The Fight Against Crime: Notes From The Front : Matching Wits With Nature and Arsonists

It is one of the hardest crimes to solve, one of the few in which the evidence is consumed by the act itself.

Arson, especially the variety that roared through the dry mountainsides from Calabasas to Malibu last week, is no picnic to investigate.

“When you’re talking about conditions that existed last week, with winds blowing 40, 50, even 60 miles an hour, you’re at the risk that evidence--a match, for instance--has blown away,” said Deputy Barney Villa, an arson investigator with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Arson-Explosives Detail.

“The Fire Department’s first priority is to put the fire out,” Villa said. “So with the water pumped at the speed it is, the evidence could be moved to another area.”

Someone could walk away with the telltale match stuck to his or her boot, or bury it under ash and mud. Lots of things can go wrong, and FBI statistics show that arrests are made in only about 17% of all arsons.

But lots of things can go right too, Villa said. About 18 months ago, the five-year arson-squad veteran put a Norwalk man in jail after finding his fingerprint on a scorched Molotov cocktail--graphic proof that not all evidence is destroyed in fires.

Arson also shares a common denominator with all crimes--someone usually has seen, heard or inadvertently stumbled upon something that points at a culprit.

“If you have 100 acres that has burned unobserved for an hour, you pretty much have to comb all 100 acres,” Villa said. But if someone saw the blaze when it was small, it’s easier to find the source, and therefore begin the search for telltale evidence.

Even a blade of grass can point toward the source, Villa said. Most vegetation burns on one side before the fire moves on with the wind. Investigators examine dozens of blades of grass, plant stems, tree trunks or other debris. Eventually, the scorched sides start to point to the area where they will find debris that is burned on all sides--the fire’s source.

“Now, that is your ideal situation,” Villa warned. Shifting winds could bring the fire around to burn both sides of trees, grass or stems.

If it sounds daunting, that’s because it is. In fact, of the estimated 3,000 cases that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department handles annually, about 15% end in arrests, said Sgt. Gary Everson, head of the 21-member Arson-Explosives Detail.

But few blazes are as investigated as the brush fires that swept Southern California in the past two weeks. Everyone in Everson’s office is involved in some aspect of the Calabasas/Malibu fire investigation, which killed three people and critically burned a fourth. Two federal agencies have been called in to help county and city investigators as well.

That greatly increases the chances of solving the blaze. Consider: Last year, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was asked to help solve 533 cases nationwide, said BATF spokesman Les Stanford in Washington. Arrests were made in 478 of them--a clearance rate of nearly 90%, Stanford said.

All the fancy chemistry and analysis will help convict an arsonist, but most are caught by ordinary detective work. “The evidence that is left is evidence of the burn, not evidence of the burner,” said Dian Williams, director of the nonprofit Center for Arson Research in Philadelphia.

That’s where officers such as Villa and Everson come in. So far, they have fielded more than 1,000 telephone calls and filled out 110 “clue sheets” in their Whittier office. Calls have ranged from the plausible to the outlandish. On Monday, investigators talked to a psychic martial arts expert who claimed to have envisioned the suspect. “Some of the calls are interesting to say the least,” Villa said.

In the end, Villa said, the same kind of information that solves other crimes can solve arson. “It’s that kind of stuff that we rely on,” he said.

Information that will put the culprit of the Calabasas/Malibu blaze behind bars can come from one of the 1,000-plus telephone calls already logged. Or it can come from one yet to be made. The number to call is (800) 47-ARSON.