Fire Captain Calls Arson Trial a Conspiracy

As his trial opened in U. S. District Court, Glendale Fire Capt. John Orr defiantly charged that the government’s case linking him to five Central Valley arsons in January, 1987, is a conspiracy of lies to railroad an innocent man.

“Have you seen the movie ‘JFK?’ ” he asked The Times during a break in the opening arguments Tuesday. “They went down to the morgue and placed Oswald’s hand on the butt of that rifle. . . . The only difference is that my hand wasn’t cold.”

Orr, a nationally acclaimed arson investigator who spent 17 years with the Glendale Fire Department before his arrest last December, was referring to the government’s key evidence: a half-charred piece of yellow paper smudged with a print from his left ring finger.

Federal prosecutors argue that paper was part of a simple time-delay device used to ignite a fire at the CraftMart store in Bakersfield. Orr alleges that the yellow paper was not part of the January, 1987, fire scene but materialized sometime later, adorned with his fingerprint.

“Exactly what the federal government did and why they did it isn’t our job to prove,” said Orr’s attorney, Douglas McCann. “The burden rests entirely with the federal government.”

Assistant U. S. Atty. Patrick Hanley said the evidence will show that Orr was not the victim of a government conspiracy but was a serial arsonist who used his perspective from both sides of a fire as grist for a novel called “Points of Origin.”

Orr is being tried in U. S. District Court because the retail fabric stores he is accused of burning dealt in interstate commerce.

In his opening argument, Hanley told the jury that Orr’s 418-page manuscript about a firefighter who sets fire bears a “striking and uncanny similarity” to the five fires in Fresno, Tulare and Bakersfield during the same week in January, 1987.

Orr was attending a conference of arson investigators in Fresno at the time. The most spectacular of the blazes gutted the Hancock Fabrics store at the K mart Shopping Center in North Fresno.

In the unpublished novel, Orr writes of a firefighter who, while attending a Fresno arson conference, ignites a blaze at a fabric store next to a K mart. “He felt fright but it excited him,” Orr wrote.

In letters to agents and publishers, Orr touted the book as “fact-based,” Hanley said. Once Orr discovered he was the prime suspect, Hanley said, the arson investigator changed his query letter.

“I was even considered a suspect at one point,” Hanley quoted from Orr’s amended letter. “I found a radio tracking device on my car. . . . By the way, I’m not the arsonist and the investigation out here continues.”

Hanley said the government will also show that each incendiary device--consisting of a cigarette, yellow paper, three matches and a rubber band--was constructed by the same man.

When Orr was arrested, Hanley said, government agents found a briefcase containing cigarettes, yellow paper and a packet of rubber bands. Orr does not smoke.

Orr’s attorney countered that the items were part of a seminar on incendiary devices that Orr delivered to fellow investigators. “We don’t deny that one man was responsible for all these fires,” McCann said. “But that one man wasn’t John Orr.”

The trial is expected to last about a week. Orr faces similar charges in Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo counties in connection with fires over the last three years.