't change any of that, but they can get even.

by taking down the guy who made them look like fools. The ATF's case against Orr still has some problems. Sure, they have his fingerprint on a delay incendiary device, but it was found at one fire where little real damage was done. The timing and similarity of the fires makes it pretty obvious he set the others too, but there's no hard proof. It's still possible for him to slip through a prosecutor's fingers. So the Pillow Pyrro Task Force decides to survive,

veil Orr to try to catch him in the act. In the meantime, they tell his boss, the Glendale Fire Marshal, that they believe he's the pillow pyro. He is floored. Orr is one of his best investigators and has been for years. But once it sinks in, he tells the task force something interesting. John Orr is writing a novel, a fiction crime thriller titled Point of Origin. It's about a firefighter who moonlights as an arsonist. That raises a few eyebrows from the team. It sounds like Orr has taken the classic author's advice to write what you know a bit too literally. And if that's the case, his writing might be useful as evidence.

Getting their hands on a copy of the book is simple enough. They recruit another fireman-turned writer. Difficult in some places, maybe, but not Los Angeles. The writer reaches out to John Orr and offers to exchange manuscripts. Pretty soon, the Pillow Pyrot Task Force is pouring through their suspect's literary work. It's a gold mine. While Orr has changed some names and locations, points of origin reads more like a diary than a work of fiction. The novel's villain is a firefighter turned arsonist who's driven by a compulsion to set fires,

which provide him with perverse sexual gratification. The author describes this arsonist setting fires that are strikingly similar to ones the task force has already linked to the pillow pyro, including those around both arson conferences. The task force is over the moon with their discovery until they get to chapter six. In the novel's most disturbing passage, the arsonist starts a fire in a hardware store that kills five people. The scene is rich with description, down to the flavor of ice cream that a two-year-old boy eats while he and his grandmother's shop, and their graphic, terrifying, and painful deaths a few pages later.

But it's other details that catch the task force agent's attention. They quickly realized the fire in the book was inspired by one that was all too real. On the evening of October 10, 1984, there were three suspicious fires in Pasadena. not far from John Orr's fire station in Glendale. They all occurred within hours of one another, while the stores were open and full of customers. Two were put out quickly, but the third, the fire at Oli's hardware store turned deadly.

The fire spread with terrifying speed, catching the employees and shoppers off guard. Four people were trapped and burned a death inside. A 17-year-old employee named Jimmy Satina, the young mother named Carolyn Krause and 50-year-old Ada Deal along with her two-year-old grandson Matthew. John Orr was at that fire.

While 125 firefighters worked to contain the inferno, he was spotted nearby, taking photographs of the blaze. At the time, no one found his presence unusual. He'd been called to another one of the Pasadena fires earlier in the day, so they assumed he'd heard about this one too and stopped by to lend a hand. He did join in eventually. The next day, once the fire was extinguished,

he and other investigators spent hours sifting through the rubble searching for the fire's point of origin. The search was cut short when the sergeant in charge of the investigation decided the fire was caused by faulty electrical wiring. Or became furious. He insisted that with two other fires started so close the same night it seemed likely they were a series caused by an arsonist using a delay incendiary device. But the sergeant ignored him.

John Orr talked about that fire for years. He never let it go, almost like he took the sergeant's decision as a personal insult. Once they make the connection to the Oli's hardware store fire, everything changes for the task force. Orr has already taken four lives and shows no sign of stopping. It's only a matter of time before someone else gets killed. On December 4th, 1991, 42-year-old John Orr is arrested while leaving his house in Glendale. He's taken into custody by members of the ATF, people he's known for years and considered friends. In his briefcase, they find materials from making incendiary devices like the ones found at the Pillow Pyro Fires.

In his car, they find copies of his manuscript along with. with cover letters. It looks like he's in the process of submitting the novel to publishers. In several of the letters, Orr mentions taking inspiration from a real-life firefighter turned arsonist. This is particularly interesting to the ATF because some of the letters were written before the Pillow Pyrro Task Force was even formed, long before Orr should have known a firefighter was suspected. And in a more recent letter, he reveals he knew he, he knew he was. He was being surveilled and was a suspect in the case. He follows this by trying to assure the reader.

By the way, I'm not the arsonist, and the investigation out here continues. My work is fictional. As much as he might insist that's the case, the jury disagrees. John Orr has since been convicted of over 20 counts of arson, as well as the four murders from the Oli's Hardware Store fire. The state of California pursued the death penalty but was not successful. He received four life sentences without parole. Despite this, Orr continues to deny responsibility for every count of arson he's been charged with,

including the Craft Mart fire where his fingerprint was found. He claims he's a victim of an elaborate conspiracy by the state of California and the ATF to pin all of their unsolved cases on him. Orr's hubris is staggering, but completely in keeping with his behavior. It's the same kind of arrogance that would lead someone to write a book documenting their own crimes. He didn't just think he was going to get away with everything. He hoped his fires would make him rich. And frustratingly, for a long time, they did.

Orr built his reputation by finding the point of origin for Arr's. arson fires that he started and use that reputation to maintain a respected lucrative career. Meanwhile, he was betraying the very community he promised to protect. As infuriating as that may be, what's even more troubling is the fact that John Orr is not an anomaly. Meaning he's far from the only firefighter to be convicted of arson. It's difficult to say just how widespread this phenomenon is due to a last of databases and the fact that many arson crimes take years to prosecute, but there's plenty of evidence to suggest it's a real problem.

In the 1990s, the FBI conducted a limited study across seven U.S. states and one Canadian province. They identified 75 firefighters who were responsible for 182 fires. Again, that's just in seven states, barely a snapshot of the whole country. The motives of these arsonists varied, but the FBI reported excitement and a desire to be seen as a hero as some of the most common drives. Arsonists motivated by sexual gratification, like the villain of Orr's novel, appear to be rare, but do exist. Several states have taken steps to curb the problem, including criminal background checks, additional training, and task forces dedicated to catching firefighter arsonists. So far, the results are promising, but many states still don't have these programs. And that's frightening.

Because if John Orr's story tells us anything, it's that even one serial arsonist can cause massive damage. No one knows the exact number, but it's estimated he caused upwards of 2,000 fires. Perhaps the most astonishing statistic is that fires in the Glendale area drop by 90%. after his arrest. That's John Orr's legacy. He's a reminder of how a criminal in a position of power can circumvent the systems designed to catch them. After all, if not for that one fingerprint

found at a Bakersfield craft store, his blaze of destruction might never have been put out. Thanks for listening to this episode of Cold Cases. We'll be back next week with an all-new episode of Solved Murder's True Crime Mysteries. We'll see you then. Cold Cases is a Spotify original from Parcast, with executive producers Max Cutler and Drew Cole.

Our head of programming is Julian Bois Row. This show is developed by Mickey Taylor, sound design by Russell Nash, with Nick Johnson as our head of production, and Trent Williamson as our senior production specialist. Ryan O'Leary Jones is our supervising editor, and Derek Jennings is our writing lead. This episode of Coldplay,

Cases was written by Andrew Callagher, edited by Karris Allen and Giles Hofseth, fact-checked by Haley Milliken, researched by Mickey Taylor, and produced by Aaron Larson. I'm Carter Roy.