Riots Touch Off Largest Arson Probe in U.S. : Fires: At least 65 people have been charged. Some cases hint at conspiracy, but little hard evidence has emerged.

During the upheaval that followed the Rodney G. King verdicts, arsonists turned Los Angeles into a crazy quilt of ashen squares and rubble, wreaking more damage in three days than they typically cause here in 30 years.

Since then, the flames have given way to the largest arson investigation in U. S. history, a multijurisdictional effort that so far has led to criminal charges against at least 65 suspects--some of them minors, many of them caught with Molotov cocktails.

The suspects range from career criminals to a USC professor’s son who had never had so much as a traffic ticket. At hand, they reportedly had combustibles ranging from gasoline to toilet paper. One MacArthur Park mini-mall was destroyed after an 18-year-old allegedly set fire to a pinata hanging from a store’s ceiling.

One of the most pressing public questions has been whether some of the arsons fires were planned before the verdicts or were quickly organized in their wake, perhaps by roving gang members. In several areas, witnesses reported that “scouts” checked out targets in advance.

“There are literally hundreds of things like that we come across,” said Charlie Parsons, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles office. “But again, there is not hard intelligence. . . . I don’t think we have resolved the issue of whether there was any pre-planning.”

None of those arrested have been charged with setting fire to buildings at more than one location. Almost all of the suspects were allegedly caught in the act by police or were observed by witnesses.

Only a few of those cases hint at broader conspiracies, although authorities say they eventually expect to find that many of the more than 1,000 riot fires in Los Angeles County were set by small groups whose motives ranged from burglary to racism to politics.

Although the arson task force is far from finishing its work, some patterns have begun to emerge, according to court records, witnesses’ accounts and interviews with riot participants, victims and investigators:

* Most of those arrested so far have felony criminal records and about one-third have gang affiliations. “The gang influence is obvious,” said George A. Rodriguez, special agent in charge of the U. S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in Los Angeles. “It’s not a secondary thing. It’s a primary thing.” The vast majority of defendants are black and Latino.

* Parsons of the FBI said there is evidence that some of the estimated 2,400 Korean-American merchants whose businesses were damaged had been singled out by arsonists, although he declined to elaborate. One gang member told The Times that he and a group of friends had, in fact, targeted stores that “looked like they were Korean.”

* Investigators believe the arson became more organized on the second and third days of the riots, with businesses seemingly targeted for their expensive or desirable booty before being burned. Some fires may have been set as diversions for wholesale burglaries nearby.

* Ninety percent of the arson cases may never be prosecuted because of a lack of willing witnesses and investigatory resources.

Firebombs of Gasoline, Hair Spray, Liquor

In the city of Los Angeles alone at least 862 buildings were damaged or destroyed by fire, causing an estimated loss of $750 million to $900 million. Never in U.S. history have so many buildings been set afire in peacetime.

Many of the burned buildings bore signs of severe “spalding,” an exploding of concrete typical of gasoline-fueled fires. “The weapon of choice,” said William A. Cass, senior arson investigator for the city Fire Department, “was a firebomb.”

Investigators suspect that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Molotov cocktails may have created by pouring gasoline into bottles that had once contained beer, spring water, juice and even barbecue sauce. Combustibles used in seemingly sloppier acts of arson included cans of hair spray, bleach and, in liquor stores, broken bottles of booze.

Soon after the first fires were ignited, authorities began receiving reports of arson plots that were untrue or exaggerated or could not be confirmed.

According to logs from the city’s Emergency Command Center, one police informant reported that a “highly organized” group of white men and women were downtown on the riot’s first night, working under a leader who timed their actions, giving them “so many seconds to break window(s) with dumbbells and . . . initiate incendiary devices.”

The logs also show police received tips that Foothill-area gangs were planning to “burn down” the San Fernando Valley, that looters were on their way to torch Panorama City Hall and that Crips and Bloods were scouting malls.

Reporters also picked up word of orchestrated arson during the chaos.

In the Pico-Union area, residents told The Times that black youths broke into at least two stores, then stood back with lavish gestures and invited throngs of puzzled Central American immigrants inside to loot. Afterward, without taking a thing, the instigators burned both stores to the ground.

Across town, merchants near East Florence Avenue and Pacific Boulevard said young Salvadorans who later helped torch buildings scouted the area in advance, asking merchants their ethnicity. One storekeeper said the group described themselves as a “cooperative” of Salvadorans, Cubans and blacks who were angry over police abuse.

In the Crenshaw district, Robert T. Moore, a prominent businessman who sometimes functions as a liaison between gang members and police, said one group of gang members held a “hurried meeting” to organize themselves after the King verdicts.

“They see people come in and take money out of the community and not give anything back and they (were) saying this is our time to take back,” Moore said. “They were out with cellular phones saying, ‘OK, the police are over here, let’s hit this place.’ . . . They knew where they wanted to go and what they wanted to take.”

What some gang members reportedly wanted were Dayton Wire wheel rims that start at $1,650. Popular with gang members, the rims are distributed by Performance Plus Tire & Auto Centers. The rims are so coveted that they have been dubbed “Killer Wires” because gang members reportedly have killed to get them.

A display version of the rim was stolen Thursday, the second day of the riots, from the Inglewood store, which was subsequently burned down. On Friday, the same rim was hurled through the window of the chain’s Hawthorne store, also torched. Some employees suspect that gang members used a newspaper ad to go from one store to another. In all, six of the chain’s 10 stores were attacked, four were looted and three were destroyed by fire, according to co-owner Glen Feldman.

One 18-year-old Crip who lives with his family in the Crenshaw district said he and some friends looted a variety of stores along Vermont, Western and Florence avenues Wednesday through Saturday, hitting a market, a surplus store, electronics stores, whatever stores they could find that nobody else had hit.

“I think the only thing that was planned was to go after stores that looked like they were Korean,” he said. “If the police or National Guard set up, we’d wait till they left then go back out where we’d left off to spread it out further.”

An associate, he said, would “throw in the bottle”--a Molotov cocktail--on their way out.

Only a handful of cases filed so far seem to suggest that kind of organized looting and arson. Perhaps the most significant involves a 23-year-old South Los Angeles man named Erik Crenshaw, who is described as an associate of the Rolling ‘60s Crips.

Crenshaw is in federal custody, charged with destroying a building used in interstate commerce and carrying a firearm during a crime of violence. According to an affidavit filed in his case, Crenshaw and another man drove to a spot near Fairfax Avenue and Pico Boulevard on the afternoon of April 30, where they were seen making about 10 Molotov cocktails out of Gatorade bottles.

The two men allegedly took the firebombs into a looted warehouse owned by Albee’s Appliances. As they came out, the Pico Boulevard warehouse began to burn. When tenants came out of the 14 apartments above the warehouse, Crenshaw and his companion threatened them, according to the court affidavit. Meanwhile, another carload of men drove up and talked to Crenshaw and his companion.

“We got this location,” one of the group reportedly said. “You guys take the next location. We will meet you there.”

One witness, who later picked Crenshaw out of a photo lineup, said Crenshaw and his companion threatened him, then shouted, “F--- the white men! Kill them all!”

Crenshaw has declined to speak to a Times reporter, according to an assistant to the warden at the federal Metropolitan Detention Center downtown, where he is being held in lieu of $50,000 appearance bond. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Friday.

The warehouse and Albee’s showroom across the street were destroyed. The owner, Josephy Safaradi, estimated losses at more than $3 million. Officials say they are hoping to make more arrests in the case.

Varied Portraits of Arsonists Emerge

Most of the 65 arson defendants, if guilty, are responsible for only a fraction of the havoc that swept the city for three days in April.

One defendant allegedly charred a tree trunk. Another lit brush alongside the Golden State Freeway. Two reportedly set a dumpster fire behind a Lynwood sex shop.

At one South Los Angeles elementary school, a seventh-grader was arrested on suspicion of setting fire to a kindergarten bungalow, allegedly with a cigarette lighter. He denied the arson charges, but reportedly bragged that he was a “Hoover Crip.”

Three 15-year-olds were arrested after officers saw them hurl a Molotov cocktail at a dentist’s office. The novices’ firebomb flamed out before hitting its mark. Deputy Dist. Atty. James Bozajian, who successfully prosecuted the three, said they were angry over the King verdicts.

Bozajian said the black teen-agers told him that they had heard “on the street” how to make Molotov cocktails. On their first try, he said, they used furniture polish. When that didn’t work, they went to a supermarket and bought lighter fluid, which they poured into empty Yoo-Hoo bottles.

Why they had targeted the dentist was unclear.

“One (teen-ager) said he had been in the office a week earlier,” Bozajian said, “and he thought he was a good dentist.”

In Beverly Hills, police officers stopped a car and found that the trunk contained two empty barbecue sauce bottles, a towel that had been torn in half and a full can of gasoline in a brown paper bag. Next to it was another gasoline can, empty.

The two young men in the car were wearing T-shirts that read “Arrest the President” on the front and “Intelligent Hoodlums” on the back. One was the son of a USC professor who showed up in court wearing his National Guard uniform because he had been activated for riot duty. Both men have pleaded not guilty to illegal possession of an incendiary device.

Among the most severe arson cases is one that has been brought against Donald E. Coleman, 34, who is accused of burning down a mini-mall at 6th Street and Vermont Avenue on the riot’s second day, April 30. Authorities are still seeking two carloads of men dressed in black clothes who reportedly were involved in the incident.

According to a witness, two cars drove up and parked in a bus zone in front of the mall about 4:30 that day. With looting beginning down the street, the witness, who works in the area, went to the 7-Eleven store to buy cigarettes. The store was closed.

Coleman, a homeless man he knew from the area, allegedly told the witness, “If you stick around about half an hour, we’re gonna open up the 7-Eleven.”

Witnesses say that at exactly 5 p.m., Coleman pitched a metal trash can through a glass door of the store, where he had been arrested for trespassing a few weeks before. With that, a man from one of two parked cars broke the store’s other door with a metal bar, Cohen said.

“Open house! Take anything you want!” one of the men in the car yelled to the swelling Latino crowd. Twenty minutes later, as sirens could be heard approaching, looters poured out and one of the men in black started to light a Molotov cocktail.

“Give it to me, I want to burn those M.F.’s down,” the newstand operator said he heard Coleman say, adding that Coleman lit the bottle and tossed it in the store.

Coleman, who has a record of criminal convictions, has been charged with eight counts of arson during a civil disturbance, ignition of an explosive device to destroy property and burglary. His attorney, Deputy Public Defender Patrick Thomason, said police say Coleman admitted to looting the 7-Eleven, but denied setting the fire. He declined further comment.

Another major arson defendant is Alex Ernesto Orellana, an 18-year-old high school dropout accused of torching the Parkview Mall on 7th Street near MacArthur Park. Orellana lives around the corner.

If, as some contend, the Los Angeles riots were a class rebellion, then his neighborhood is rebel-held territory. Here, gangbangers are not outsiders but brothers and sons with parents in minimum- or sub-minimum-wage jobs. Orellana, authorities say, is a member of a Salvadoran gang whose graffiti cover almost every wall on the block.

His mother, Blanca Sanchez de Orellana, 38, a domestic, denies that her son is a gang member and says police surely beat her son to get him to confess to setting the fire that consumed 12 stores that night.

Some of Orellana’s neighbors admit they helped loot the mall. “With gusto, I entered,” said one, recalling a litany of sub-minimum-wage jobs he said he had worked for wealthy white and Asian-American bosses. “Everyone reacted that way because the Americans don’t love us and the Orientals don’t love us.”

None of them knew--nor did it seem to make a difference when they found out--that the owner of the mall was an Iranian-American.

As for Orellana, police reports suggest that he started out as just another looter, taking gum and other small items. Then, on the way out, he allegedly grabbed a cigarette lighter, climbed up on a box and set fire to a hanging pinata.

Police say he confessed: “I’m responsible for this, my conscience tells me I’m guilty. I’m responsible and I’d like to help a little by paying for this.”

Since then, however, he has pleaded not guilty.

Investigators say they believe that 10% or more of all fires set during the unrest were for personal motives, including spite and insurance fraud. “Even during a riot, boyfriends still get mad at girlfriends, and landlords and tenants still mix it up,” said City Fire Department Battalion Chief Leslie E. Hawkes, who heads the arson section.

Several Long Beach businessmen were allegedly caught torching their own buildings in arson-for-profit schemes. One of them was furniture store owner who was arrested after a resident videotaped him buying a newspaper from a vending rack, igniting it and setting fire to a couch. The suspect, who wore a black basketball jersey with the number 32 and the name of a local eatery on it, was identified by police who checked local basketball leagues.

To date, the only owner-arson case in Los Angeles involves a Filipino-born businessman accused of setting fire his own rental mailbox business, a puzzling move considering that he apparently had no insurance.

At least two defendants in other cases reportedly told police that they had no motive but were simply swept up in the moment. One allegedly said he “got caught up in it all,” while the other said he was was attempting to start a fire “because everyone was doing it.” Both have pleaded not guilty.

Two other men, who were arrested in Hollywood, were heard by witnesses yelling in Spanish, “It’s a game! It’s a game!” as they tried to burn a truck.

Multi-Agency Task Force Organized

Battalion Chief Hawkes had less than three months on the job as head of the Los Angeles Fire Department’s arson section when the riots began. Then, in an experience he dubs “baptism by fire,” he found himself supervising casework in the biggest arson investigation in American history.

His staff of 19 has swollen into a task force of 69 that includes experts from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Also looking into arson are officials from the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, several cities, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s organized crime division and the FBI.

Many arson investigators manned fire lines during the disturbances, watching arson evidence vanish as fires burned unchecked. When they returned to survey fire sites, it took weeks to look for evidence and come up with an estimate of the fires set between April 29 and May 2.

“Most of the easy cases--those involving suspects seen leaving burning buildings or found with Molotov cocktails--are finished,” said Rodriguez of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. “Now we have to do the hard-core gumshoe work and it is just a monumental job.”

He and Hawkes admitted they have no hard leads on 90% of the fires.

When investigators reviewed 240 hours of subpoenaed television videotape, they leaned heavily on the fast-forward buttons. Cameras captured lots of looters and smoke, but few, if any, arsonists in the act.

Most physical evidence was incinerated in “free burns.”

Witness hot lines have been a mixed blessing. One tipster reported a Korean-owned business had been tagged with the letters “PHUN1,” presumably to identify it for arson. Investigators rushed out only to find a blank wall.

“We get some dynamite tips,” arson investigator Cass said. “But they all start out with, ‘I’m not going to tell you my name. . . .’ Without a witness or any physical evidence, what are you going to do? Go up and ask the guy to confess?”

Still, mountains of clues have yet to be computerized, and officials are hoping accused arsonists will try to buy down prison time with information.

“I believe that there is a treasure trove of information in the community that hasn’t reached us yet,” a deputy district attorney said. “Somewhere down the line someone’s going to get in trouble and know something. It’s a wait and see deal.”

Times staff writers David Willman, Stephen Braun, Rich Connell and Carla Rivera contributed to this report.

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