Investigators Continue Hunt for Arsonists : Fires: More than 70,000 acres of brush burned. Suspects’ alibis check out and clues are getting fewer and further between.

After two months, the trail is growing colder, but investigators keep hunting for the arsonists who set four corners of Ventura County ablaze.

As burned-out homeowners rebuild and green plant shoots poke through the ash, arson detectives are still checking out clues in the deliberately set wildfires that scorched more than 70,000 acres of brush and destroyed 119 outbuildings, houses and mobile homes around Halloween.

But investigators say that alibis have checked out for all their suspects, and that the tips they are getting are fewer, further between and more likely to be crank calls.

Damage estimates in the two largest fires, near Thousand Oaks and Santa Paula, have topped $13 million, and the California Department of Forestry estimates that those cost $13.3 million to extinguish, said Abbe Cohen, fiscal analyst for the county Fire Department.

In the largest fire, the 43,844-acre Green Meadow blaze near Thousand Oaks, one investigator admitted: “We’re almost at a standstill.”

“Basically, nothing’s changed,” said William Hager, Ventura County fire investigation specialist.

Tips have been phoned in from all over the country, he said.

“We’ve been doing a lot of follow-up on that,” Hager said. But many of the tips are from women turning in their boyfriends because they are angry at them, he said.

Investigators check out all the tips, even the cranks, he said.

They have also interviewed more than a dozen former arsonists and suspects in other fires, all of whom proved that they were not at the ignition site at the end of Green Meadow Avenue in Thousand Oaks, Hager said.

It was there, about 1:15 p.m. Oct. 26, that the fire was started.

Over the next 10 days, flames roared southward through 37-year-old brush before being quenched by nearly 2,000 firefighters.

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Hager declined to describe the device used to start the fire, saying: “That’s how we eliminate the lunatics. We had someone who called up and said he did it, but when we asked him how and where, he couldn’t say.”

Hager said investigators have interviewed five people who were near the scene at the time, and eliminated them all as suspects.

Hager said investigators have ruled out as a suspect an unidentified motorcyclist who sped away from the area because no witnesses saw him at the fire’s ignition point.

“We have no idea who it was, no plate or anything,” Hager said. “It was a red Honda dirt bike with an orange stripe. He was wearing a full helmet and face mask. He might have been up in the hills riding and saw the fire and got out of there because he thought he might get blamed for it.”

But they still are looking for clues to lead them to the owners of two vehicles spotted in the area--a black, early-1980s Datsun 280Z with chrome bumpers, and a full-size Chevrolet or Ford pickup with slightly faded orange paint, Hager said.

“We can’t do our job without their eyes,” he said of witnesses. “And if somebody saw or heard anything since the fire, we’d be more than happy to talk to them and hear what they heard. Our number is (805) 388-4269.”

Investigators are also running out of tips in the 26,500-acre Steckel fire that raced from the borders of Santa Paula toward Ventura, said Sgt. Kelly Fadler of the Sheriff’s Department’s major crimes unit.

Tips are growing scarcer, he said. “Early on, we did (have) a lot of leads, and we tracked them down. But lately, we haven’t had any.

“Early on, we had a suspect we worked very hard and heavy on,” he said Thursday. “He was a local cattle rancher that had lost a lease and had some other motives for possibly doing it.”

Detectives offered the rancher a chance to take a polygraph test--which he passed. “Our investigation completely exonerated him,” said Fadler, whose office is investigating the Steckel blaze jointly with the County Fire Department’s arson team.

Fadler said investigators are also looking into a vehicle that may have been seen near the fire, which began in the early hours of Oct. 27 near Steckel Park. But Fadler said it may be premature to publish a description of it.

Investigators are saying even less about the Wheel fire that blackened 1,650 acres of Los Padres National Forest near Ojai and the 1,500-acre Box Canyon fire that seriously injured four Los Angeles city firefighters.

Brian Humphrey, spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department, said investigators don’t want to give out any information that could jeopardize their work.

“They said there is nothing new they wish to state at this point,” Humphrey said. “People who saw or continue to see suspicious activity can call 1-(800) 47-ARSON. It remains under active investigation.”

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S. Forest Service investigators looking into the Wheel fire “have checked on all the leads,” said Juanita Freel, spokeswoman for the service. “None of them have panned out. The evidence they did have went to the lab, but there’s no indicator of any responsible party. That investigation is still ongoing.”

Arson crimes are hard to solve, Fadler said.

“Unlike a lot of crimes where we have some specific motive--monetary gain, etc.--these things are just kind of a random satisfaction type (of crime),” he said. “It’s difficult unless we have witnesses to locate these individuals.”

The fire often destroys evidence, he added. “But a lot of evidence is retrieved after the fire, and a trained arson analyst can determine a heck of a lot from an arson.”