The Binge Crimes: Deadly Fortune - The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors

Episode Date: May 8, 2025

As each new fire burns, investigators are inundated with tips and leads. They begin to suspect the culprit could have inside information. Binge all episodes of The Arsonist Next Door, ad-free today by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge Crimes on Apple Podcasts and hit ‘subscribe’ or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access. From serial killer nurses to psychic scammers – The Binge is your home for true crime stories that pull you in and never let go. The Binge – feed your true crime obsession. A Sony Music Entertainment and Novel production. Find out more about The Binge and other podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Or visit getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen. The Binge, feed your true crime obsession. You're getting out of the lane. Yeah, the other, no, I'm sorry. Give me the wrong directions. This is Ken Williams. He was a local at the time of the arson spree and still lives in the area. He wasn't born in Phoenix.

He moved here as a young man from the beautiful state of New Jersey. Same place I'm from. You want to hear something funny? When my kid brother first visited me out here and we're getting into the Mount Preserves area he goes, what is this? He goes, is this the landfill? This is the landfill.

Oh my god, that's a real mountain kid. Ken is an older man with a square jaw, bright blue eyes, and the demeanor of a kind uncle. He's directing me and my producer, Leona, from the backseat of our cute red Mini Cooper, which he barely fits in. We're driving through the suburban sprawl of North Phoenix towards the striking mountain ranges that encircle the valley. We're on the way to the scene of a fire

that changed the course of Ken's life. My brain's fried, man. The heat's getting me. I said the same thing. Gazing up at those mountains as we drive, I'm struck by the immense beauty of this place. It's way greener than I thought it would be. And the preserves are teeming with life.

Cactuses are everywhere. Short ones, tall ones, fat ones, skinny ones, long dangly ridiculous ones that look straight out of a Dr. Seuss book. At night, coyotes and javelinas, which are like little wild piggies, will appear in your backyard. And you can hear a chorus of insects and owls hooting.

But you'll also hear the constant hum of traffic rumbling down huge six-lane roads. Phoenix is the fifth largest city in the U.S. These beautiful mountains we're driving past, they almost got transformed into urban sprawl. Back in the 70s, local activists fought hard to protect the mountains from development. But where those environmentalists wrote petitions, made a float for the Phoenix Rodeo Parade, and even took lawmakers on horseback rides through the mountains,

CSP is using arson. And the homes they're burning aren't even in the preserve. But driving past this peaceful oasis, I can start to understand why any development might feel threatening, and why some people might be driven to take extreme action against it. My daydream is interrupted when Ken begins to tell me a story. I want to say it was closer to Christmas, you know, like maybe the 20th of December somewhere around there.

In the year 2000, Ken is at home in his yard. I was just cooking up some chicken and some steaks on the grill for the family and I see an orange glow reflecting off my backyard window and I turn around I go oh my god a fire and I could see the flames shooting up into the sky and so I called the wife I said, take over. Ken hands over the barbecue tongs to his wife because he knows immediately this fire must be part of the arson spree. That was 25 years ago. Now I want to see the place for myself.

From the backseat of the car, Ken directs us to the scene of the fire. So I leave this gate here, and I've run up the street here. Ken heads toward the glowing light in the distance. Keep going straight? Yeah, keep going straight. So it was up here? Yeah, it's up over here by the red car.

We're driving into a cul-de-sac full of big houses. The location triggers a rush of memories from Ken. And as I'm running up this hill, I can see this thing's really igniting pretty fast. Ken is getting closer and closer to the fire. And I could hear sirens coming, and you could feel the heat as you were approaching it. Are you running?

Yeah, I'm running. Now other people from the neighborhood are starting to head this way. There, at the end of the cul-de-sac, is another large house under construction. The timber frame is engulfed in flames. I mean, it's going up like a Roman candle, because this thing is burning like real fast. Acrid black smoke fills the air. There's no way you were gonna be able to salvage

any part of that thing. Around the same time Ken was running up the hill towards the flames, Lieutenant Rob Handy gets a phone call. CSP's seventh attack. Immediately, he thinks of his prime suspect, the anti-development hermit. They've been watching him for weeks, lying in wait to catch him if he sets off to start a fire.

Rob calls the surveillance team. We actually had eyes on him, and he was in his home. Their main suspect is right there in his house, nowhere near the fire. That's another kick in the gut. Rob's best lead has gone up in smoke. It was a low point for sure. But then, a stroke of luck.

One of the neighbors saw a suspicious man at the scene of the latest fire. He was watching calmly from the sidewalk as the house burned. A guy they hadn't seen around the neighborhood before. The man was white, middle-aged, with glasses. And the witness said he was acting kind of shady. A sketch artist is called in to create a detailed likeness of the suspicious character.

Finally, they have something solid to go on. Someone must know who this man is. There's no time to waste. We were scared. We were scared for the community. We were scared what was going to happen. From Sony Music Entertainment and Novel, I'm Sam Anderson. This is The Arsonist next door.

Episode 2 Smoke and Mirrors Number two, smoke and mirrors. By December of 2000, everyone building houses near the preserve is well aware of the arson spree, including Danielle Sink. We had takeout from this wonderful little place called Chino Bandito. Chino Bandito? Mm-hmm. Chino Bandito Tickie-ow-dee. Love it. It's delicious, but we always remember it as the meal we had the night of the fire.

On the same evening that Ken Williams was working the barbecue, Danielle and her family were enjoying black beans and jade chicken from Chino Bandito. It's a local restaurant with a menu that's Chinese and Mexican. And Jamaican too, it's as little hodgepodge. Danielle is tall with long, striking white hair. She speaks gently and distinctly. I find myself leaning forward slightly to listen when she talks. At the time of the fires, Danielle is a doctor at a local hospital, teaching medical students

and residents. She and her husband have three kids, two boys under 10 and a daughter just two months old. So the whole family is crowded around the dinner table. The baby is in a high chair. We lived in a house that had gotten a little too small for our family, but we absolutely loved the neighborhood. So we bought some empty land a couple blocks away and spent a few years designing a house and saving up money to be able to build our dream house and then started building it in 1999.

By December, their new home is finally coming into focus. Danielle fantasizes about the views she's going to enjoy as she sips her coffee in the morning. Can walk out my front door and I can get onto the mountain and have a view across all the city and imagine all the people's lives going on in the twinkling lights you see. For Danielle and her family, the house is more than just a place to live. It was a I think a symbol of success. I was

successful in my job, my husband was successful in his. We were building this big house that was going to be something we were really proud of and we were excited to raise our children in it. But as the family chows down on the Chinese, Mexican, Jamaican, Tequiaoite, it's hard to ignore the elephant in the room. The story about the fires was pretty much everywhere. Everyone at work was talking about it and people would be saying, what happened? There was another fire.

There was a lot of fear because these were big fires going up with huge amounts of flame. Houses nearby them were almost set on fire, and everyone was really concerned that someone was gonna be injured or killed. For Danielle, as a doctor, the fear runs deep. Burn injuries are just kind of a horrifying thing, and so people who have very serious burns spend years getting multiple surgeries to recover from. It's just foolish and dangerous

and cruel to put somebody through that. And it's not just the most horrific possibilities. There's also the more mundane concerns that are grinding people down. Did we need extra insurance? Did we need to hire security? Did we need dogs to guard our properties? The preserves mean a lot to Danielle,

and she understands why people would want to protect them. But she has no sympathy for CSP's methods. Protecting the environment is a very good thought, but going about it in a way that is damaging, it doesn't help the cause and it doesn't help the Earth. I just thought they were being complete idiots. Danielle and her husband installed a couple extra security measures and tried to put aside their fears.

Up until now, they've continued to build with no sign of trouble. Danielle likes to take her kids to visit the new house and celebrate the progress. The boys even put up Christmas decorations in the fresh timber frame. The kids wanted to make sure that Santa knew how to come to the new house in addition to the old house.

They were worried that, you know, if we moved, there might be a problem there. As the family finishes off the last scraps of their Chino banditos, they're feeling festive. It's Christmas after all. And they're excited to move into their new home. And just at that moment, they notice a rhythmic thumping sound in the distance.

The boys are having fun, and we're talking. And then suddenly, my husband's like, there's helicopters. There were multiple helicopters that you could hear flying over. Danielle pulls the baby out of the high chair and rushes toward the front door. The entire sky over the mountain was blowing. It was nighttime and you could see helicopters

and flashing lights from fire trucks. The streets are suddenly filled with traffic. There was a line of cars going all through the neighborhood. Fire trucks are trying to get to the scene while a crowd of curious neighbors heads towards the glowing fire on the mountain. They want to see who's been hit this time. Danielle's husband already knows.

He looked at me and said, our house is burning down. The fire and the glow were so big that we knew that the house was gone. There's no way the firefighters could have saved it. The new house is only a couple of blocks from the old one. Standing in the street, Danielle can see the flames getting higher and higher, fueled by the desert wind.

She's worried for their neighbor, Tom. You could see the flames going towards Tom's house from the wind. And I was very fearful that his house was going to burn and if that burned then the mountain would go up. Over the next several hours, firefighters put out the blaze. Neighbor Tom's house lives to see another day. When the dawn comes, it's bright and clear. Just four days until Christmas. Danielle drives to the site of the fire to assess the damage.

The scene is swarming with people. Law enforcement, fire investigators, journalists, and neighbors are milling around. The mountain looked pristine, and my lot was just a burned-out black apocalypse in the middle of this beautiful neighborhood. The only thing that's still standing is an outdoor fireplace.

Everything else was charred and black and on the ground. A police officer approaches Danielle and said, Bambus, it's yours. And he held out his hand, and there was a little ceramic Santa Claus. He found it in the rubble, pulled out of the rubble, and gave it to me. Just the night before, it had been bright red

with rosy cheeks, but now he had baked in the fire back to just a plain white ceramic. Danielle takes the tiny Santa and closes her fingers around it, thinking about how she's going to explain all this to her kids. Santa survived, Santa's still going to come. Was there anything else you recovered from the home? There was nothing. There was nothing at all. Lieutenant Rob Handy of the Phoenix Police Department has arrived at the scene of the fire. He's still reeling from the loss of his main suspect, the anti-development hermit who was safely under surveillance last night as Danielle's house burned.

The more this continued, somebody was going to get hurt and possibly killed. Firefighters were in danger. When firefighters are going to fight these fires, they have no idea if there's a basement even on some of these homes. Basements are a firefighter's worst nightmare. If there is a basement, they could be on a floor that collapses during a fire. If the floorboards collapse, they'll be trapped in the suffocating heat of a fiery pit with no escape. This kind of accident happens often enough that firefighters have a word for it. They call it a widow maker.

As the risk to human life continues to grow with each new fire, Rob is under serious pressure to solve this case. And frankly, he's overwhelmed. We really felt like we're losing control of this thing. This latest fire at Danielle's place is, once again, outside the area that police have been surveilling. You know, I don't know. We were also in a bad spot at that point.

You know, we couldn't get ahead of this thing. We needed more resources. I knew we needed more resources. We were trying. Do my ears deceive me? Or is the proudly independent lieutenant finally ready to ask for help? So far, Rob's been resistant to accepting assistance from the FBI. But now it's obvious even to Rob that it's time to call in the cavalry. So when he gets a call from an FBI boss, Rob says, OK, come on down to the scene.

Let's talk. He came. We stood at the car. And we literally shook hands and agreed how we would work this thing over the trunk of a car in the middle of the night. He now has the full might of the FBI behind him. What Rob once described as a neighborhood problem

has officially blown up. And it won't be long before they're on the trail of some very juicy new leads. We gave them a good shake. I mean, we went through their knickers big time. It's springtime. And so that means our family's outside more, playing in the yard, running errands.

It also means we're away from the home more often. FBI data shows break-ins are more likely during daylight hours than at night. It was time for us to up our protection game. We chose Simply Safe. The outdoor basic package is also called the Lighthouse System. It was exactly what we needed. Smart cameras, motion sensors, entry detection for the perimeter of our home

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and get instant access to over 50 other jaw-dropping true crime stories. Plus, subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series on the first of every month. Search for The Binge channel on Apple podcasts or head to getthebinginge.com to subscribe today. Soon after Lieutenant Rob Handy accepts the help of the FBI, a huge joint task force is assembled.

Within a couple of weeks, we had swelled from 10 to 15 people working on it to about 40 or 50. Among the dozens of agents told to join the task force is Ken Williams, the local man we met earlier, who left his grill to run to the fire. Because Ken Williams is more than just a neighbor of Danielle Singh. He's also a special agent with the FBI. And now his

bosses want him to investigate the case unfolding in his very own neighborhood. It's not a democracy. You know, you got to do what the boss tells you to do. At first, Ken is resistant to the idea of joining the arson task force, because he already has his hands full with another case. I have a confidential human source who was a member of a terrorist organization. Ken has a source who's a member of a terrorist group, and he's paying this source for information. This guy was making a pretty substantial chunk of change a month because he would give us good information.

The source has just given Ken a new lead. He told me about these two individuals that were going to school at Embry-Riddle University up in Prescott, Arizona. Prescott is a town about two hours north of Phoenix. My informant told me that these two guys were very much active in recruiting young Muslim males around the world. Recruiting them into terrorist organizations. I remember the informant telling me specifically,

he said, these guys are the real deal. Ken trusts his source. His gut tells him to follow this lead and look into these two guys who may be recruiting young Muslim men to become terrorists. And that's why he's trying to avoid getting pulled onto the arson case.

But it's not long before one of his bosses beckons him over with a certain look in his eye. He's standing by his door and he says, come on, I need to talk to you. He pulled me into his office. Ken knows immediately where this is going. These fires were getting out of hand. We thought it was an eco-terrorist group and it was like whole hands were called on deck. His boss tells him, we need you on the Phoenix case.

Though we did try, we weren't able to reach his former boss for an interview. Ken recognizes that the eco-terror case is important, but pushes back. After all, he's an international terror expert, and this is a domestic case. If I'm a heart surgeon, don't ask me to perform lung surgery. I communicated that to the bosses, but it wasn't the boss. I wasn't calling the shots. His boss is unmoved. And while it might sound crazy to prioritize

a local arson over possible Islamic terrorists, remember, this is before the war on terror. In the Y2K era, lefty groups and eco-terrorists are one of the FBI's top priorities. Ken is fighting a losing battle. I had to go do what I had to do on the arson case. He joins the FBI's arson team, led by special agent Terry Kearns, who you met last episode. And for Rob Handy and Terry Kearns, this is their lucky day.

Because Ken Williams really is one of the best. And they need backup. I didn't have the experience to do what I was doing, quite honestly. We needed help. This is a bigger case than either of them have ever led before. They now have huge resources at their disposal. Heavily armed SWAT teams and a hostage rescue team have joined surveillance efforts in the preserves. They would sit in the preserve overnight

with night vision goggles and all that. All this surveillance was costing them up to $40,000 a week. But even with all these resources, they still have no one to point their guns at. They don't have any strong leads. And apart from the notes left behind by CSP, there's not much evidence either. Our joke with the fire department was that they wash all the evidence away because what do you do?

You put the wet stuff on the red stuff, right? The one thing they do have is that sketch of the suspect reported at the scene of the latest fire. It's a detailed depiction of a white, middle-aged man with glasses. When Ken, a white, middle-aged man with glasses, arrives at the task force HQ, he sits down for the daily briefing. Copies of the sketch are passed around. When I saw the composite sketch, I said,

you know, that's me. This witness is describing me. And it stands to reason, because I was one of the first ones on the scene. That's right. The sketch depicts not the arsonist, but one of their own agents. I'll tell you, I don't know if it was one of our artists

or one of the PD artists that did it, but it was a very good picture. After having a good laugh, or possibly a cry, the team decides to refocus on one of their last remaining sources of information. We set up a 1-800 hotline so that people could call in if they had tips of anything that they thought might be helpful. And the Phoenix community is all over that tip line. We had a lot of phone calls with leads coming in.

I think we had thousands. We got tips all the time, constantly. Some of them you look at more seriously and some you can rule out right away. They left early in the morning one morning and they were wearing dark clothing and they must have done it because there would be a fire that day. We would rather somebody call something in and go run it out and it be nothing than to not be that call and it was the one call that might give us the break that we needed. Imagine the paranoia that must have been running through the community by this point. Reading through some of the leads that got called in through the tip line, so many of

them were just complete shots in the dark. A park ranger called in to report some graffiti he found in the preserve. Someone spray painted, quote, civic legacy andromeda success. It's not CSB, but it does have a C and there's also a S. And then there's a young guy spotted with a painting in the back of his car window. It says, you build it, we burn it. The same tagline used by the Earth Liberation Front and CSP.

They tail this kid to the coffee shop where he works, drag him out back and give him the shakedown. He's a journalism student. He swears that he just thinks it's a cool phrase, nothing more. Sounds pretty suspicious, right? But it turns out he's telling the truth. He's just a kid with a subversive taste in art.

And here's the thing, all of us do things that can look kind of suspicious in the right context. look kind of suspicious in the right context. In my career, just over 20 years, there was probably only one or two times I had a case where there wasn't a skeleton in the closet. I mean, if you go look in anybody's trash can on a consistent basis for a couple months,

you're gonna find weird stuff. It just teaches you people are strange. You can't just go down one rabbit hole. You kind of have to try to look at as many possibilities as you can. Veteran investigator Ken Williams has some advice for his young teammates. Start diving down a few of the most promising rabbit holes to see if any of the little bunnies who live there hate mansions and love fire. Rabbit hole number one. We got contacted about this particular female firefighter.

A firefighter suspected of arson. This could be it. When either a bunch of cops get together or a bunch of firefighters get together and they're going to point the finger at one of their own, you got to take that very seriously. Everyone knows about the thin blue line, and I'm guessing that goes for the guys in the red suits too. The law enforcement crowd rarely rats each other out,

even when they commit serious crimes. So when they do break ranks, it catches Ken's attention. And there's actually a well-documented connection between firefighters and arson. Could this woman be part of CSP? An eco-radical working from inside the system? She's made comments about they shouldn't be building along the preserves, that type of stuff.

She was off on a lot of the days that these fires took place. So it all started to build up. Sounds promising. Her colleagues also have some less concrete evidence. She kind of had like a goofy reputation. Outdoor enthusiast, mountain biker. That gets you excited. She was a mountain biker? Oh yeah. But it's not just super vague personality profiling. Whoever is lighting these fires, they are always one step ahead. Maybe that does point to an inside job. As soon as we'd have surveillance on a mile area, an arson would happen just outside of that surveillance area.

Agent Terry Kearns again. We would expand the surveillance area, and arson would happen just outside, to the point where we really started wondering, is there a leak? With all this in mind, Ken leaps into action and investigates the female firefighter. He brings her in for questioning.

She gave us some alibi stuff. We told this very serious matter. If you're lying to us, we'll put you in jail. But it turns out her alibis, they're solid. She was not at the scene of the fires. So we ruled her out. I do wonder whether the fact that she was a woman working in a pretty male-dominated field might just have a little something to do with the huge amount of scrutiny she received

from her colleagues. Ken is at home, lying in bed next to his wife. Kids are asleep when the phone rings. My wife was used to it. Her dad was a cop. But she's now an ex-wife, so maybe she didn't get used to it. Ken stumbles out to the landline. It's headquarters.

A tip has come in from a security guard who spotted a suspicious man inside a construction site on the edge of the preserve. He catches a guy semi-naked in this building under construction masturbating. Ken rushes down to the station. When you get something like that, you don't even care about sleeping. Sleep goes out the door. You can go 48 hours without sleep, you know? When he gets there, the officer on duty briefs him about this new suspect they just arrested at a construction site. He's a local man with a complicated past, once accused of murder.

It was his fiance, and it was a suspicious drug overdose. They thought maybe he had something to do with it, but they never proved anything there. Could this local guy be setting fires for sexual gratification? Because believe it or not, that sort of thing is well-documented. Some convicted arsonists have set fires because it turns them on. Because, believe it or not, that sort of thing is well documented.

Some convicted arsonists have set fires because it turns them on. Obviously, as an investigator, when you see that a person was masturbating in a house that's under construction in the middle of the night, yeah, you take that really serious. Rabbit hole number two. Ken starts digging into who this guy really is. We were going strong after him. Ken grills the man on where he was during each of the fires. He gives Ken alibis for all of them.

Then he throws himself on Ken's mercy. Yes, he masturbates in construction sites, but he's not an arsonist. He can explain. He gets sexually excited when he smells fresh cut wood. And he says it's an issue for him. I like to think of myself as a pretty open-minded guy, and I definitely don't want to kink-shame anybody. But the smell of freshly cut wood? That's a new one for me. Ken isn't satisfied. He tracks down the man's friends and interviews his current wife. And according to her, Apparently this wasn't the first time he's ever done anything like that.

Ken methodically checks out each of the man's alibis. And just like the firefighter, they're solid. He's still a problem, but he's not the arsonist. I think about what this process must have been like for these two suspects to find themselves in the crosshairs of a major FBI investigation. We can make your life miserable. Nobody wants to be under the microscope of the FBI. Trust me.

It is ruthless. I take that responsibility very seriously. So before I unleashed the Kraken on you, you know, I got to be very certain that I really think that you're the bad person. The guy jerking off in the construction site, he kind of had it coming. But the firefighter? The FBI might have ruled her out, but she still had to go to work the next day with the same colleagues who said she had a goofy reputation and therefore might be an arsonist.

The firefighter and that local guy are just two of the many leads the team chases down. All of them end up in dead ends. Even with all of Ken's experience, the investigators are still struggling to find the needle in that haystack of tips. But they're not just relying on tips. Investigators take more proactive measures, too. Rabbit Hole number three. They target the small but mighty cohort

of environmental activists in Phoenix. And not all of them appreciate the attention. Because we all know it's bullshit. Every one of us. We all know each other. Next thing you know, we got a knock on the door. I open the door and it's the FBI. I open the door and it's the FBI.

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We didn't. This is Scott Meyer. He's tall, a bit more put together than you'd expect rich people. If some rich person got their house burned down, who gives a shit? We didn't. This is Scott Meyer. He's tall, a bit more put together than you'd expect from a lifetime activist. And he has a sort of permanently bemused expression on his face. The office in his house is full of anti-capitalist memes, printed out and stuck on the walls. Got some cool stuff here. Yeah, this cool stuff, quote unquote. He's been an environmental activist in Phoenix for decades.

His specialty is taking polluters to court, and he's really good at it. We've put over 95 people in federal court, won every one of them. We just scared the hell out of everybody. Scott lives with his longtime collaborator, Steve. They run a group called Don't Waste Arizona, and they're both frustrated at the narratives

bringing up in the news. About environmentalists being eco-terrorists, which is just pure bullshit. -♪ Next thing he knows, Scott hears a knock at the door. He cracks it open, and his hears a knock at the door. He cracks it open and his dog goes crazy in the hallway. Outside are two serious looking dudes.

$3,000 suits, you know, and this one guy had a magenta suit. I was just like, wow, it's a really nice suit. It's the FBI. The agents introduce themselves and come inside. Scott drags his dog out of the room to protect that gorgeous suit from dog hair. Once they've settled down, the interrogation begins. They were like, your name came up, you know, concerning these fires. And he says, yeah, well, you heard about them.

He says, well, you ever go up there, you know, to that area? Well, no, why would we? We don't live up there. Scott and Steve live in the south of Phoenix, which is completely on the other side of town from where the fires are taking place. One FBI agent's attention is drawn to the wall of Scott's house.

There's a big map of Phoenix covered with colored pins, like something straight out of a true crime show. They were studying that and looking at that, and they just didn't know what to think, you know? Scott told me the map actually shows the location of pollution sites for lawsuits they're working on. There's the copper smelter releasing toxic emissions into the air,

a toxic waste incinerator that they're trying to stop from being built. There's low-income communities affected by a poisonous chemical fire, which is being completely ignored by the EPA. Honestly, shout out to Scott Meyer and Don't Waste Arizona. I was really impressed with their work.

But most of it focused on polluters. Developers building on the preserve in the wealthy Phoenix suburbs couldn't be lower on Scott's list of concerns. We didn't care. We didn't give a shit. We deal like mining towns, you know, where people got cancer and they're poisoned and the EPA and the state government

isn't doing anything to help them. Five-year-old kids are running around with tumors in their head. These are the kinds of things that concerned us. These were our issues. Scott explains all of this to the magenta suit and his colleague. I kept asking him, who gave you our name? You know, why are you here? What makes you think that we would have anything to do with this? And besides, you know, it's not like the FBI

isn't aware of us. This, I should mention, is not Scott's first rodeo with the FBI. If you're an environmentalist or a peace activist, you're on surveillance almost from immediate start. Scott isn't surprised the FBI is at his door. He's surprised the FBI doesn't already know he's not the arsonist from all the phone tapping

and surveillance he says they're doing on him. Whenever they would decide to listen in, it would click. It had this audible click and you pick up the receiver and of course there's no dial tone. I had fun with it. I banged some pots and pans by the receiver. I'd pick it up and say some really crass things about their mother,

and about 15 seconds later they'd hang up. The agents question them for about half an hour and get nowhere. We don't know anything. But what about CSP, the coalition to save the preserves? That's not a real group. That's not any of us. We know them all at that time.

I mean, we were in the center of it all. And it's a very small group of people. Scott says no one in his circle has heard of this new radical group, the coalition to save the preserves. It was like, who is this group? We never heard of that. So it was real obvious to me that this was just a ploy.

Scott's theory is that it's not a group of people. It's just one guy taking advantage of the FBI and the media obsession with eco-terrorism. He sends the agents packing with some free advice. We told him, what you're looking for is somebody in the neighborhood who is upset about these new homes are coming up, ruining his view. You're looking for a local. As the new year approaches, 2001, the pressure to catch CSP is starting to take its toll on the investigators and their families. My wife and kids were concerned about this. Who are these people? Where are they coming from? It's got to be one of our community members. I mean, you know, they know the neighborhood.

It was terrorizing the community. There's no question about it. It seems like nowhere is safe. Ken goes to church one Sunday and is distracted from the sermon. He glances suspiciously at his fellow worshipers. This person to the right of me or the left of me or behind me or in front of me, I'm sure every other member of the community was having those type of thoughts too. You see somebody filling up their gas can, where are they going with this bucket of gasoline, you know? How do I know they're going to be putting it in their lawnmower? Special Agent Terry Kearns is feeling the squeeze too.

I had been out to dinner with some friends and was driving home. It was dark. And the windows were up because it was cold. And I think it must have just come in through the vents. And I smelled that smell of something burning. And I freaked out. Immediately, Terry gets her boss on speakerphone.

And I'm like, there's another arson. Where is this at? Why haven't we got a call? I think he thought I lost it. He's like, calm down, we haven't got any calls. Just that smell triggered those arson sites. You really put your life into cases like this. And while the investigators flounder, the media spotlight is getting brighter and brighter. With each public note or every news story,

it was almost like a kick in the gut. And then, just at that moment of maximum stress, the investigative team is dealt another blow. The vibe we got was that law enforcement was very upset. Next time on The Arsonist Next Door, a 28-year-old journalist gets a mind-blowing scoop. Meeting The Arsonists right under their noses was probably pretty embarrassing.

Don't want to wait for that next episode? You don't have to. Unlock all episodes of The Arsonist Next Door ad-free right now by subscribing to the Binge Podcasts channel. Search for The Binge on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page. Not on Apple? Head to GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you listen. As a subscriber, you'll get binge access to new stories

on the first of every month. Check out the Binge channel page on Apple podcasts or GetTheBinge.com to learn more. ["The Binge"] The Arsonist Next Door is an original production of Sony Music Entertainment and Novel. This series was written and reported by me, Sam Anderson. It was produced and reported by Leona Hamid. Our assistant producer is Madeline Parr. Research by Zayanna Youssef. Additional production from Tom Wright and G. Styles.

Our editor is Dave Anderson. Additional story editing from Max O'Brien. From Novel, our executive producers are Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan. From Sony Music Entertainment, our executive producers are Katherine St. Louis and Jonathan Hirsch. Sound design, mixing and scoring by Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempson. Our original theme song was composed and performed by Nicholas Alexander. Production management from Sheree Houston,

Joe Savage, Sarah Tobin and Charlotte Wolf. Fact checking by Dania Solayman. Story development by Nell Gray-Andrews. Novels Director of Development is Selena Metta, and Willard Foxton is Novels Creative Director of Development. Special thanks to Jen Feifield, Libby Goff, Bob Kahn, Xander Adams, Anthony Wallace, Steve Ackerman,

Carolyn Sher-Levin and the team at Reviewed and Cleared, Mario Caciotolo, Isaac Fisher, Kevin Lee Carras, Jess Swinburne, Sunny Mar, Carly Frankel, and the team at WME. I'm not gonna lie, I'm not gonna lie