Arson Prober Convicted of Setting Fires : Trial: Glendale investigator is guilty of igniting 3 Central Valley blazes. He wrote unpublished novel about firefighter-turned-arsonist.

Glendale Fire Capt. John Orr was convicted Friday of setting fire to stores in Tulare and Bakersfield in 1987 as he drove home from an arson investigators conference in Fresno.

Orr, 43, a nationally acclaimed arson investigator, showed no emotion as the jury pronounced him guilty of starting three fires along California 99 during a four-hour span. Similar incendiary devices were used in each--made of a cigarette, yellow paper, three matches and a rubber band.

After the verdict was read in U.S. District Court, Orr turned to his attorney, Douglas McCann, and pleaded: “Try to keep me out of jail right now, Doug.”

But the firefighter who spent 17 years with the Glendale Fire Department before his arrest in December was taken into custody and transported to Fresno County Jail. He will be sentenced Oct. 19, facing a maximum 30 years behind bars.

“You never want to see a firefighter convicted of setting fires,” said federal prosecutor Patrick Hanly. “It’s a bittersweet victory for sure.”

The jury convicted Orr of setting fire to the Family Bargain Center in Tulare and the CraftMart and Hancock Fabrics stores in Bakersfield between 10:45 a.m. and 2:40 p.m. on Jan. 16, 1987.

He was acquitted of two counts of arson for fires that occurred earlier that week at the Hancock Fabrics and House of Fabrics in Fresno, where he was attending a semiannual meeting of the California Conference of Arson Investigators.

Prosecutors said it was “a miracle” that no one was injured and only two of the five fires caused extensive damage. Orr was tried in federal court because the retail stores dealt in interstate commerce.

“A danger to the community is now behind bars,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Carl Faller said. “We’re going to see to it that he doesn’t get out while he awaits sentencing.”

The verdict followed three days of jury deliberation and brings to a close the Central Valley proceedings against Orr. He faces similar charges in Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo counties in connection with fires over the past three years.

Orr is suspected of starting dozens of fires throughout Southern California, some of which he investigated. He had an uncanny knack of finding incendiary devices where his colleagues had failed.

The case gained wide attention not only because a well-known firefighter had been accused of betraying his badge but because Orr had used his perspective from both sides of a fire as grist for a novel called “Points of Origin.”

Throughout the weeklong trial, prosecutors emphasized that the 418-page manuscript about a firefighter setting fires bore “striking” similarity to the five Central Valley fires. Each was set during the day in foam, pillows or dried flowers inside retail stores open for business. Each incendiary device was rigged to give the arsonist plenty of time to leave the scene before any fire could be noticed.

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 named Aaron Stiles who attends an arson investigators conference in Fresno and sets fire to a North Fresno fabric store near a K mart.

“He felt fright but it excited him,” Orr wrote. “. . . His fires gave him the much-needed attention he craved, providing him with feelings of importance and recognition.

“He was, after all, the only one who knew how the fire started. And didn’t that make him a very important person?”

In query letters to agents and publishers, Orr touted his novel as “fact-based.”

Jurors said they gave little weight to the novel, calling it insignificant compared to a half-charred piece of yellow paper--smudged with Orr’s fingerprint--that was recovered at the scene of the CraftMart fire in Bakersfield.

“The fingerprint was by far the most important evidence,” said Ernest Hicks, a juror from Bakersfield. “The book was a work of fiction.”

Orr’s attorney, McCann, tried to discredit the fingerprint evidence. He told jurors in his closing arguments that a government fingerprint expert failed to link the yellow paper to Orr’s prints in 1987. It was not until the government used more sophisticated technology in 1991 that a match was made.

In an interview before the verdict, Orr argued that the government’s case amounted to a conspiracy of lies to railroad an innocent man. He alleged that the yellow paper was not part of the January, 1987, fire scene but materialized later, with his fingerprint.

Despite the distractions, Orr said, he is writing a second book--a sequel to “Points of Fire” that will focus on a series of robberies in Southern California.

“I wrote the first three chapters in a week,” he said. “I use the same characters as before. Only this time arson is just a minor theme.”