Orly Lapin Wins Latest Battle: Arson Case Thrown Out

A former Israeli beauty queen who was at the center of several sensational Orange County legal fights with her ex-husband has won her latest courtroom battle against arson charges.

A Municipal Court judge in Palm Springs on Friday threw out felony charges that Orly Lapin, 33, burned down her house in 1987 in an insurance scam. A prosecutor blamed the dismissal on legal obstacles to the use of key evidence in the case.

The actress and model once shared the Palm Springs house with then-husband Ron Lapin, a surgeon who made a national name for himself as the proponent of “bloodless surgery,” a surgical technique that seeks to avoid blood transfusions.

The dismissal of arson and insurance fraud charges against Orly Lapin marks the third time that she has fought criminal allegations and won.

In May of 1988 she was acquitted on charges of making a bomb threat to an Anaheim bank in which Ron Lapin had a financial stake. Later that year, another jury acquitted her of charges that she had abducted her two children from Ron Lapin by taking them into hiding for four months. At a trial filled with back-and-forth accusations of adultery, rape and drug use, Orly Lapin justified her actions by asserting that the ex-husband had molested their daughter.

However, in late 1989 a judge granted custody of the two children to Ron Lapin, concluding that Orly Lapin had essentially fabricated many of her allegations.

Orly Lapin could not be reached for comment on the Palm Springs arson case. Her attorney, John Horwitz of Santa Ana, said she is now living in Los Angeles, has opened a matchmaking business and has been making the rounds on the national TV talk-show circuit to publicize it.

The Palm Springs house was badly damaged by fire in June, 1987, and Orly Lapin was arrested on arson charges two years later. Her insurance company stopped payment on the policy when it became suspicious of the origin of the fire, according to prosecutors.

David Downing, a deputy district attorney in Riverside County who prosecuted the case, said the prosecution was hindered by several “legal quandaries,” including firefighters’ failure to serve a search warrant at Lapin’s home, an insurance investigator’s failure to notify Lapin that he was tape-recording their conversation, and a prosecution witness’s failure to show up to testify.

Given those weaknesses, Downing said he could find no fault with the decision by Municipal Judge Arthur Block to drop the charges at the close of Lapin’s preliminary hearing last week.

Nonetheless, Downing said prosecutors are still considering refiling charges against Lapin.

“It is our theory that she burned the house down for the insurance,” he said. “The house was on the market, and when it didn’t sell, she took it off the market, and a few days later it was burned down.”