A Visionary Alone With His Flames From the Future

Ernesto Montgomery must have known that the turnout would be sparse the other day when he called a news conference to announce that he knows who started this month’s devastating Calabasas/Malibu brush fire.

Montgomery is a psychic, after all.

Events of the future, he says, have a way of appearing before his eyes with the clarity of a movie theater screen. It’s been that way since he was a 5-year-old growing up in Jamaica who earned slices of mango by making predictions for grown-ups.

Later, when he joined the island Police Department, he claims to have solved some 400 crimes--”some even before they were committed. . . . During my tenure, there were no unsolved cases.”

He says that in 1957 he foresaw the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. He claims he predicted two years ago that the World Trade Center in New York would be bombed this past Feb. 26.

When authorities ignored his warning, Montgomery says he made a special trip to New York last year to issue a second advisory. They ignored that one, too.

And no one paid much attention last month, he says, when he went on a radio show to announce that an arson fire would soon sweep down on Malibu and destroy hundreds of homes.

So Montgomery didn’t flinch when he walked into the room that he had set aside for the news conference at his Wilshire district office and saw 28 empty seats.

“Skeptics are just individuals who need more information,” he predicted to the lone reporter who had come. “It’s only a matter of time until they take me seriously.”

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No arrests have been made in the Nov. 2 Calabasas/Malibu fire, which authorities have blamed on an unknown perpetrator, but Montgomery says he has the answer. It was started by two arsonists, according to the vision that he said first came to him as he traveled in his 1979 Mercedes between his North Hollywood home and his office.

The first fire, Montgomery feels, was started by a short, dark-haired transient who dropped a highway flare on a Calabasas hillside before casually hitching a ride out of the area.

Montgomery said the other was ignited by the driver of a 1980 blue Toyota pickup who lobbed three other flares into a canyon a few miles away from the first fire. In the confusion, authorities mistook that outbreak as part of the original fire, he said. But the second firebug is more dangerous than the first one, according to Montgomery.

“This man is against famous or rich people. He thinks they are not contributing enough to poor people,” Montgomery said.

Montgomery visualizes the pyromaniac as a 28-year-old Caucasian who lives in Long Beach, is 5 feet, 11 inches tall, weighs 170 pounds, has hazel eyes and tends to frown when he talks. The man likes to wear his long blond hair in a ponytail tied with a rubber band, according to Montgomery.

In all, Montgomery said, he sees six individuals responsible for 19 recent Southern California brush fires. They acted individually with no conspiracy between them, he said. But the pickup truck driver is worrisome, he said.

“To find him, the authorities should alert the people of Malibu to watch out for him. Many people saw him on a small, winding road the day of the fire--they will remember if their memories are refreshed.”

Montgomery said he notified Los Angeles police of his vision. But he said investigators never called him back.

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Police say they don’t recall hearing from Montgomery. In fact, the closest thing to a vision that they’ve received came from an Oklahoma woman who called to suggest that her brother-in-law set the fire.

“She told me her sister’s husband had made some comments about the government and had been upset over problems he’d had previously,” said Officer Rigo Romero. “She said he was gone from Oklahoma during the fire and she suspected he might be involved.”

All information about the Calabasas/Malibu blaze is being funneled to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Deputy Jim Gonzales, an arson investigator, said psychics will be treated like any other informant.

Without Montgomery’s assistance, authorities last week reported the first major breaks in their effort to nab those responsible for two weeks of devastating Southern California fires that destroyed more than 1,100 structures--more than 300 of them in the Calabasas/Malibu blaze. Investigators arrested a juvenile on suspicion of setting an Anaheim fire. And federal prosecutors filed charges against another man, Thomas Lee Larsen of Van Nuys, who is accused of sending a letter in late August threatening to set a series of fires.

According to sealed court documents and sources familiar with the case, Larsen is considered a suspect in five fires that burned more than 58,000 acres in Thousand Oaks, Chatsworth, Steckel Park, Ojai and Rancho Palos Verdes.

Hundreds of tips about the Calabasas/Malibu fire are being checked out, said Sgt. Mark Winters, a homicide detective who is helping lead the investigation because that fire killed three people.

Winters said he has never worked on a case that was cracked by a psychic.

“But you never know. We keep our eyes and ears--and certainly our minds--open,” he said.

Winters jotted down Montgomery’s name from a reporter. He indicated that investigators will soon be giving the psychic a call.

Montgomery, of course, knows that.