CALIFORNIA IN BRIEF : REDWOOD CITY : Teens Arrested in Videotaped Blaze

A year after videotape of an arson fire, narrated by an eerily whispering and laughing arsonist, was found by a Stockton roadside, police arrested two teen-agers in connection with the 1988 blaze. Police spokesman Howard Baker said one of the youths, now 19, confessed to starting the 1988 fire at an unfinished house and filming the tape. Detectives have linked him to the torching of 27 other building and grass fires that scorched parts of Redwood City and San Mateo County in 1987 and 1988, Baker said. Investigators received 1,600 calls after the videotape was shown on the television program “Unsolved Mysteries.”