Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - He Started Hundreds of Fires - The John Orr Story

Episode Date: November 22, 2025

John Orr was a respected Glendale, California fire captain and arson investigator who spent nearly a decade secretly setting the very fires he was supposed to prevent. Between 1984 and 1991, Orr ignited hundreds possibly thousands of fires.

This is your fix. I am your host, Stasi Schroeder. Welcome to Tell Me Lies, the official podcast. What's the most unhinged thing of season three? Stephen, because he's so evil. I do think he is misunderstood. You see everyone base consequences. It's intoxicating.

The writers just know how to trick you. There's always a twist in this show. Tell Me Lies, the official podcast, January 6th, and stream the new season of Tell Me Lies, January 13, on Hulu, and Hulu on Disney Plus. So this guy likes to secretly set things on fire. He also just happens to be a firefighter. Now the guy's name is John and John is 35 when this story starts and he's living in Glendale, California. But John has a big problem.

Even though he works as a firefighter and he mainly handles arson investigations, he also loves starting fires. Like he'll low-key set a whole ass building on fire and then later he'll show up to investigate it. And so of course he always figures out the cause of each fire because, you know, he's the one who secretly started it. And he does this a ton, like he sets all kinds of fires and no one knows it's him. And one day in 1984, John gets the urge to start yet another one. So he builds an incendiary device using a cigarette and some matches and flammable glue. Then he drives to South Pasadena to this home improvement store.

And there he goes inside and when no one is looking, he lights his incendiary device and he places it on a foam cushion and he just walks away and leaves the scene. And the fire catches and slowly it starts to spread and then kaboom the flames get out of control. And this creates a big structure fire and unfortunately four people die because of this. And later the firefighters show up and the sheriff's department rules the cause as an electrical accident. But John hears this and he's like, no, no, wasn't? He starts arguing with them like, no, someone deliberately set the fire. It's like he secretly wants credit or something. But anyway, soon he goes and he sets another fire. And then another

one and then another one. Then he'll later investigate and he'll pinpoint the cause with accuracy. And over time, he starts to get a really good reputation as a top arson expert. He even starts writing articles about how he caught over 40 serial arsonism. and how he understands how they think. So on the outside, John looks like the Sherlock Holmes of arson. He's always appearing on TV to reassure people whenever there's a fire. But in reality, he's kind of a psychopath. And the fires he sets hurt people.

And so three years go by. And it's now 1987. And one day, John attends an arson investigator's conference in Fresno, California. And while he's there with all those other arson investigators, boom, the urge to start a fire suddenly hits him again. So he sneaks away from the conference, and he walks into a pharmacy, and he plants this incendiary device and some sleeping bags that are on display, and he sets them on fire.

And, boom, the whole store goes up in flames, and it burns down. Then he sees a fabric store, and he does the same thing, like he secretly sets out on fire too. Next, he drives to a nearby town, and he sees another pharmacy and a fabric. store and he sets those on fire as well. And no, no, he's not done yet. Then he drives

over to yet another nearby town and in a craft shop, he hides his incendiary device in some artificial flowers. And kaboom, the whole place goes up in flames. So he sets five fires in one day.

However, this time, at the scene of one of the fires, arson investigators find what turns out to be a clue. One of the incendiary devices is partially wrapped in yellow paper. It's not much, but it's something. Not only that, but the captain of the Bakersfield Fire Department, this guy, Marvin, Marvin notices that several fires have occurred since that arson investigator's conference started.

And that is when Marvin starts thinking, maybe the person behind all this is one of the attendees of the conference. But, you know, he doesn't have any evidence. It's just a theory. And so he shares this theory with other fire captains, but they don't really take him seriously. So Marvin has to let this theory go, and the case goes cold. Now, here's where the story gets really crazy. A few years pass, and it's now 1989, and there's another arson expert conference happening in Pacific Grove.

And of course, John is there attending. And while he's there, he again gets the urge to start some fires, And so he goes and he secretly lights up multiple buildings in the area. And again, when the arson investigators investigate the aftermath, they find that the fire was started with the same type of incendiary device wrapped in a piece of yellow paper. Plus, this time, there's a partial fingerprint. And Marvin, he hears about these fires, and he immediately notices the timing. These fires also happen during an arson conference.

So now he's convinced that whoever is starting these fires is an arson investigator. So he himself starts investigating. And he gets a list of the attendees of the conference, and he compares the names to the list from the previous conference years ago. And he sees that only 10 people attended both events. And one of those people is John. So he then orders a fingerprint test on these 10 guys, because he wants to see if it matches that partial fingerprint that they found.

But, unfortunately, the system can't confirm a match. So, nothing else happens, and again, the case goes cold. Then two more years pass, and it's now 1991. And John's weird ass is still out there setting fires. And by now, he's, like, overconfident. I mean, he's been doing this for seven years, and so far, no one has caught him. So he decides to take it a step further and write a novel for some reason. It's called Points of Origin.

And it's about an arson investigator who secretly starts a bunch of fires while pretending to solve them. So the novel he's writing seems to be low-key about himself. Like it feels like it's based on him. And in the book he even writes about details from the real fires that he started. He writes about how this character starts a fire in a hardware store that ends up killing for people, which is exactly what John did years earlier. Also, the character in this novel is sexually aroused by setting these fires. So I don't know if John is also like that or what, but...

Ew. Anyway, while he writes this book, he keeps setting fires. He sets fire to a store in North Hollywood. He starts a fire in Glendale that destroys over 6,000. over 60 homes, he even sets fire to part of Warner Brothers Studios back lot, which destroys one of their sets. Now, at this point, John, he's set a bunch of fires throughout his career. Some estimates say that it's several hundred. Some estimates say that it's more than 2,000.

It's hard to get an exact number of how many that were caused by him, but it's a lot. And so far, no one has caught him, so it looks like he's just going to keep getting away with it. Until. Now, at some point, the fires have become too frequent to ignore. I mean, it's got to be the same person behind all of them. So, a special task force is created to find whoever's behind these fires. And this task force decides to retest the partial fingerprint found at the craft shop fire years earlier with a newer, more advanced system.

And this time, boom, the fingerprint has a match. John. And the investigators, they don't believe it. Like, they think surely John must have accidentally contaminated the evidence. Like, there's no way he's the guy. But then they investigate more. And they discover that there's no way he could have contaminated this evidence. So they start tracking him. Like they literally place a hidden tracker on his car. And they monitor him and slowly but surely they start piecing all this evidence together. And they question John, supervisors. And that is when one of them mentions that he has written a novel and that he's been trying to sell the manuscript to get it published. And so they go and they search John's

home and they find the manuscript and so they comb all through it and they immediately notice how similar the stories in his book are to the real life fires. So with all this evidence against him, bam, police arrest John. And I couldn't find a mugshot, but But here he is in police custody. And so after all that, ultimately he gets life in prison.