Fire Slaying Suspect Described as Volatile : Background: Two teens who shared home with Jonathan D’Arcy say he is inclined to wild rages. His arraignment is today.

Jonathan Daniel D’Arcy, the suspect in the immolation-slaying of a Tustin bookkeeper, was described Wednesday as having a volatile personality inclined to wild rages that turned him into “the meanest person in the world.”

Chain-smoking on the front porch of his La Habra home, Jeremy Willis, 17, the son of a woman with whom D’Arcy lived on and off for the past five years in La Habra, said the janitor was sometimes “a nice guy” but “deserves to die” if convicted in the slaying of Karen Marie LaBorde.

“My mom loved him, and she still will, even though it’s over between them now,” the pale, lanky Sonora High School senior said while sitting beside his twin sister, Carrie.

“He called here last night from jail saying he didn’t remember doing it,” Willis said. The youth said D’Arcy went on to tell his mother, “Oh, hon, it looks like I really screwed up this time.”

He said his mother started crying and said, “It’s over now, it’s over.”

D’Arcy, 30, a custodian described as enraged over a late $150 paycheck from the custodial services firm where LaBorde worked as a bookkeeper, will be arraigned today on a charge that he tortured the woman to death, according to Deputy Dist. Atty. David Brent.

Tustin Police Lt. Chuck Crane said detectives had confirmed that the liquid poured on LaBorde was gasoline, but had not yet determined a motive. Witnesses said D’Arcy splashed the fuel over LaBorde after declaring, “I want my (expletive) money!” and police investigators believe that D’Arcy then sparked the blaze with a cigarette lighter.

The torture charge will make D’Arcy eligible for the death penalty if convicted.

“He intended to kill her, but he intended to inflict excruciating pain to do so,” said Brent, adding that the murder-torture charge is rarely used, but appropriate for particularly heinous crimes.

“The pain she must have felt is indescribable. It makes me sick to think that a human being could do such a thing to another human being,” Brent said.

LaBorde’s husband, Jerry, returned to her office Wednesday to thank Craig McKinnon, 27, one of the men who had tried to save her by using a fire extinguisher, for the time it afforded him to speak to his wife before she died.

“She was still awake when I got (to the hospital) and I was able to discuss a lot of things with her. That’s why I wanted to thank the man,” Jerry LaBorde said.

LaBorde, accompanied by his children, also told his wife’s co-workers that in her last moments she felt “no malice to anyone, not even the person who did this.”

Shirley Bradley, a friend of Jerry LaBorde’s, said he told her that “everything but the bottom of (his wife’s) feet” was burned. Just before Beforedied in the hospital, Karen LaBorde she was able to relay some personal information to her husband, who was only able to say “I love you” before she passed away.

According to the complaint, which has not been formally filed, D’Arcy will also be charged with arson. Prosecutors will decide in upcoming weeks whether to seek the death penalty against D’Arcy, who is being held in lieu of $250,000 bail.

Officials of Quintessence Building Maintenance, the custodial services firm that occasionally hired D’Arcy as a contract janitor and had employed LaBorde as head bookkeeper for a year, on Wednesday issued a statement describing LaBorde as a “valued employee” with a “caring and giving attitude.”

D’Arcy and LaBorde appear to have been merely acquaintances at the janitorial firm, but court records paint a picture of a violent relationship between D’Arcy and Joan Leslie Willis.

The La Habra woman filed three restraining orders against D’Arcy between 1987 and 1989, alleging that he had assaulted her, chased her children and hurled objects.

Her children reported that the couple had reconciled recently, however, and had even begun to attend church services at Calvary Chapel Church in Diamond Bar.

“My mom wants to pray for the other family,” said Jeremy Willis, referring to the husband and two teen-age children of the burning victim. “She wants to help them. They need it.”

Word of D’Arcy’s arrest did not surprise the Willises’ neighbors.

“Nobody on this block would talk to them,” said Joe Rodriguez, 71, who lives down the street from the home where D’Arcy and the Willises reside. “They were mean-looking. The cops were always in front of the house.”

Carrie Willis said she liked D’Arcy, considering him a “nice” but moody person who could be friendly one minute, then suddenly become “all psycho--just the meanest person in the world.”

Her brother said D’Arcy complained often that Quintessence Co. took “months and months” to pay him and had “cheated him out of a lot of money.” Company officials declined to comment on that charge.

Yet, the teen-agers were puzzled by the attack D’Arcy is accused of committing.

“He didn’t have no obsession with fire,” said Jeremy Willis, who said D’Arcy left him alone but persistently picked on his older brother, Corey, 20. “He didn’t even like to light things. He had a temper, but I never thought he’d do something like that.”

D’Arcy had a record of violence against others beside Willis and her family.

In May, 1991, he was charged with assaulting two men, Leonard Godfrey and Thomas Thompson, in Orange County with a baseball bat. He pleaded no contest in July and was sentenced to 240 days in Orange County Jail and three years of probation.

In addition, he was ordered by his probation officer to “use no force or violence against anyone.”

Three years earlier, he was convicted in a hit-and-run accident that resulted in an injury in Fullerton and sentenced to 30 days in jail.

D’Arcy had a troubled childhood, which court records indicate included several burglaries. He was placed in juvenile detention repeatedly as well as classes for the “emotionally handicapped.”

His mother, Barbara D’Arcy, 63, of Buena Park, was twice divorced, and his father remarried while still married to his mother, according to court records. His father was sentenced to prison in Illinois for bank robbery when D’Arcy was young.

Jeremy Willis said D’Arcy complained about his mother, saying she was a devout member of a Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation who “was always breaking his rock records and throwing away his guitars.”

“She would play mind games with him,” Jeremy Willis said. “He said she’d kick him out of the house when he was 12 and make him live on the streets.”

Willis said he was heartbroken over Tuesday’s events, and wanted to reach out to LaBorde’s children.

“What I would say to them is, ‘We’re sorry, we’ll pray for you.’ They must be mad as hell at us, and we didn’t even do anything.”

Quintessence Co. said the public may contribute to the welfare of LaBorde’s family by sending donations to the Kari LaBorde Family Relief Fund, Orange Evangelical Free Church, 1350 E. Taft Ave., Orange, Calif. 92665.

More than 50 members of the church’s congregation joined members of LaBorde’s family Wednesday evening for an emotional prayer service in her memory. Many in the group wept as they sang hymns, prayed and reminisced.

“I’ll remember her friendship and her smile and the love she gave to all of us,” a female church member said softly.

Pastor Richard Hann described LaBorde as “a gift to all of us.”

“Kari had a special saying, and that was, ‘Better a hug than a handshake,’ ” Hann said. “We need more people like Kari, who cared and gave of herself. We are thankful for her gentle spirit and for the time we had with her.”

Besides her husband, LaBorde is survived by her children, Chris, 17, and Rene, 15; her parents, Bert and Iris Leiter, three brothers and a sister.

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Greg Hernandez, Thuan Le, Mark Landsbaum and Rene Lynch.