John Orr

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John Leonard Orr (born April 26, 1949) is a convicted serial arsonist who was once a fire captain and arson investigator for the Glendale Fire Department in Southern California.

Contents 1 1984 South Pasadena fire 2 Investigation 3 Trial 4 John Orr in popular culture 5 External links

[edit] 1984 South Pasadena fire

On October 10, 1984, in South Pasadena, California, a major fire broke out at an Ole's Home Center located in a shopping plaza. The store was completely destroyed by the fire, and four people died in the blaze, including a two year old child. Within a matter of days, arson investigators from around southern California converged on the destroyed store, and declared the cause to be an electrical fire. However, John Orr, as an arson investigator, insisted that the cause was arson.

Investigations later showed that the fire started in highly-flammable polyurethane products, which caught fire very quickly, causing the fire to flashover very rapidly. After his arrest in 1991 and subsequent conviction for a series of arson fires not related to the 1984 Ole's fire, Orr was linked to the arson by investigators due to circumstantial evidence and a highly detailed description of a similar fire in his novel Points of Origin that bore several almost perfect similarities with the real-life 1984 fire. Orr has insisted that he is innocent with regards to the 1984 hardware store fire.

[edit] Investigation

Captain Marvin G. Casey of the Bakersfield Fire Department (BFD) had long suspected that an arson investigator from the Los Angeles area was responsible for a series of arsons committed during the month of January 1987 in California's San Joaquin Valley. These arsons took place about the same time as a three-day seminar in Fresno, California hosted by the California Conference of Arson Investigators, and Orr became the prime suspect for these and other crimes when a fingerprint from a piece of yellow lined notebook paper found at one of the crime scenes in Bakersfield on January 16, 1987 was identified as coming from Orr's left ring finger. (The piece of notebook paper was part of a time-delay incendiary device.) However, it took years for this fingerprint to be identified as one of Orr's, and Orr was initially cleared of suspicion for this particular offense without becoming a serious suspect.

During March 1989, another series of arsons were committed along the California coast in close conjunction with a conference of arson investigators in Pacific Grove, California. By comparing the list of attendees from the Fresno conference with the list of attendees at the Pacific Grove conference, Captain Casey of the BFD was able to create a short list of ten suspects. Orr was on Casey's short list, but all of the people on this short list were cleared of suspicion when their fingerprints were compared with the fingerprint that Casey had recovered from the piece of notebook paper found at one of the arson crime scenes.

On March 29, 1991, Tom Campuzanno of the Los Angeles Arson Task Force circulated a flier at a meeting of the Fire Investigators Regional Strike Team (FIRST), an organization formed by a group of smaller cities in and around Los Angeles County that did not have their own staff of arson investigators. The flier described the modus operandi of a suspected serial arsonist in the Los Angeles area. Scott Baker of the California State Fire Marshal's Office was at that meeting and told Campuzanno about the series of arsons investigated by Captain Casey of the BFD and about Casey's suspicions that the perpetrator was an arson investigator from the Los Angeles area. Consequently, Campuzanno and two of his colleagues met with Casey, obtained a copy of the fingerprint that Casey had recovered, and matched it to John Leonard Orr on April 17, 1991.

Orr then became a serious arson suspect and the subject of investigation and surveillance until his arrest on December 4, 1991. Orr was alerted to this surveillance effort on May 3, 1991, when he discovered and removed a tracking device that belonged to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) hidden under the bumper of the vehicle he was driving. However, Orr was apparently unaware of the fact that a Teletrac tracking device was later installed behind his dashboard when he brought his city vehicle for service on November 22, 1991. Meanwhile, a federal grand jury handed down an indictment, and shortly thereafter Orr was present at the scene of a suspicious fire, so a decision was made to end the surveillance, obtain an arrest warrant, and effect an arrest.

[edit] Trial

On July 31, 1992, a jury in a federal court convicted Orr of three counts of arson in a five count indictment, and the judge in that case sentenced Orr to three consecutive terms of ten years in prison. However, Orr maintained and still maintains his innocence, notwithstanding his subsequent guilty plea on March 24, 1993 to three more counts of arson pursuant to a plea bargain agreement for an eight count indictment that probably would have seen him paroled from federal prison in the year 2002.^{[citation needed]} Meanwhile, however, on June 25, 1998, a jury in a California state court convicted Orr of four counts of first-degree murder from the 1984 fire with special circumstances in a twenty-five count indictment, deadlocking on only one of the twenty-five counts, which was subsequently dismissed at the request of the prosecution. When asked to sentence Orr to the death penalty, the same state court jury deadlocked, and the judge in that prosecution sentenced Orr to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Consequently, when Orr has finished his time in federal prison, he will be transferred to a California state prison to serve the remainder of his life sentence.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] John Orr in popular culture

The story of John Orr has been chronicled by bestselling author Joseph Wambaugh in a book entitled Fire Lover, and an HBO film entitled Point of Origin stars Ray Liotta as John Orr, whereas the investigators and prosecutors who sent Orr to prison believe that Orr chronicled his own exploits in a work of purported fiction entitled Points of Origin about a serial arsonist who happens to be a firefighter.

[edit] External links

• Court TV - The Firestarter - John Orr - In depth coverage with video, documents, and annotated links.
• HBO Films - Point of Origin - Official Home Page for the HBO movie about John Orr starring Ray Liotta. Includes a synopsis, information about the cast, and credits.