BURNED-Frank C. Girardot Jr.

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of terror. In sunny Southern California excerpt, a hardware store employee saw the flames as they roared toward him down one of the over stalked aisles. A group of employees ran by, and then he herded them toward a nearby fire escape. The fire was sucking all of the oxygen out of the room and when they got the door open, the group of panic Shoppers employees running for their lives were literally pushed out of the door as though they were shot from a cannon. It was coming coming fast

towards us. The flame, the fire, everything together with award winning journalist Frank C. Girardo Junior, or looks back at on the journey that took her from love to fear and the search for answers about how the father she loved could also be a thrill seeking predator, a predator brought to justice by a dogged investigator no one wanted to believe, A master manipulator who participated in the writing of this memoir and hopes that it would redeem him

in the eyes of his family and others who trusted and believed in him. The book that we're featuring, the Siveing is Burned, Pyromania, Murder, and a Daughter's Nightmare with my special guest journalist and author Frank C. Girardo Junior. Welcome back to the program and thank you very much for Greeninger's interview. Frank C.

of help her flesh it out. And I jumped at the chance, because, you know, it was a story that I was intimately familiar with and one that affected many of the neighborhoods around where I live. So her Dad is quite an interesting character. He is the most prolific serial arsonist of the twentieth century, at least he's been described that way. And his story is just absolutely fascinating,

primarily because he tells it himself. In a work of fiction or what he calls fiction, and his telling of it kind of led to his arrest and conviction and near sentenced to death row. Now Laurie. Laurie's relationship with her father is very complicated because she grew up believing

he was a hero. This was a man who would be on the nightly news talking to reporters about, you know, a fire he helped put out, or a dog he helped rescue, or a family he helped rescue, and later on in his career talking about, you know, his investigations

into major arson fires. So she saw her dad as a hero, and when he was facing the death notely, she's so leaved in him that she showed up at court testified on his behalf, and many of the jurors said later they were so moved by what she had to say that they decided that they would not seek the definitely for John or in this very complicated series of arsons that took place over about a twenty year period of time.

usually starts, you know, sometime between June and August. It doesn't have a set day, you know, it's not the first day of summer, and it's marked by very dry conditions, high winds for you know, massive fires. And you know, over the last two years, I'm sure you've you've seen

news reports about some of these fires. The what's interesting about LA and Glendale where which is sort of where this book is centered is that many of the homes in this part of the of the south Land are built right into these hillsides, and these hillsides are covered with you know, dried desert grasses, tinder, if you will, and creaso and other sorts of plants that you know, naturally burn and when they do, they burn hot when the wind blows it can you know, take a fire

of a couple acres up to one hundred acres in a matter of minutes, and you know, if there's houses anywhere near, you're not going to be You're not going to be protecting your property. You're going to be running for your life with whatever possessions you can grab. John Lord's dad an arson investigator in Glendale. He knew about

this stuff. And you know, his job initially was to go and inspect weeds strewn lots, to tell people to cut back their weeds watch out for you know, fire season, and and so he you know, it turns out that he was actually able to manipulate people that that didn't follow the rules the way that he thought they should. One of the stories that we uncovered for the book Burn was John going to the home of a city

planning commissioner in Glendale. I'll tell you a bit about Glendale in a fact, and telling the guy he needed to cut the weeds in his backyard. The man didn't feel that he had to, and within a matter of days he had a fire that burned, you know, down the hillside and nearly right to his front door. Of course, the man believed later on that it may have been

that by John Glendale. To understand Los Angeles, you have to envision it as not just being you know, La Palm Trees, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, but actually a collection of eighty eight very different communities. And those communities have in many cases their own police departments, in their own fire departments. They all have different standards of you know, what it takes to be a fireman or what it takes to be a policeman. And within those you know, eighty eight

communities our twelve million people. So predators, especially in the seventies and the eighties and even the nineties, could move pretty easily from communities to a community without you know, stirring up a lot of attention. And that was sort of John's forte He was very good at making his way into a place, not really being seen or noticed, and then you know, finding a way to take advantage of the situation where he could set a fire.

you know, didn't know this was going on. She saw her father through the prism of this man who was a hero, fighting, hero, always working, always out there protecting the citizens of Los Angeles County and of Glendale where they lived, and and her mom Jody Ah had you know, had her flaws. She hooked up with a with a man named Jerry, and Jerry wasn't the kindest stepfather that one could ask for. In fact, he was abusive to Laurie's mom and abusive to Laurie and her sister Carrie.

And they hoped they saw their dad, you know, as being you know, a savior perhaps. But you know, the thing is, the interesting thing is that John was so wrapped up in himself and he'll tell you this today that you know, he didn't really see what was happening with his with his girls or didn't care about it, uh and you know, sort of ignored their cries for help, and some of their cries for help, you know, weren't the verbal cries, hey, dad, come and get us out

of this situation. You know, they were they were running away, they were drinking at ay, you know, young age, they were engaging in you know, some dangerous behaviors because they didn't like the situation that they were in with their mom. And so they're living in this kind of oh you know, Cinderella asks sind situation and here's their dad, Tiro, and they're always looking at him as sort of being the man that can rescue them from being Cinderella. It didn't happen,

but that didn't keep them from loving him. They you know, went on trips with their dad occasionally, They you know, were introduced to subsequent girlfriends and wives, and in fact, you know, we got some family pictures of one of John's weddings where you know, the girls are there and happy, beautifully dressed, and you know, on the outside it disappeared to be an you know, a flawed but all American family.

him through his entire life. Basically that these this workaholic and also that before we talk about that his disappointment in trying to become a member of law enforcement, how that how that shapes his attitude, and how that helps him get into a career and with the fire department.

want for money. He after high school. John was in high school in the sixties and that was when the Vietnam War was raging really and you know, the options for a young man who wasn't necessarily college bound were a few. One of them was get drafted or joined the military. John decided to join the Air Force, and in the Air Force he followed through on a lifelong dream,

and a lifelong dream was to be a firefighter. So John gets trained as a firefighter in the Air Force and he's sent to Spain and he performs, you know, moderately. Well it's about that time too, that he and Jody get married and they're living on the base in Spain, and John is exhibiting a characteristic that will come to mark him for the rest of his life. And that

is working all the time. Here's Jody is his newlywed wife, and she never sees the guy because he's even when he's not on shift, he's out working, you know, palling around with his buddies or you know, looking for ways to make more money. After John was discharged honorably, so he came back to Los Angeles and decided that, you know, his career.

is a at that time a very complicated taest. Uh, you know, like a Minnesota multi Phasic Personality Inventory type of thing m mp I, and you know, the evaluators there, after looking at the task, UH saw that he had some tendencies that would not make him a good cop.

And he went and applied for a job with the Los Angeles Fire Department and the LA Fire Department, big city fire department. He did okay on a psychological test, and he did okay on most of the entry tests, but in the academy class. One of the requirements was that you carry a large ladder for a certain amount of feet and be able to put the ladder up against the window and then get up on it. And

John was unable to physically unable to do it. And again this, this inability to do this caused the Los Angeles Fire Department and to him, Hey, you know what, sorry, but you're not suitable. You're not physically fit for the kind of work that we need Los Angeles firefighters to do.

So thanks for your application. Sorry, so again. John walks away from a dream job, extremely bitter, angry, really angry at the system, angry at you know, the bureaucrats that are holding him back, and I'm kind of angry at this the city that he loved. I remember, I told you that Los Angeles is a community of many communities. And just because Los Angeles itself wasn't hiring, other cities were. Glendale, a neighbor of Los Angeles just to the north, had

a fire department and they still do. At that time, they were among the well, let's just say, the lowest paid and probably lacking, you know, the significant kind of training that a fire department would need in its personnel. And so John was able to convince the folks in Glendale that he was a good match and they hired him and brought him on board as a firefighter. Well, the pay was low, hours were long, and that meant John needed to keep his job as a security guard

at Seers, and he did. It also meant that, you know, every now and then he'd even take a third job on a couple of occasions, for you know, months at a time. He worked as a clerk at the seven to eleven, constantly looking for ways to make money. Some of that money, you know, went toward child support, you know, and later on alimony and those types of things that you know, John would need to pay as he went

from girlfriend to girlfriend and marriage to marriage. But he he just had this you know, desire to be out sort of you know, doing something. He earned quite a reputation as a security guard, he as he tells it, you know, he developed a knack for nailing shoplifters. You know. I mean, if you've ever been in the department store where they get a shoplifter, you probably have never even seen it because they do it very quietly, you know, right. But John would always make a big show of it.

And you know, he didn't mind being armed. He didn't mind chasing people out into the parking lot, he didn't mind scuffling with people if they took stuff, and he didn't mind. He will always want it to be the hero and being in a department store security guard gave him that opportunity. As a rookie firefighter, some of those what we would call law enforcement skills, you know, he

put them to work. There's there's stories of John driving around in a city fire truck and spotting vandals, you know, from a local gang, and you know, rather than calling the police department for backup, you know, John makes an effort to apprehend these men, and in one case, he even gets into just imagine this, right, He's in a car chase with some bad guys in LA and he's driving a fire truck, you know, and they're driving their their car and an accident ensues during the course of

this chase, and John gets out and holds one of them a gunpoint.

Los Angeles county. And then you talk about right about October tenth, nineteen eighty four, game two of the World Series San Diego Padres versus Detroit Taggers, and you said, the streets of South Pasadena were quiet, but a little fire started at a grocery store in Pasadena, and an hour or later another Pasadena Fire Department investigation tell us what happens on October tenth, nineteen eighty four with the starting with the small fires and what it leads to.

and you can get it going pretty good. So there was this a series of small fires and potato chip racks at grocery stores throughout what I guess would be the San Gabriel Valley, a communities, you know, a group of communities adjacent to Glendale, adjacent to Los Angeles. These fires are minorly destructive, but nothing major. And on this particular night, a couple of them took some grocery stores that were you know, minutes apart. But something else happened

that night too. There was a At the same time that fire department in South Pasadena was responding to a grocery store fire, a fire broke out in a hardware store, and the hardware store was called Ole's. It was a prominent chain of hardware stores in southern California. And this fire, although nobody knew it at the time, broke out in a stack of polypoam, you know, like Mattros type of

and pillow type of material. That stuff then was largely made out of a derivative of petroleum and gasoline that's highly flammable, and as the fire department was chasing down these potato chip fires and putting them out, this fire in the hardware store began to build, and it built rapidly. The hardware store actually two buildings that had been put together.

They were separated by a mechanical fire door so that if a fire were to break out there, this door would slam shut, feeling off you know, one area from another and limiting the amount of damage. Turns out that this fire would so massive and spread so quickly that it caused a mechanical failure in that fire door that trapped people inside. The fire grew quickly, it created a

like a weather system of its own. It sucked out all the oxygen from the air in this building and exploded in a force that, you know, many people hadn't seen. One employee of this store described going out, you know, getting crawling through smoke and heat to get out of the building, and when he got outside, his skin just melted right off. His hair was burned. People were panicked. They were running and trying to get out as fast as they could. Sadly, four people ended up being trapped

inside and killed. Among them were a grandmother, ate a deal, her son, her two year old grandson, Matthew Troudel, another man by the name of Jimmy Setina, who was a seventeen year old college i'm sorry, high school baseball star in Pasadena. And then a woman named Carolyn Kraus, who you know, essentially, you know, young married woman who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong

time on her shift. By the time the fire department arrived after putting out the potato chip fire fully engulfed, these people were certainly dead, and you know, it was a huge tragedy in the in the community. Anytime there's a big fire like that, the uh, you know, the powers that be are called out, and it just so happens that in the community of South Pasadena, arson investigations are largely done. The county sheriff has a large arsenal and explosives team, the which by now, John see this

is this is an interesting little thing here. So John Orr, also an arson or at least you know, fledgling arsen investigator at the time, thought that he should be the

lead investigator on this case. And when the sheriff was out there investigating it, the sheriff determined that the cause of the fire was electrical in nature and very quickly shut down any inquiries into whether or not it was arson, whether or not it could have been caused by something other than a malfunctioning light bulb, and you know, quickly wrote a report, put it out to the media within twenty four hours of the fire, and you know, for

all intents and purposes, the investigation was done. Well, let me tell you something about this fire. Fire was set by John Warren. So were the potato chip fires. They were intentional diversions. And he was very, very upset that the Sheriff's department didn't recognize his handiwork as an arsenist. And immediately within days, two other Olie stores, the hardware store of the chain, were hit with similar fires. Nobody

was killed in either of them. The damage wasn't great, but the investigators never linked them to the big one that happened at OLiS either. They just kind of sat there as being part of the pillowcase pyro, which is what they called the this arsonist and the potato chip arsonist investigations. So start having all these fires and all this damage, it caused the into the attention of the ATAF so at this point in time. Sorry, the atif is now, you know, kind of looking at these series

of fires. But everybody's accepted the sheriff's take on Olie's and not thrown it into the mix. What does or a huge tragedy?

clues how this massive fire had started. And he was frustrated in that by the sheriff saying, Nope, electrical fire, that's what it is. You're not going in there, You're not looking at anything. I'm telling the other way it is, and that's that the arrogance of the of the county sheriff's fire investigator really upset John, massively upset him. And and it only and it only upset him because he didn't get credit for the fire that he started. So it was, you know, it's it's really like for us

to think about this. It's odd, right, it's backwards. You'd think that a guy that you know was engaged in criminal activity would not want to have anyone discerned that he was involved in it. But John was certain they wouldn't catch him. He he wanted to hit you know, his alter ego, his you know, hidden persona to get credit for the fire. They killed four innocent people.

So a task force is set up, you know, in the communities of the foothills, places where you know fire weather is likely to destroy homes, and you know, John very quickly becomes an officer in the in the club, you know, and you know, starts to establish his himself as a respected arson investigator, affiliated with other arson investigators

and a sleuth. Yeah, you know, sort of legendary proportions, and you know, arsenal investigators from around the region at first, and then from around the state and soon from around the country sought his advice because he had, you know, been a part of his task force and sort of

proved himself as a pretty good investigator. You know, the intent was likely to you know, be able to be the guy that pointed out fires like the Olies fire though, you know, be able to go into another situation like that and point out, hey, this is arson and make the sheriff and everybody else that didn't believe it looked bad.

other how to investigate fire. And they go to there's a conference that's held up in uh, you know, several communities away in northern California, and John's invited to the conference, and on his way home from the conference, he lights several fires. In fact, actually it's good to go back there. While they're at the conference, John lights the fire that destroys a fabric store and and a fabric store that's

a lot like Olie's. You know, it has that polyphone in it, and the fire, while it's covered on you know television in the community, doesn't really get a lot of recognition for being an arson fire. John goes home from the conference and on the way home lights four or five more fires, all at fabric stores between Fresno and Los Angeles. This has this task the task force,

like we got you know, what's going on here? John is suggesting to his friends and others that what's happening is that there's a serial arsonist who knows that all the arson investigators are together at this conference and wants to show off. But something happened along the way. One of the fires that he set was in Bakersfield, California, and there was an old time arson investigator there by the name of Marvin Casey, and Marv Casey went out

to this. It was a dud fire. It probably did, you know, less than a couple of hundred dollars worth of damage at a fabric store and the main part of Bakersfield. Your listeners probably know Bakersfield as being the you know, the home of Merle Haggard and Buck Owens. But it's a big oil community. There's a lot of families that live there and it and it does have season investigators like Marv Casey. So Marv goes after this fire. He looks at it and here is the device. He

finds it. That's the fire. The device consists of a cigarette, three matches, a piece of rubber band, and then some lines notebook paper set up as a tenth. The way this works is the cigarette you let this back. Then cigarettes would burn, they didn't have retardant in them. The cigarette would burn when it got down to the match heads. The match heads would flare up. The flare from the match heads would set the tented paper on fire. The flame from the tented paper would go into the polyphone,

and the polyphone, being a gasoline product, would ignite. Well, in this case, for some reason, the fire didn't take the cigarette device. The matches and the paper were still there. Marv Casey knew that there had been a conference of arsenal investigators. It's just in the neighborhood. And notice that there had been fires on the road, the highway between

Fresno and Los Angeles. So he went to the ATF and he said, he asked him, hey, I would like to I found a fingerprint, and I'd like to run this fingerprint through the database of firefighters that attended this conference to see if there's a match, see if we have a fireman who you know, may be setting fires. And the ATF and other investigators were horrified by the suggestion that a fireman might be an arsonist. They told me, no, way, can't do it. This is this is outrageous. There's something

else going on here. Do not pursue that line of investigations. Well, you know, Omarv said, Okay, I mean, if that's what you want me to do, that's all I'm going to do. But you know, he knew his heart that they weren't going to solve these these fires, and he believed that there would be you know, more fires to follow, and he was right. You know, two years later, there's another again,

same group. This is the same task force of people that are looking for the pillowcase pyro and the potato chip arsonist and this guy that's making his way up and down the state. They meet in the town of San Luis Obispo and that's on the coast. It's a nice place, it's a good place to have a conference. And sure as heck, at the end of this conference, there are a series of five fires in hardware stores and fabric stores along the road between San Luis Obispo

and Los Angeles. So Marv Casey down to baker Field catches wind of this. It reminds me of what happened in you know, years earlier, in eighty seven. He's got that piece of paper in that fingerprint, and he again goes to the ATF and he says, hey, you know, you remember a couple of years ago, I wanted to run this against firefighters. You guys said no, but it's

just too coincidental that this thing happened again. And they and ats said, well, all right, but if you can narrow down the number of people that you want to run a print on, then will take a look at it. So he gets a list of firefighters from Los Angeles area that attended the eighty seven conference, compares it to a list of firefighters that attended the eighty nine conference. Finds an finds out there's a handful of them that attended both, and says, all right, here, I've got a

list of five guys, ten guys. One of the names on the list, by the way, is John Orr. He submits the list amidst the print, the ATF runs it and no match comes back. So now Marv's, you know, really scratching his head and it's just it really doesn't make sense to him. How can it be that here's these fires, here's these conferences of firefighters, here's this pattern of you know, hardware stores and stuff between LA and San Luis Obispo and between La and Fresno. He's kind

of stumped. AHF is kind of stumped, and John knows that, you know, and he's not really feeling the heat. And he's probing people in the Task force to find out, you know, what they know is there, you know, an investigation where he might be the suspect. You know, is there something that he because he's close to them, you know that he can learn about their investigation trying to

figure it out. It's not that simple though, for John uh and it's it's not that simple for investigators either, because it's going to be about two more years before they finally hook them up.

early June. So the grasses were tinder dry, and somebody set a fire and fire burned up a hillside and it was out. You know, this is an interesting thing. This fire was out in a day, but you know, by the time it was it was out, and you know, millions of dollars of damage, homes gone, families, uh, you know, taken out of their neighborhood.

somebody in the College Hills. And the film crew is a reporter of a cameraman and a Michaephan guy just happened to be in the neighborhood where this fire started at the time that it started, and they got, you know, some early footage of the flames as they made their way up this hillside. And this is just so great. The next morning, John Orr is at the TV station, the Fox TV station, demanding that they turn over the the tape that they that they had shot that day.

As you know, part of his investigation, and the man told me that, you know, he later on found out that the reason John, and it's obvious, you know, but the reason that John or wanted that tape was so that he could find out whether or not they caught him setting the fire. They were that close to him.

The people did see him, and he was very noticeable in an unnoticeable way, you know, because it's I guess it's that you know, that thing of you know, the dissonance that you get sometimes, right, you don't really put two and two together to keep so out to ask this this fire, now, remember this is a fast moving fire, and it goes, it blows right through the point of origin and up this hillside and into these homes so much, so quick and so fast that investigators were able to

go to the point of origin within hours after it started, and they noticed that John was dragging his feet, that he didn't really have a strong desire to go to the spot where they believed the fire had been set. And then when he did go there, he acted so unusual and suspicious that you know, later on it would keep people into that maybe there was something more there. John told reporters that, you know, he knew how the fire started. He had seen a device that started it.

But when his superiors asked him for it, asked him to write a report and asked him to do follow up and find a suspect, he wouldn't deliver. I almost refuse to deliver in an insubordinate way. And uh, it began to you know, draw, it began to draw some attention to him at the same time, Uh, Marvin Casey and the ATF roughly about the same time. A lot of little interviewing facts. But we'll just go right back to Mark Casey and the ATF and that and that fingerprint.

You know, they've run that. Eventually, they're gonna run that print again. And John knows it. And he also has been setting other fires, more hardware store fires, this time in Los Angeles and communities that are, you know, a little bit south of the city instead of north. And he's seen at the scene of one of them, like oddly, guys that knows him sees him at the scene of this fire, and people are starting to piece it together. They In nineteen ninety one, there's another one of these

arson conferences. This time it's up in San Luis Obispo again. And this time they have a pretty good sense that, you know, John is a suspect, and they put a tracker on his car. And it never police had never done this before. It was you know, new GPS technology,

and so they put a tracker on his car. And he's at the conference and he comes out and he sees the antenna from the tracker sitting kind of pointing out from under the bumper, and he gets in his car and he hauls the ass out of the parking lot, drives down to the San Luis Obispo Sheriff's department and tells him that there's a bomb under his car. Well, you know the ATF that puts his tracker on his car.

And the detectives are horrified. They're like, this guy, he's gonna blow up our you know, our tracking device, and we're gonna you know, we're not gonna get it. We're not gonna be able to follow him anymore. So they call into the the Sheriff's department while oars there and they tell him, hey, look this, we're the ATF. We're not going to tell you why, but there's a tracker on this guy's car. You can whatever you want to do. Pretend just play along with him. It's not a bomb,

don't do an investigation. We'll just we'll figure this out later. So so he was pretty slick and he knew that they were they were onto him, and they were able subsequently to that to get another tracker on and uh, they tracked him to the scene of a fire on the Warner Brothers movie studio, a lot where his wife at the time worked. And evidence is starting to pile up. And now now they run that fingerprint for a third time. And what they did was they expanded the database of

prints that they could run it against. And one of the pieces of information that they had was the l A. P D database. And remember when he applied for that job at LAPD at that time, he had to give him his fingerprints, and so they had him in there. They made him. They figured out that while John was in fact the guy that set that fire in Bakersfield, he was the guy that in fact set the fires

in Fresno and Sai Louis Obispo. And they showed up at his house and for this is a federal case and the rest of him in connection with I want to say, eight hardware store fires in central California News.

a named Mattessa that's instrumental in this investigation. And also, yeah, sorry, go ahead, what I wanted to do before we before we talk about it a little bit later, let's talk about the origin of Points of Origin. Origin. Pardon me? Why is he writing this book? And you talk you write about that he sends a draft of the book to somebody in the in the fire department, and they

forward as someone else. So it's an eerie confluence of events that are going on at the same time that he's this suspect and doesn't quite know it for a while till the surveillance is obvious to him. So tell us about the book that he's working on, Points of Origin.

So at the time that all this is happening, John is in the midst of writing a book, a work of fiction called Points of Origin, and the story of Points of Origin is about two firemen, one of whom is this amazing investigator named Phil lang Tree, and the other is a firefighter who happens to be an arsonist named Aaron Stites or Styles, I'm sorry, Aaron Styles. So the book is essentially a cat and mouse game between

Phil and Aaron. Aaron in chap there's about Aaron. There are these very detailed descriptions of arson fires and how and how the arsonists aroused by these fires, sexually aroused by them. And he's mixing you know, the images of large breasted women with images of flames, you know, burning up potato chip racks. When he gets angry at people, he finds ways to get back at them by starting fires. And he loves to watch the fire department respond to

these fires. In the heart of the book is the description of a fire that's a lot like Olie's that remember that fire in South Pasadena that killed those four innocent people, And Aaron in the book Points of Origin sets a fire in a hardware store uh in the in foam rubber mattresses, uh. And the fire spreads rapidly and ends up killing in the book five people, including a two year old. And there's a lot of little things, you know, So this is kind of inside writer baseball, right.

But you know, to make a good story, you gotta have dialogue, right. You can't. It can't just be description, description, description. You've gotta have some dialogue. So there's a there's a snippet of dialogue in the book where Aaron overhears a grandmother and grandfather tell their grandchild that when they're done shopping, uh, they will buy him ice cream at the baskin Robbins Monk turns out that that snippet of conversation wasn't just

made up. It's in fact something that the actual arsonists of the Olies fire probably overheard. John is shopping this book. He's desperately trying to get it published because his idea is that, you know, if he can publish this book, it can be made into a movie. And you know, he's living the Hollywood dream, right. He got his he got his book optioned, it became a movie. And now he's not just Arson investigator John Orr. He's you know, the next Joseph Wambaugh, right, a guy who has some

working knowledge of his profession. So one of the so his captain, read the book and immediately saw the strong parallels between the cows fire in points of origin and he always fire in real life. And you know, it raised many red flags for him, and it raised later on would there's other parts of the books that would that of that book that raised flags for others too. Now all of this is coming, you know, it's sort of being discovered at the same time the Feds are

working these cases up in Central California. But it's beginning. They're beginning to see that, you know, or have a sense of who John is, and they're getting a better sense of it from the book. And probably I think most stunning to all of them was after the young kid died, after the baby died, and the grandmother died, and the people died in the hardware store. In the book, The Arsenist says something along the lines of, well, they deserved it. They didn't get out of there fast enough.

So you're really looking into the mind of a you know, cold hearted killer, and people are starting to see that.

the arsonist. The personality of an arsenist is somebody who is powerless, and the personality of a rapist is sometimes also the personality somebody who's powerless. So you have this confluence of you know, really dangerous personality types all pent up in this man. His kids. You know, obviously his kids don't see any of this. I mean, his kids are you know, they meet the wives and the girlfriends and all the dogs that come and go from the house,

and you know, in all the different living scenarios. You know, they kind of, you know, like kids do. They compartmentalize and go with the flow and you know, figure out how to navigate their father's weird personal life at the same you know, I mean surfacely weird. They don't know the weird stuff. At the same time, you know that they're really reaching out in hopes of having a relationship with them with him, and he's not giving himself over to them to have a relationship with them, and it's

you know, it's a strain obviously on them. And again, you know, as you ask, all this is happening at the same time, right the same time he's starting the fires, the same time he's about to get caught, right and their relationship with his girls is becoming more and more strangth and he's writing this book and having I mean, I you know, I don't it's hard to like talk about it, and it's hard to write about people's sex lives and to talk about because you know, I mean, obviously,

you know, everybody has their own thing, right, but some of the things that he does, you know, would appear to be you know, rather out of the ordinary and certainly not you know, in the bounds of what might

be described as typically normal. And I think it comes I think that that the reason and it's you know, and the reason that I included this in the book, right, The reason that it's there is because it goes to the personality of the you know, the arsonist, right, the controlling personality of the arsenists.

I said, John, you know, listen, oberin Burbank and Glendale, there are people that believe that you're not just you know, an arsenist who killed people in South Pasadena, but you know you raped and murdered at least one woman and he's not. I no, I didn't. But you know you have this you know, you have this persona where you you know, you engage in all this kinky sacks and you know, and he he cannot slip out of this thing.

He turns it around. It comes about. You know, the investigators don't like him because he was so good at what he did. And you know, it's too bad they can't catch the real arsonists and don't know all the facts. That's the deal. That's that's John Or in a nutshell.

a good year. And it wasn't just you know, the incessant playing of that video, that horrific video of Rodney King getting beaten, but it was you know, the relationship with the Los Angeles Police Department, and then of course the trial of the four police officers, their acquittal and the riots you know that followed, or the civil unrest

if you will. And so you know, John Orr, the Glendale fire captain arrested for you know, eight minor arsons in the Central Valley didn't occupy a lot of media attention. He's now what happened was he he goes to trial and trial is not looking good, but ultimately he pleads guilty to an arson fires a single arson fire, enters a guilty plea to a single arsen fire and very a small fire I think could cost sixty four dollars in damage at a builder's emporium in North Hollywood.

for the Olies fire. Now, now this is going to be difficult. This is not an easy task because, you know, they're LA County's own investigator said, while that Olies fire, you know, that wasn't an arson and that was an

electrical fire, right. So there, so it took almost six years pieces together into a criminal case that La County could prosecute for the holiest fire, the four murders, the you know, multiple homes that were destroyed in Glendale, the fire on the burbank lot, and a couple of other uh, you know, hits or misses around the region. The court case, well, this is now, this is where I'm gonna stumble a

little bit. I don't remember all the statistics, but in the UH I was very fortunate that in the writing of the book, I was able to get access to not just all the all the documents that related to the case, I mean everything including by the way, most of the reports that John wrote as a firefighter, Wow, and in in the with the in the files that I had were were John's notes, and he took very copious notes on every one of the witnesses, on his attorneys,

on evidence that was presented. So I was able to you know, sort of synthesize in my memory, which you know, was fading having gone to the trial. There were certain things that I didn't remember, but I was able to you know, piece the trial back together and the investigation, you know, through all of these various documents that I was really fortunate to have. It was a I mean, I guess as a writer, you'd call it a gold mine. On top of that, we talked about points of Origin.

But you know, John also wrote a second book called Points of Truth, and Points of Truth is his autobiography and his defense in the criminal cases that he was confronted with. So Points of Truth, remember, points of Origin is, you know, so let's say two hundred pages, you know, I mean, it's super formulaic tropes everywhere, you know, you could you can figure out the plot pretty quickly. Points of Truth is probably about four hundred pages, very densely written.

It starts out with him, you know, as a five year old describing his first arson fire but completely not taking completely, not admitting that he said it, and then going through his entire forty five year history of as an arsonist, describing every fire that he ever investigated, describing every girlfriend, every wife, every relationship that he ever had, describing his feelings about being rejected as a police officer, his feelings about being rejected as a firefighter, his feelings

about his promotions, his superiors, the rests that he made when he was a security guard. And what's interesting to me is that after reading these two books, I realized that, you know, John has two personalities, just like you know, his firefighter arsonist and his good guy firefighter. And his books are the complete opposite of what they pretend to be.

Points of Origin, which purports to be a work of fiction, is actually a work of nonfiction, and Points of Truth, which purports to be nonfiction, is actually so John turns everything upside down in you know, in everything, and it's, uh, I guess, you know, in a relationship, you'd call it gas lighting. But you know it's clear that he's you know, super manipulative, and this is his way of being I caught during the course of So before writing the book, I wrote him a letter and I said, John, I'm

writing this book. I'd like you to participate. Uh. He said, I will if you can get my daughter to write me a letter and tell me that she's participating in it. Also, so Laurie wrote him a letter and said, hey, yeah, I'm working on this book with Frank. We're going to publish it. And we knew then the book would be called Burned, and we knew that it would be published

by Wild Blue Press. And U she told him, she said, Dad, I hate to tell you this, but you know you are not going to look good when this book comes out. So John didn't write back to her. He wrote to me and he said, well, my daughter says she's working with you. So all right, you know, ask any questions you want to ask. I'll you know, I'll provide you with any information that I can. And I'm hoping that at the end of you writing the book, at the when the process is all over, that that you get

to a point where you see me as being innocent. Okay, you know, I mean whatever I write, you know, I write the whole thing. And we correspond a lot during the course of this, and talked on the phone a couple of times, and then, you know, at the end of it, I wrote the maletter and I said, okay, John, the book's done. I'll make sure you get a copy of it. I just want you to know that your

daughter was right. You don't look good. And in fact, I'm more convinced than I ever was that you're guilty of the Olies fire and a bunch of other fires, you know that hurt people and damage property. And it took a while. A couple of weeks went by, and I get a letter and it's from John, and it's

about a ten page letter. The first three or four pages and him, you know, talking about how hard it is to be away from his family, and you know how he's done his time, and you know how he plans to do his time and the future, and you know how he might get out. And then he says then he you know, halfway through the letter, he says, oh, you know you're wrong about me. I'm not guilty. But since you think that, it's okay, lots of people think

I'm guilty. I just want you to know that I imagine that when you're done with this, you'll probably read another book, maybe two or three other books, and you'll want to talk to guys in the joint. Well, I've been in for thirty five years and I know a lot of people, including Bobby Bosley who was with the Manson family. So if you ever need a connection or a good word on your behalf, just let me know. Yeah, sincerely, John, Yeah, Yeah, manipulative run until the very end. Yeah.

certainly remember it. The death penalty case. Courtrooms packed and she comes in. They start asking, you know, all these questions, are your dad good? Yep? Dad a hero? Yep? You love your dad? Yep? Do you think you should get the definitely? Nope, you know I have. She at that time, she had a young son, and you know, it was a heartfelt plea for her dad's life, and it wasn't easy for her to do that. It's you know, she's I mean, she didn't ask for any of this, worry,

didn't ask for any of this. I mean, she's just you know, a regular person trying to grow up normal and you know she's kind of saddled with being the lone person who can save her dad. But I mean, I think as most of us would probably do in that situation. You know, she testified in his behalf and and I guess you know, if it was a gamble

for John, I guess it paid off. It helped him, but maybe a decade or so later, or a couple of decades after that, you know, Laurie began to think about, you know, what really happened, why her dad was arrested, you know what, you know, what had he been involved in? Then she had and she has children of her own, and one of her children has exhibited some signs of perhaps being mentally ill, and Laurie thought, well, you know, here's my dad. He's in prison for being an arsonist.

Maybe there's a family history of mental illness. Maybe, you know, I can ask him, like, hey, have you ever been diagnos with mental illness? Do you know what it's called? Do you know kinds of help I can get? Or is there a family history of it? And so she writes him a letter and explains what's kind of what's going on and what she's looking for, and John flips out, there's no there's no history of mental willness. How dare

you ask me that? It's ridiculous for you to say that, And uh, you know, I'm not going to talk to you if this is what you're going to accuse me of. End of the relationship and the beginning of Laurie's reassessment of you know, her dad's life, and she'll tell you. You know, she'll say, you know that back then she was ninety nine point nine percent certain that he was innocent at the time of the trial, but she'll tell you now that she's ninety nine percent certain that he's guilty.

And the the idea of the book, when we've talked a lot about John, the the idea of the book was really to look at the family, right, a family member, somebody who you know is an innocent victim, like Laurie or Laurie's daughter, and you know, there are people that

are in the wake of this criminal mastermind. You know, like he's got these targets, these people who don't even care about But then he's also got family and he doesn't care about them either, and you know, the toll it takes on them in their lives is not insignificant. And you know, as victims, sometimes the family members of the criminals are overlooked.

Laurie and Carrie. And Laurie's convinced that, you know, her dad, this guntating detective Sherlock Holmes guy, you know, will come to her rescue if she tells him what's going on at the household. And he doesn't. He wents out, you know, he says, Hey, that's the house you live on. That's the roof you you know I'm paraphrasing herebody, that's the roof you live under. Those are the rules you got to follow. Uh, you know, he didn't. He didn't have

time in his life for their problems. And uh, you know, I think to it. For Laurie, it was the beginning of the crack in his armor that would ultimately you know, and this is see in the book is written you know, in that perspective, like, you know, Laurie being completely divorced from the facts of what he's doing and having this relationship with him that's you know, not good to begin with, and slowly falling apart until they both end up in

the same courtroom. Uh, and he's about to be put to death.

it in a different way. And and he was very narcissistic, and his letters to the you know, to literary agents and who you know, people who were in the film industry are just chocked full of the sort of narcissism that you know that we now see on Facebook every day, but in that day was a was a quite bold form of it. And uh and and and the fact that he left a paper trail like that, you know that and so detailed and and so specific. Yeah, it

undid him. And Cabral, Mike Cabral, you know, this like a bulldog prosecutor in this case, you know, he he he tore it apart. And Mike. Mike also did something else too that I didn't appreciate at the time, and that is, you know, he got the judge in the criminal case to put kind of a gag order on

it so that neither side could talk to reporters. And you know, looking back, yeah, I'm certain that it was done because John was so charismatic and so manipulative that you know, he might have been able to, you know, through the media, sway the jury somehow into believing that there was no way he was anything but a hero.

So Cabral worked. Cabral really worked that case. He became an expert in in murderous Arson, and in fact, he had been sort of a an insurance fraud guy as a prosecutor before that, so you know, having that background made it easy for him to like, you know, turn the table and it's not really insurance fraud, but it's a fraud of the sort, right, you know, the fraud of pretending you're re firement while you're at arsonists uh

co council. There was a Shandy Flanner and the Flannery uh, nice young woman really adapt at sort of peeling apart uh some of the the science of of murder. And also one of the things that now remember, he's one of the things that they have to do with that prosecution. In the prosecution, they have to tear down the sheriffs lead Arson guy who said the only spire was electrical in nature. So so part of the prosecution required tearing down their own people. And and this and this guy,

this this Arson investigator. You know, he was an arrogant dude who was not going to you know, just roll over and admit that his conclusion was was wrong. Uh, you know, he was you know, nearly a hospital prosecution with It's fascinating really to how it all came together.

So I did have a chance to look at them, you know, but for averable, Yeah.

is a hero. He you know, in the book, we I talk a little bit about Sherlock Holmes and sort of how uh you know John or had a fascination with Sherlock Holmes and deductive reasoning and and fire investigations are largely, you know, a an exercise in deductive reasoning, right.

You know, you have to you have to examine the where the fire is, you have to examine the you know, these subtle differences and how things burned or just colored, all these things, right, And but separates Marvin Casey from just your average sort of detective is that he's not just looking at the scene of the fire and you know, deductively reasoning that you know, an arsonist came in, set up a device with a cigarette and some matches and a piece of paper and you know, lit a building

on fire. He's considering the totality of many other events and then deducing from that logically that there is no way that anybody other than a firefighter attending that conference could have set these fires. So having that fingerprint and going to the ATF, right then you know, obviously would have validated his theory had the probably had the ATF taken you know, done what they were supposed to do. And I think that you know, a lot of times when you know, in fiction, it's all you know, it's

a detective story, right. Fiction is always these great detective stories. Uh, you know, dashal Hammett stuff, Raymond Chandler, you know, on and on and on Rockford Files on television, they're always about to detective. But I think Marv Casey, this arson investigator in Bakersfield, is you know, kind of underappreciated as being,

you know, a great detective. And the guy that really, you know, brought brought the master arsonist you know, to justice, and it's you know, it's kind of just look, you know, kind of a you know, cowboy country guy. You know, I'm sure, I mean, you know, if you met him, you'd think he's the nicest guy in the world, you know, and you know, and very unassuming and yet you know, a master puzzle solver.

And uh and I there's people today in you know, in and around Pasadena where Jimmy Settina grew up you still remember him fondly. And uh and you know and and and and how close to his family was and what a good son he was and a loving you know, a loving kid who was on his way to success. He really was, you know, if he was going to be successful as an athlete or if he was going to be successful in school. You know, Jimmy Setina was on the road to something, and at seventeen, his life

was cut short. And you know the fourth victim, Karen Kraut, you know, she's like just a reg you know, regular working woman, showed up to work, hard working, just happened to be on the job on the wrong day at the wrong time. And you know, her sister h kind of suspected early on that she her sister knew John and suspected that that John may have had some involvement, but you know, she's never really able to, you know,

put those pieces together. And all these families to this day are you know, suffering from the loss of their love for day. You know, lives cut short for no good reason other than, you know, a thrill seeking sexual predator who got off on setting buyers. That's John Orr.

Fire Department firefighter. He was you know, laughed at for being the security guard who you know was rough with shoplifters, laughed at for being the firefighter who you know, tried to pop gang members, laughed at and cajoled for being the you know, the rule adherent who tried to bust the city planning commissioner. He he John a bridled under the yoke of authority. He hated authority, just couldn't stand it.

And he really couldn't stand anybody being above him. Uh And and what was worse is that a lot of times they couldn't stand him because he was insufferable. And yeah, and all this, you know, combines to you know, there's a reason why John Or is the most prolific serial

arsonist of the twentieth century. And and for many reasons, and you know, and they're all wrapped up in this person who you know, didn't live up to what he thought his expectations would be, you know, casting himself as a hero when he's a villain, you know, casting himself as a good family man when he's a serial philanderer and a bad father. You know, casting himself as this you know, great arson investigator when he's really just you know, a fire starter, who, by the way, is not really

very good at it. You know, you they say, you know, you talk about this kind of you think about it. He set a lot of fires, but only two, you know, I mean two or three of them were signific deiquantly destructive, you know, So I mean there must have been some you know, motivation at that. Of course, you know, his goal of becoming the next Joseph Bomba, you know, complete failure there. And yeah, I mean it's just it's an it's an interesting study in psychology, right, in forensic psychology.