Glendale Fire Investigator Charged in 3 Store Blazes : Crime: Head of arson unit wrote novel about a firefighter who sets blazes. Other fires are under review.

Glendale’s chief arson investigator, who has written a novel about a firefighter who deliberately sets fires, was charged Wednesday with igniting blazes at three Los Angeles-area retail businesses.

Federal officials said they are trying to determine whether John L. Orr, a 42-year-old Glendale Fire Department captain, is also responsible for at least a dozen other fires that occurred in 1987 and 1989 in Central California, where Orr was attending arson conferences.

Most recently, federal officials said, Orr was seen near a Nov. 23 brush fire in the La Canada Flintridge-Montrose area. He has not been charged in connection with that blaze.

Attorney Drew Edwards, who is representing Orr, said, “Mr. Orr is simply not the individual who is responsible for these crimes.”

Orr has worked for 17 years as a Glendale arson investigator. Federal authorities arrested him Wednesday morning outside his Eagle Rock home, charging him with three counts of arson affecting interstate commerce. He pleaded not guilty at an arraignment Wednesday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. Each count carries a possible 10-year prison sentence.

U.S. Magistrate Elgin Edwards ordered that Orr be held without bail after federal prosecutors charged that he has endangered shoppers by setting stores on fire during business hours.

“I cannot find any conditions or provisions that assure the safety of the community” if Orr remains free, Edwards said.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Walter F. Brown Jr. and Stefan D. Stein told the judge that Orr has used his fire-setting exploits as the basis for a novel called “Points of Origin.”

They presented a letter, apparently written to a publisher, in which Orr described his novel as “a fact-based work that follows the pattern of an actual arsonist that has been setting serial fires in California over the past eight years. He has not been identified or apprehended, and probably will not be in the near future.”

Orr added, “As in the real case, the arsonist in my novel is a firefighter.”

Michael F. Matassa, a special agent with the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, said in an affidavit that he is “familiar with many serial arson investigations.

“Unless there is another serial arson investigation involving a suspect who is a firefighter, I cannot imagine who Orr’s unidentified arsonist firefighter (in the novel) might be other than Orr himself.”

Matassa said the novel is about a serial arsonist who uses an incendiary device made with a cigarette, beads of glue and paper. The arsonist starts fires in Los Angeles-area retail stores during business hours and sets other blazes in Fresno, Tulare and Bakersfield while traveling to arson conferences. The federal complaint charges Orr with setting fires at People’s Department Store in Highland Park on Dec. 10, 1990; Builders Emporium in North Hollywood on Dec. 14, 1990, and D & M Yardage in Hawthorne on March 27, 1991.

Prosecutors would not comment on a possible motive for the crimes.

Orr headed the investigation of Glendale’s worst fire, the arson-caused brush fire that destroyed or damaged 64 homes on June 27, 1990. Federal prosecutors would not comment on whether Orr is suspected of setting that blaze. No arrest has been made for that fire.

Glendale Fire Chief Richard Hinz, who was just named to his post Wednesday, declined to comment on the arrest. Glendale City Manager David Ramsay said city officials knew little about the probe, which was supervised by agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

“I have not seen the scope of their investigation or the details,” Ramsay said. “We are very concerned by the news.”

After they arrested Orr, federal officials searched his home, his car and his office, seizing several incendiary devices, videotapes of arson fires and a starter pistol that prosecutors said could be used to launch a fire-starting projectile.

Edwards, who is representing Orr, said these materials are used by Orr in his role as an investigator and an instructor of other arson investigators.

Federal investigators said Orr prepared a training video that includes shots of the People’s Department Store fire and a store fire in Burbank. Investigators said these incidents were outside Orr’s jurisdiction and were not filmed by local firefighters.

“From the tape, it would appear that John Orr videotaped these fires while they were taking place,” the affidavit said.

In the affidavit attached to the federal complaint, investigators said Orr was seen by employees at each of the three stores named in the arson counts at or near the times the fires occurred.

The document also states that Orr’s fingerprint was found on an incendiary device recovered after a Bakersfield fire in 1987. Orr has not been charged in that case.

Federal agents have been investigating Orr since April, 1991, for store fires dating back to 1987. They said most of these fires were started in the drapery or bedding sections of the store. The fires were started by an “an unusual delay incendiary device” made from a cigarette, matches and a rubber band, all attached to a pad of yellow lined paper, investigators said.

In arguing for a low bail, Edwards said Orr has long ties to the community, no criminal record and that he was honorably discharged from the Air Force in 1971.