La Habra Landlord Held as Suspect in 5 Apartment Fires : Arson: Authorities allege he set blazes--the latest one in Anaheim--at complexes he owned to collect insurance.

Authorities said Friday that they suspect a 63-year-old landlord of trying to set as many as five fires at his own apartment buildings in Orange County, but they released his wife from jail after concluding that she was not involved in any of the arsons.

The most recent fire came early Thursday morning at an eight-unit apartment building at 1545 W. Ball Road in Anaheim, forcing at least three families to flee into the night. Building owner Gheorghe Alexandroai and his wife, Floarea, 50, were arrested hours later.

Floarea Alexandroai was released from Anaheim City Jail late Friday afternoon after investigators determined that she did not take part in what they believe was an insurance-driven scheme. As she sat on a couch in the couple’s La Habra home Friday afternoon, just hours after she was released, the teary-eyed woman said she remained unsure whether her husband set two fires and tried to start three others as charged.

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” she said, wrapping a pink sweater more tightly around her hunched shoulders. “I feel so sorry for him. . . . So sorry.”

But pity was far from the minds of some of Gheorghe Alexandroai’s tenants.

“What kind of man would do that kind of thing with so many kids in the building?” said an irate Ronda Hahn, who has lived for three months with her three children at another complex that Gheorghe Alexandroai owned at 1541 W. Ball Road. Investigators allege that the landlord also tried to set fire last November to Hahn’s building, next to the one involved in Thursday’s blaze.

“The man must have no morals whatsoever,” Hahn said.

Gheorghe Alexandroai, who emigrated to this country from Romania two decades ago, is being held at the Anaheim jail on $150,000 bail. Officials said he is expected to be arraigned Monday on as many as five charges of arson and attempted arson.

Authorities said they are also considering whether attempted murder charges should be filed in the Ball Road blaze and perhaps others, but no decisions have been made.

Even before Thursday’s fire, the county arson task force was already investigating Alexandroai and was preparing to serve a search warrant against him, said Orange County Fire Capt. Dan Young. The warrant was hastily executed Thursday after the Ball Road fire.

In the warrant, investigators alleged that he set or attempted to set five fires in Orange County in the last nine months. No one was hurt in the fires.

Investigators are looking at other cases possibly involving Alexandroai in Mira Loma in Riverside County and in Chicago, as well.

In August, 1992, he allegedly set an early-morning blaze at an apartment building that he owns in the 8600 block of Cerritos Avenue in Stanton, according to the search warrant.

He later received $217,000 in insurance money. According to the search warrant, a Stanton building inspector told investigators that the repairs made with the insurance money were unnecessary or were upgrades that tenants had asked for before the fire struck.

Investigators from the Garden Grove Fire Department, which covers the Stanton area, are handling that incident, working with the Anaheim Fire Department.

Investigators alleged in the warrant that Alexandroai then tried to set fire last Nov. 19 to the apartments at 1541 W. Ball Road by leaving a trail of gasoline-soaked rags and clothes in the attic. No blaze was actually ignited in that case.

Anaheim Fire Investigator Mike Doty said that at the time, authorities believed that gang members seeking retaliation may have been to blame.

On Jan. 8, Alexandroai allegedly tried to incinerate the apartment building that he owns next to the one on Cerritos Avenue in Stanton, causing charring in the attic and other limited damage. None of the occupants were hurt, and all were relocated.

On March 2, the search warrant said, firefighters once again responded to tenants’ calls that they smelled gasoline at 1541 W. Ball Road. Firefighters found seven one-gallon plastic milk jugs filled with gasoline in the attic, along with plastic cat litter pans that also contained gasoline. They also found cash register receipts for some of the items, allegedly purchased from a store half a mile from Gheorghe Alexandroai’s La Habra home.

Young said the California Department of Forestry is also investigating a suspicious blaze at an Alexandroai property in Mira Loma last Sept. 9.

It was not until fire investigators from Garden Grove, Anaheim and the Orange County Fire Department began comparing notes last month that they noticed the similarities in the incidents at the Alexandroai-owned buildings.

But it was too late to prevent this week’s blaze.

In the most recent incident, fire investigators said they believe that Alexandroai left five plastic salad bowls filled with gasoline-soaked rags in the attic of the apartment building at 1545 W. Ball Road late Wednesday night.

The rags caught fire shortly before 4 a.m., seriously damaging five of the eight apartments and leaving several families homeless, including that of the apartment manager. Authorities say they are uncertain how or when the fire was actually set.

“We couldn’t believe it happened again,” said Hahn, the tenant in the building next door. “There were a lot of little kids standing out there in the cold, asking, ‘What’s going on?’ It’s just not fair.”