A Hard Crime to Crack : Special Joint Squad Makes Inroads With Arson Cases

Only two days after a section of Normal Heights went up in flames, San Diego arson investigator Jim Acevedo was called to the scene of another suspicious fire.

Consider it The Case of the Incompetent Arsonist.

The car, parked on a Southeast San Diego street, stunk of gasoline. Its upholstery had been soaked, and on the back seat rested a vodka-less vodka bottle with a paper-towel fuse. The edge of the paper was only singed; there had been no explosion. The bottle seemed empty, but a whiff revealed the same gasoline smell, only stronger.

The arsonist had probably carried the fuel in the bottle before dousing the car, Acevedo figured. Then the arsonist apparently fitted the fuse, lighted it, tossed the bottle in the car and fled--without realizing that the flame had gone out.

In the annals of San Diego’s Metro Arson Strike Team (MAST), the case stands out mostly because the fire didn’t get going. During the 1984-85 fiscal year, according to the San Diego Fire Department, about 6,380 fires got going in the city, including the catastrophic Normal Heights blaze on June 30, the last day of the fiscal year.

The most destructive and most suspicious fires are probed by MAST, a joint fire and police squad that boasts a national reputation for arson investigation. The Normal Heights fire, which investigators believe was the work of arsonists, ranks among the biggest cases handled by the 14-member team.

Four weeks after Normal Heights went up in flames, MAST investigators acknowledge that they have a lot of work ahead in identifying the person or persons responsible for setting the most destructive fire in the city’s history.

MAST Capt. John Hale grimaces and says the probe is progressing “slowly.” The Normal Heights fire destroyed more than 100 homes and other structures and caused an estimated $8.9 million in property damage.

“It’s a difficult case in that we don’t have a suspect or a reason,” Hale said. “And the longer it takes, the less chance you have to solve it.”

Statistically, odds are that whoever ignited the Normal Heights blaze will not be caught. MAST reports that 23% of its investigations result in an arrest--not a bad figure when compared to the national rate for overall crimes of about 18%.

But if it’s any consolation, fire officials are confident that they are better prepared to crack the case today than if the fire had happened before June, 1980. In those days, there was no MAST, and the arrest rate for arson “hovered at about 1%,” Hale said. “Really.”

And in the late 1970s, San Diego had only two fire department investigators and one police detective specializing in arson investigation.

MAST was conceived as a means to combat soaring rates of arson--especially arson fraud. The incidence of arson runs in inverse proportion to the economy, experts say. During the recession of the late 1970s, arson rates were climbing as the result of what some insurance executives call “friction fires”--the phenomenon that sometimes occurs in failing businesses when a big mortgage rubs against a large insurance policy.

“There was a great incentive to torch property,” Hale said. “With a 1% arrest rate, there was a very good chance that you weren’t going to get caught.”

MAST was formed in June, 1980, as a marriage of fire investigators who had expertise in analyzing fire scenes and police detectives who specialized in follow-up investigations.

Then the MAST members were cross-trained. The police were schooled and certified as arson investigators, and the fire department members were given special police training and armed.

“Arsonists are felons,” Hale said. “We looked at the people we had arrested for arson, and a lot had records for assault with a deadly weapon, battery, armed robbery . . . Firemen could always make arrests, but all they had was a set of handcuffs.”

The hard economic times continued another two years after MAST was founded, but arson rates started to decline in San Diego. The rates are starting to climb again, though investigators aren’t sure why.

MAST officials say a major reason for the decline was a decrease in arson fraud. They believe that business owners and professional “torches” are now less likely to commit arson in San Diego for fear of getting caught.

MAST has investigated every kind of arson fire there is, Hale said. Along with fraud, experts say, there are six other general motives for arson: pyromania (such as Robert Fanning, the convicted “Clairemont Arsonist” who was responsible for more than 40 home fires in 1982 and 1983); civil disorder and terrorism (such as the recent torching of abortion clinics); plus vandalism (often gang-related), spite and revenge, crime concealment and “vanity.” A vanity fire occurs when the person starts the fire to enable himself to be a hero by rescuing people and property and extinguishing the blaze.

In all, MAST has arrested 667 suspected arsonists involved in all kinds of arson, according to department statistics. The conviction rate has been 97%.

“We’re pleased with that,” Hale said. “We want to bring our arrest rate up higher.”

The best possible arrest, at the moment, would be the culprit in the Normal Heights fire. But fire officials still fidget over semantics when asked what started the blaze.

Hale prefers the term “incendiary” to “arson.” Incendiary simply means the fire was started by human hand. Arson means it was started willfully and with malicious intent.

Hale holds to the possibility that a hiker or motorist could have started it accidentally--say, by carelessly tossing a burning match after lighting a cigarette.

But Capt. Larry Carlson, also a MAST member, calls it arson without hesitation. Carlson, who was the first MAST member on the scene that day along with investigator Steve Mackaig, said their observations convinced them that it was deliberately set. Eventually, seven investigators covered the fire scene.

“We looked at the nitty-gritty of the scene, and it’s our opinion as investigators that this fire was deliberately set,” Carlson said. “If there isn’t a reason for the fire to occur accidentally, that leaves you with the determination that the fire was deliberately set.”

The chance that it could be a careless accident as described by Hale is so remote, he said, that arson is the appropriate term.

MAST received dozens of calls in the first few days after the Normal Heights fire from people who offered descriptions of people and vehicles seen at the place and time of the fire’s ignition. It started at about 11:50 a.m. near Camino del Rio South just east of the Interstate 805 overpass, then raced up the canyon slopes to Normal Heights.

Hale said investigators are still going through information, trying to establish patterns and hoping for a break in the case. While the fire’s point of ignition was not in a secluded spot, Hale noted that most of the potential witnesses “were driving by at 55 miles per hour.”

Meanwhile, it seems that MAST has a good chance of nabbing the arsonist in Southeast San Diego, who succeeded merely in sullying the car’s upholstery with gasoline.

Investigator Acevedo has handed his evidence file in The Case of the Incompetent Arsonist to the district attorney’s office, which will determine whether there is sufficient evidence to charge the suspect identified by Acevedo.