MURDER CHARGED IN FIRE

A 36-year-old auto mechanic from Beaumont was charged Thursday with arson and five counts of murder for allegedly setting last week’s Esperanza fire, which killed five U.S. Forest Service firefighters and destroyed 34 homes in a remote mountain area of Riverside County.

Convicted felon Raymond Lee Oyler has been in custody since Tuesday, when authorities arrested him on suspicion of setting two smaller blazes in June and announced that he was a “person of interest” in the fatal arson fire. If convicted, Oyler could face the death penalty.

Authorities provided little information about what led them to Oyler. Prosecutors said they found “a consistency” to the string of fires set in the San Gorgonio Pass from early June through October.

“We had 30-plus people in one room reviewing every bit of evidence. It becomes a cross-examination by the most experienced prosecutors in the state of California,” said Riverside County Dist. Atty.-elect Rod Pacheco, an assistant district attorney who takes over the top office in January. “We came to a unanimous conclusion.”

Along with murder, Oyler was charged with 11 counts of arson and 10 counts of possession of materials to commit arson.

Oyler’s attorney, Mark R. McDonald, said his client “adamantly denies” any involvement in the deadly Esperanza fire or the other fires he is accused of setting.

At his arraignment in Riverside County Superior Court on Thursday afternoon, a heavily tattooed Oyler stood handcuffed in an orange jumpsuit, staring at the floor. He entered a plea of not guilty on all 26 counts.

Asked about Pacheco’s characterization of the evidence against Oyler as “overwhelming,” McDonald expressed skepticism.

“If it was overwhelming,” Oyler would have been charged with the crimes much sooner, McDonald said.

U.S. Forest Service spokesman John Miller, who has spent the last week shuttling between the dead firefighters’ families and the hospital where one firefighter lost a six-day fight to survive, had tears in his eyes Thursday as law enforcement officials announced the charges against Oyler.

“Are things OK? No, things are not OK. It will not bring them back,” Miller said of Oyler’s arrest. “We appreciate everything our friends in the Forest Service community have done for us, and the county of Riverside. But the emotions aren’t over yet.”

Authorities would not comment on whether they believe Oyler acted alone.

Edith Bowers, who lives in the Cabazon neighborhood near where the Esperanza fire started, told The Times that when she saw Oyler’s face on a news website, she recognized him as one of two men she saw at the scene shortly after the blaze began.

“As soon as I saw his picture, it blew me away,” said Bowers, adding that she was interviewed by sheriff’s detectives last week. “Put a hat on him and stick him in a lineup and I’ll pick him out.” She said she had not talked with authorities since Oyler’s arrest.

Oyler had previous run-ins with the law, court documents show. In 1995, he pleaded guilty to auto theft in San Bernardino County. Six years later, he pleaded guilty to possession of a controlled substance there.

A mixed reputation

Oyler’s former father-in-law, Kenneth Bond, described Oyler as a “lowlife.” Bond’s daughter, Christy, married Oyler in the Bond family’s backyard in Chino Hills in 1997. They moved to Joplin, Mo., and separated in 1999, shortly after she obtained a restraining order against him, saying he was a violent man who sold drugs.

“[He] verbally harassed me, there is so much drug trafficking going on, I said I will not tolerate it in my home because of me and my child,” she stated in the March 30, 1999, petition in the circuit court of Jasper County, Mo. “I do not want that. He is so paranoid, it scares me. He is very unpredictable and hits walls.”

The couple divorced in 2001, and she was killed in a traffic accident last year.

“Maybe he’s changed since then, but I doubt it,” Bond said from his home in Rogers, Ark. “Ray was pretty worthless. That’s as nice as I can be about him.”

Riverside County birth records also show that Oyler fathered a daughter in 1987, when he was 16. The mother was 15 when the baby was born at Riverside Community Hospital.

Oyler’s co-workers at Highland Springs Automotive in Beaumont, where Oyler has worked for the last few months, had a much more favorable impression of the man and said they believed authorities had the wrong person.

Mechanic Jason King, 23, said Oyler kept pictures of his girlfriend and their 7-month-old daughter in his toolbox, which was confiscated by authorities.

“It was obvious that they were what he was living for,” King said. “This guy, he wanted to change his life. He didn’t do something like this.”

General manager Jason Walden described Oyler as “a very good guy” who let homeless people sleep in his cars and would rush home to care for his daughter when his girlfriend, a waitress, worked the night shift.

“If Ray’s guilty, he should be punished,” Walden said. “But we work with fire torches, and it’s not like he stands there and glares at it.”

Walden added that Oyler had told him Monday that investigators wanted him to take a polygraph test, and when he refused, “detectives told him they were going to make his life a living hell.”

Authorities refused to comment on their contacts with Oyler.

As news spread, neighbors of Oyler’s parents in Banning expressed disbelief. Neighbor Eddie Lyon said Oyler, known for working on his cars at odd hours of the night, helped him work on one of his trucks.

“If he did do it, I guarantee it was an accident,” he said. “He probably dropped a cigarette or something. He’s a chain smoker.”

Most of Oyler’s family declined to talk about Thursday’s charges. His uncle Charles Oyler of Banning said he was stunned by the news.

“I’m just as shocked as anyone,” he said. “He was a pretty nice guy, from what I saw.”

William “Billy” Hutson, who said sheriff’s officials had accused him of being the arsonist when he was questioned Monday, said Thursday evening that he was relieved he was no longer under scrutiny.

“They already had tried, convicted and sentenced me,” said Hutson, who was convicted of an arson in Texas 10 years ago and, after the Esperanza fire, had his home searched by sheriff’s officials. “I knew I was innocent and the truth would eventually come out.”

Weekend surveillance

Authorities questioned Oyler on Friday and put him under surveillance throughout the weekend, arresting him at 3 p.m. Tuesday during a traffic stop in Beaumont.

Authorities charged him with five counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances. The Riverside County district attorney’s office will decide in the next 60 days whether to pursue the death penalty.

The firefighters killed in the Oct. 26 blaze were Mark Loutzenhiser, 43, of Idyllwild; Jason McKay, 27, of Phelan; Jess McLean, 27, of Beaumont; Daniel Hoover-Najera, 20, of San Jacinto; and Pablo Cerda, 23, of Fountain Valley, who succumbed to his injuries Tuesday.

The men were overrun by flames while defending a home. The blaze was the deadliest in the nation for firefighters since July 1994, when 14 were killed in Colorado.

McDonald, Oyler’s attorney, said he had not seen police reports and had “no idea what the allegations are and their truth.” He said he worried that his client would not get a fair trial in Riverside because of “the emotionally charged nature of the case,” adding that he may seek to shift the court case elsewhere.

Oyler is being held without bail in a seventh-floor jail ward at the Robert Presley Detention Center in Riverside, McDonald said, where he is isolated from the general population because of the publicity surrounding the case.

McDonald said he found his client “almost catatonic” and “scared to death” when he visited him in jail for 20 minutes Wednesday. His parents and girlfriend, meanwhile, remained “in shock.”

“They all say he could never have done it,” McDonald said. “They’re completely in the dark right now.”

Oyler’s next court hearing is scheduled for Dec. 15.

At the news conference in Riverside when Oyler’s arrest was announced, Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Stone called Oyler a “pyromaniacal murderer.”

“The perpetrator believes that he has seen the fire of all fires. I disagree with his fantasy,” Stone said. “As a person of strong faith, I believe that this perpetrator will see a firestorm bigger than he’s ever imagined when he meets his ultimate fate at the conclusion of his shameful life.”

Firefighters said they got some measure of closure from the charges against Oyler.

“I would say it is excellent work by the teams put together to investigate this tragedy, and we expect that justice will be done,” said Pat Boss, a U.S. Forest Service spokesman and longtime friend of Loutzenhiser.

Boss and his family have been helping Loutzenhiser’s wife, Maria, and her five children since his death last week. She declined to comment Thursday.

“It’s rough for her,” Boss said. “And it’s getting rougher as we get closer to the memorial this Sunday. She is getting her thoughts together for the service.”

The public memorial for the firefighters will be held at 1 p.m. Sunday at the Hyundai Pavilion in Devore.

Efren Ayala, stepfather of deceased firefighter Daniel Hoover-Najera of San Jacinto, likewise declined to comment except to say he was glad an arrest had been made.

maeve.reston@latimes.com

jonathan.abrams@latimes.com

sara.lin@latimes.com

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Times staff writers Christopher Goffard and David Kelly contributed to this report.