The Firestarter
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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out at patreon.com slash forensic tales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. Throughout the 80s and 90s, California was ravaged by fires. Thousands of fires burned brush, buildings, homes, and sadly, innocent people.

It seemed California's environment was made to be burn. Until a clever fire investigator noticed a pattern. It wasn't the climate. Oh no, much worse. A serial arsonist is torching the state. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 79, The Fire Starter. ♪

Thank you.

Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell. Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.

If you're interested in supporting the show, getting early access to weekly episodes, bonus material, ad-free episodes, merchandise, and much more, consider visiting our Patreon page at patreon.com slash Forensic Tales.

Another great way you can help support the show is by leaving us a positive rating with a review or telling friends and family who love true crime about us. Now, let's jump right into this week's case. On October 10th, 1984, in Pasadena, California, a fire erupted inside an Oles hardware store. The store was filled with dozens of customers and employees.

Then, smoke started to fill the store. Employees scrambled to get customers out, but within five minutes of smelling smoke, the 12,000-square-foot store was completely engulfed in flames. Many of the employees and customers safely made their way out of the store in time, but not everyone was as lucky. Four people were trapped and killed in the fire.

The victims included a two-year-old child, Matthew Tradile, his grandmother, Ada Deal, and 26-year-old mother of two, Carolyn Krause, as well as 17-year-old employee of the store, Jimmy Satina. All four victims died of smoke inhalation. Billy and Ida promised their grandson, Matthew, that they would take him to go get ice cream after their quick trip to the hardware store.

They arrived at the store at 7.10 p.m. Ida and Matthew decided to go down a different aisle while Billy walked to another part of the store. Billy's decision to walk to another part of the store ultimately saved his life, but sadly, not for his wife and grandson. The two other victims were in their prime of their lives.

26-year-old employee Carolyn Krause only went to the store that night to get a set of house keys made for her mother. 17-year-old employee Jimmy Satina was a high school senior and a star athlete. The Chicago Cubs were even out scouting him to play baseball as an outfielder.

As soon as firefighters arrived at the hardware store to put the fire out, fire investigators began trying to figure out what caused the fire. The team of fire investigators was led by L.A. County's experienced fire investigator, John Orr. Orr had a reputation throughout Los Angeles County that stretched over two decades. When there was a suspicious fire anywhere throughout L.A. County, John Orr was the guy they called in.

He had an uncanny ability to uncover the truth behind even the most mysterious of fires. John Orr had a very unique way of investigating. He knew a lot about the pathology behind an arsonist. He theorized that arsonists like to stick around the scene to watch their work. So, the suspect could soak in the magnitude of their actions to watch the destruction firsthand.

Like a serial killer who attends their victim's funerals to relive the crime over and over again, arsonists do the same. When Captain Orr arrived at the fire scene at the hardware store, he suspected arson. And when he did, he began taking photos and videos to watch later on to see if anyone stood out in the crowd. He was searching for a potential suspect.

Once fire investigators discovered that four people died in the fire, the investigation was no longer simply a case of arson. It became a homicide investigation. When it becomes a homicide investigation, the case is turned over to the L.A. County Sheriff's Department. Initially, L.A. County Sheriff investigators believed that an electrical issue caused the fire.

But when Captain John Orr and his team of fire investigators looked at the scene originated in the store, Orr didn't believe this was an electrical fire. Instead, he thought someone set the fire intentionally. Typically, electrical fires spread from the top down in a building, whereas arson typically runs from the ground up.

So when Orr looked at where the fire started in the store, it was pretty clear that the fire began on the floor.

John Orr, well, a well-respected not only firefighter in the community, but he was also well-respected by the police in the area. So when John Orr insisted that, no, this wasn't an electrical fire, someone intentionally set this one, the county sheriff's department took his word for it and then began looking at the case as a case of arson.

On the same night of the Oles Hardware Store fire, another fire broke out 15 minutes away at an Albertsons grocery store. The fire was much smaller than the one in the hardware store, and this fire started in the potato chip aisle. It almost looked like a type of fire that a group of teenagers might start, maybe to divert the attention of the store's employees to then run across the store and steal alcohol.

Fortunately, the fire was relatively small, and L.A. County firefighters quickly put it out before anyone was injured or killed. As soon as firefighters put out the second fire, a third fire started across town. This fire, similar to the second one, was also at another grocery store and was also set in the potato chip aisle.

Now, because these fires were much smaller than the hardware store one, investigators in the area didn't really believe that the fires were connected. It just seemed like a strange coincidence that all three fires broke out within a couple miles of each other. Two months after these fires, a small fire erupted in another Olds hardware store in Pasadena.

But unlike the fires two months earlier, this one didn't ignite all the way. When firefighters put out the relatively small amount of flames, they recovered the materials used to start the fire. Inside one of the aisles in the store, investigators found polyurethane foam with a cigarette containing three matches rolled up inside.

Someone rolled up the cigarette and three matches inside of a yellow piece of lined notebook paper. Once the cigarette is ignited, it acts as a timed fuse to light the matches. Then, the matches would light the yellow lined paper. Essentially, this type of device allows an arsonist enough time to start a large fire and then calmly walk away from it.

After this fire, investigators got the message loud and clear. Hey, you missed me the first time? Here I am. Try to catch me now. Over the next two years, there were over 6,500 fires across Southern California. When all was said and done, these fires caused more than $20 million in damage worldwide.

The damage stretched across hundreds of privately owned and public properties. Unfortunately, nobody could say how many of these fires were accidents and how many of them were deliberate. In January of 1987, firefighters were called to a craft store in Bakersfield.

One of the firefighters responding was a senior fire investigator, Captain Marvin Casey of the Bakersfield Fire Department. Captain Casey was a very experienced fire investigator and was incredibly well respected in the area. And when he arrived at the craft store, Captain Casey immediately recovered the device used to start the fire.

He found a small, burned-up piece of yellow-lined paper in one of the store's aisles used to display fake flowers. Inside of the yellow-lined paper, of course, were a couple matches,

He took the paper and compared it to all of the yellow paper found inside of the store and quickly determined that the paper did not come from inside the store. Instead, someone must have brought the paper inside with them. Captain Casey then interviewed the store's employees to find out if anyone saw anything out of the ordinary or anything suspicious coming into the store that day.

The fire started when there were a lot of customers and employees inside, which makes it pretty risky for someone to simply walk through the front door, set a fire, and then just calmly walk out without anyone seeing or hearing anything out of the ordinary.

But when Captain Casey talked to these employees and a handful of customers, nobody saw anything. Nobody saw anything out of the ordinary, and it seemed like the fire started out of nowhere. While Captain Marvin Casey is investigating this fire, he receives a phone call that another fire has broken out only a couple miles down the road.

Very similar to the first fire, this one also started in a large department store. However, this time, an employee of the store did remember seeing someone inside of the store that caught her attention. She said that she saw a guy dressed as a cowboy walk into the store.

The man grabbed her attention because she said he was handsome. He was tall. He had this big cowboy hat on. She said the man had something in his hand, but she gets distracted. When she looks back for the cowboy, the man's gone, and that's when the fire started. Later that day, Captain Casey learned about a conference happening up in the city of Fresno.

Two investigators who attended the California Conference of Arson Investigators told Captain Casey about a string of fires on the last day of the conference. The fires were located along Highway 99, and they all started within hours of one another.

The first fire started in Fresno, not too far from the location of the conference. The next was a little farther down Highway 99 in the city of Tulare. Then there was one in Bakersfield. So it was like someone was driving down Highway 99 from Fresno, making stops and setting fires on their way down to Southern California.

The realization that these fires started on the last day of the California Conference of Arson Investigators made Captain Casey suspicious that maybe someone at the conference might be responsible.

Which isn't really the easiest of conclusions to come to. The only people who attended this conference were 1. Firefighters and 2. Fire investigators. It seems entirely bogus for someone to believe that a firefighter could be intentionally setting fires, right?

It's like concluding that a police officer could be a suspect in a serial murder investigation. But Captain Casey suspected that a firefighter who attended the conference started fires along the highway as he traveled home to Southern California. Fire Captain Casey sent the yellow lined paper inside the craft store fire in Bakersfield to the lab for DNA and fingerprint testing.

The lab test revealed a fingerprint on the lined paper. The fingerprint can help point investigators in the right direction, so they ran the fingerprint through the National Fingerprint Database, but the search didn't get a hit. Whoever left the fingerprint behind on the paper has had no criminal background. This also meant that Captain Casey's theory of a firefighter starting the fires just might be true.

A firefighter would not have a criminal background, and their fingerprint wouldn't be in the national database. Next, Captain Casey obtains the attendance records of the conference in Fresno. The list contained a little over 250 people who attended, everyone from firefighters to insurance agents and anyone involved in fire investigations.

Based on those who traveled from Fresno after the conference down to Southern California, he narrowed that list down to 55 potential suspects. The list contained 55 firefighters who attended the conference and then drove down to Southern California. So armed with a fingerprint and now a list of 55 potential suspects, he turns this information over to the FBI.

Casey tells the FBI, based on his investigation, he believes that a firefighter is responsible for setting all these fires. But when the FBI gets the list, they tell him, no, no, no. We're sorry. This is a huge list to investigate. We just don't have the time or resources to look into 55 people for these fires when really there's no objective evidence that a firefighter is responsible.

So because the FBI won't get involved in the case, Captain Casey has no choice but to put his theories aside. For the next two years, more fires occurred across Southern California, but none of the arson fires can be linked to the 1987 fire spree until March of 1989.

In March 1989, another fire investigation conference took place in Pacific Grove, California. Firefighters got together to try and figure out what they could do about all of these fires erupting across the state. And exactly like what happened two years earlier, after the conference, a string of fires rose along Highway 101 to Los Angeles.

The same M.O. from what Captain Casey saw two years earlier. When Casey learned about this second conference, he did the same thing he did in 1987. He compared this new list with the attendance list of the past conference.

He then determined that there were 10 firefighters who attended the 1987 conference as well as the 1989 Pacific Grove conference. That list of 10 possible suspects.

Now with this new list went from 55 down to only 10, Casey goes back to the FBI and says, hey, I've narrowed down this list from 55 possible suspects down to 10. Do you think you can investigate that? The FBI says, okay, we can work with 10 individuals. So the FBI compared the 10 names on the list to the fingerprint sample they had from the Bakersfield fire.

Of course, none of them came back as a match. Once again, they were back at square one in the investigation. More fires with no suspect. Four months of fires raged across California. If you're from California like me, you know all about the Santa Ana winds.

So the Santa Ana winds would pick up during this time, and the fires would be devastating. People lost homes, buildings and businesses were completely destroyed, and investigators couldn't tell if any or all of these fires were arson or not. By the late 1990s into early 1991, another series of arson fires broke out in Southern California.

These fires were much closer to downtown LA. The fires were threatening more homes and more lives. One of these fires took out 67 homes in Glendale, making it the largest fire in the city's history. This series of fires was far more sinister. Someone set the fires with the intent to kill.

On March 29, 1991, L.A. firefighters responded to a large commercial fire in the South Bay area. Later that day, investigators discovered this wasn't the only fire. There were three. In each of the three fires, investigators recovered the same device. Matches rolled up in a yellow lined paper and stuffed in a pillow or foam.

It was clear to investigators this was the work of the same serial arsonist. In late 1991, L.A. County Sheriff created a task force to try and apprehend their suspect. They were nicknamed the Pillow Pyro Task Force Group because most of the fire started in a pillow or some sort of foam material.

Within days of creating the task force, they identified at least 30 fires in Los Angeles over the course of just three months. All of these fires identified matched the same MO. All were started by the same yellow lined paper stuffed inside of foam. All fires were close to the freeways for the suspect's quick escape. All fires were set to either hardware stores or fabric department stores.

And all were started during the middle of the day. Dangerous business hours, fires which could easily kill employees or kill customers. The Pillow Pyro Task Force in Los Angeles learned about Captain Marvin Casey up in Bakersfield. And they also learned about his work on similar fires set in Northern California.

They learned about Casey after the task force circulated a flyer at a fire investigator's regional strike team meeting. They described the MO of their L.A. arsonist on the flyer. And Scott Baker of the California State Fire Marshal's Office attended this meeting. Instantly, when he saw this fire, he thought about Captain Marvin Casey.

Scott Baker knew that Captain Casey previously investigated fires up in Northern California and that he suspected a Southern California firefighter was responsible. When investigators pick up the phone and call Casey directly, he tells them that not only does he know about similar fires set with yellow lined paper, but he also has a fingerprint from one of these devices.

Los Angeles investigators get the yellow paper from Bakersfield and send it out to the lab. When the lab first tested the paper for fingerprints, they only compared it to known fingerprints in the national database, the database for anyone who has had any type of contact with law enforcement and was required to submit their fingerprint.

But L.A. County investigators also wanted to compare the fingerprint to anyone who has submitted fingerprints for any reason, not just after being arrested. And this report included individuals who submitted fingerprints for a job. Three days after the fingerprint was tested and compared against all these databases, it came back with a match.

On April 17, 1991, the fingerprint belonged to Glendale Fire Captain John Orr. Investigators matched the fingerprint to John Orr's left ring finger. Before John Orr became a firefighter with the city of Glendale, he first wanted to become a police officer.

In his 20s, he applied for a position with the Los Angeles Police Department, and his application was accepted. He passed the physical and written test, but then he failed the psychological evaluation.

The psychologist who evaluated Orr deemed him unsuitable to become a police officer. Now, just to be clear, someone can be deemed, quote, unsuitable to become a police officer for lots of different reasons. Doesn't make you a sociopath or anything like that. But in John's case, the LAPD psychologist noted something about him or his personality that would make him unsuitable for the department.

So when the LAPD rejected him, he decided if he couldn't become a cop, he'd become a firefighter. He applied to the Los Angeles Fire Department a few years later and was accepted. All he needed to do was pass the pre-interest exams before he could enroll in the fire academy. But it didn't turn out to be so easy.

Initially, he failed the department's physical test. He also had difficulty getting a passing score on the written test. Eventually, Orr exhausted all of his attempts, and the Los Angeles Fire Department changed its mind. By this point in Orr's life, he's married and a father of two young daughters. He needed a job, so he applied to be a firefighter with the Glendale Fire Department.

Although he just barely squeaked by on all the exams as well as the pre-hire evaluations, Glendale offered him a job, John Orr, the firefighter. As soon as the task force discovers that John Orr's fingerprint was on one of the arson devices recovered in Bakersfield, they set up a 24-7 surveillance on him.

Not only did investigators need to collect additional evidence against him, but they also needed to make sure that he wasn't going to be setting any deadly fires anytime soon. So while investigators surveilled Orr, they gathered pretty damning evidence against him. They watched as he went into different stores, buying the same supplies used to create the devices, the matches, the yellow-lined paper,

and probably most damning, was watching him purchase cigarettes. Why would someone buy cigarettes when they're not a smoker?

After surveilling Orr and gathering evidence, the police believed they had enough evidence to prove that he was the serial arsonist responsible for all of the statewide fires, including the deadly Orr's hardware store fire back in 1984 that killed four innocent people. So the police took the evidence they gathered and presented it to a grand jury.

Not only did they have the fingerprint, but they also had a mountain of circumstantial evidence. Based on the attendance records from both conferences, they knew that John Orr attended both of them. Investigators speculated that Orr set those fires along the highway on the last day of both conferences as he made his way back home to Southern California.

They also knew that in dozens of cases, that same yellow-lined paper device with cigarettes inside was the device used. All these fires matched the same M.O. that all led them back to John Orr. So after the grand jury heard all the circumstantial and forensic evidence in the case, there was no question about his guilt.

He was indicted in late 1991. John Orr was then arrested and faced federal arson and murder charges. While Orr was in jail awaiting trial, investigators searched for more evidence. During their investigation, they learned that Orr wrote a novel, a book titled Points of Origin. In the book, Orr very oddly mirrors much of his own life.

The story centered around the character Aaron Stiles. Like John Orr, Aaron Stiles is a fireman who just so happened to be a serial arsonist. This character that he described in his book got sexual gratification from setting fires and watching them burn. This book is supposed to be fiction. Nothing is true. Or is it? It was odd that much of the story mirrored John Orr's life.

Here he is, a fire captain accused of being a serial arsonist, and we find out that he's written an entire book with pretty much the same storyline. So when the investigators got their hands on this book, they couldn't believe their eyes. It was like John Orr wrote a fiction novel documenting his entire crime spree. The book was there all along, but nobody knew it existed.

This made the investigators' work much more straightforward because John Orr created a complete document of his crimes. Besides the novel, investigators also recovered dozens of videotapes and photographs taken of fire scenes by Orr himself. Remember how I mentioned that he always had a unique way of investigating a fire scene?

Orr also said that it's always a good idea to immediately start videotaping the scene just in case the arsonist is there. Well, that's because we know that arsonists will often stick around after they start the fire and watch. Well, in dozens upon dozens of tapes, John Orr was the one recording and taking photographs of the fires that he started himself.

So instead of trying to find out who in the crowd might be responsible, he was the one documenting the scene for his own private pleasure, a sick way to relive these crimes. On July 31st, 1992, a federal jury in Fresno, California convicted Orr on three counts of arson. The federal judge sentenced him to 30 years behind bars. But this federal conviction was only the beginning of his criminal charges.

Once the federal system finished convicting him, it was then the state's turn. Orr was convicted of federal arson charges in federal court. He, of course, could still be charged with state charges, which included murder. So in November 1994, California prosecutors charged Orr with four counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances.

special circumstances meant that the prosecution could decide to pursue the death penalty against him.

The special circumstance meant these four murders were committed during the course of a dangerous felony. Setting the fire from the get-go, Los Angeles prosecutors were adamant about their decision to pursue the death penalty against Orr. They felt like not only did he cause millions and millions of dollars of damage in all of these years, he also cost the life of four innocent people back at the Olds Hardware Store fire.

What was unique about Orr's MO was that he set many of these buildings and structure fires during the middle of the day. These were buildings with employees inside. They had dozens of customers inside. It wasn't like he was starting these fires in the middle of the night when these buildings were empty.

When he was doing this, he understood that not only would he cause property damage, but he was probably going to kill people.

So L.A. prosecutors thought that it was fortunate, and I hate to say that in this case, but it's true, that only four people were killed. The number of potential murder victims here could have been much higher over the years. But of course, in any case, four victims are far too many, and prosecutors wanted to seek justice, and they sought that justice would be the death penalty.

While the state case waited to go to trial, L.A. prosecutors approached John Orr's defense team. They said that they would take the death penalty off the table if, in exchange, he accepted a plea deal where he would plead guilty and agree to a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. A part of this plea deal, he would also have to admit in court exactly what he did, which

He would essentially have to own up to the murders. I think this is a smart move by the state's prosecution. After federal court, Orr was only sentenced to 30 years behind bars. It was entirely possible that if he was acquitted in state court, that after serving 30 years in prison, he could be released someday.

So what the state is trying to do here is that they wanted to ensure that Orr would spend the rest of his life in prison for these murders, even if it meant taking the death penalty off of the table. But after L.A. prosecutors met with John Orr, they met with his defense team. He rejected their offer. He didn't want to admit guilt. John Orr maintained his innocence in everything.

So anytime a defendant turns down the state's plea deal, this is just going to add more fuel to the fire. No pun intended. The state isn't going to back down. They aren't going to take the death penalty away. And they also want John Orr convicted and sent to prison. On June 28th, 1998, a California jury convicted Orr on all four murder charges and all but one of the arson charges.

After Orr's conviction, the same jury was tasked with deciding whether or not to sentence him to death. After deliberation, the jury was split. The decision of death would ultimately be left up to the judge. The judge ended up sentencing him to four consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole plus an additional 21 years to his sentence.

He also ordered that the state sentence would run consecutively to the federal conviction. In other words, John Orr will spend the rest of his life behind bars. After the convictions in both state and federal courts, Orr appealed his convictions. In 2000, he received a small victory in his case. On March 15, 2000, a California appellate court vacated nine years of his state sentence.

The appellate court found that the burning of some homes that Orr was convicted of was incidental. In other words, the court believed that Orr shouldn't be held responsible for the homes burned when he set the brush fire, regardless of vacating nine years off a sentence, Orr will die in prison. John Orr was released from federal prison in 2002.

Upon release, he was transferred to a California state prison where he began serving out four consecutive life sentences. John Orr is considered one of the worst, if not the worst, serial arsonists of the 20th century in the United States. The ATF believe he's responsible for setting over 2,000 fires throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

It's also speculated he's responsible for thousands more. After Orr's arrest, the number of brush fires in California decreased by over 90%. John Orr's life and career are the epitome of a walking contradiction. He was well-respected and regarded as one of the most skilled fire and arson investigators in Los Angeles for years.

For decades, fellow firefighters looked to him for guidance. There was no one out there like him who could solve a fire as quickly as he did. Nobody understood the mind of a serial arsonist as he did. If a brush fire stretched thousands of acres, he had the uncanny ability to find the single match that started it all. But he was a fraud.

He could solve fires as quickly as he could because in many cases, he was the person who started it. He understood the mind of a serial arsonist because he was a serial arsonist. John Orr lived his miserable life as an arsonist, a fraud, and ultimately, a murderer. To share your thoughts on John Orr, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at Forensic Tales.

Let me know what you think about the fire starter. To check out photos from the case, be sure to head to our website, ForensicTales.com. Don't forget to subscribe to Forensic Tales so you don't miss an episode. We release a new episode every Monday. If you love the show, consider leaving us a positive review or tell friends and family about us. You can also help support the show through Patreon.

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