Laguna Fire Suspect’s Alibi Appears Solid : Inquiry: O.C. investigators review records, photographs and fingerprints at Mexican prison.

Orange County district attorney’s office investigators on Monday apparently confirmed that the man accused of setting last year’s devastating Laguna Beach fire was confined in a Mexican prison 1,200 miles away at the time, the prison’s warden said.

After reviewing prison logs, medical records, photographs and fingerprints, as well as interviewing the man’s cellmates and prison guards, who were shown the man’s photograph, the investigators remarked “we are talking about the same person,” Olga Leticia Aguayo, the director of the prison, quoted one of the investigators as saying.

Chief Assistant Dist. Atty. Maurice Evans said investigators are still looking into the alibi of Jose Soto Martinez, 26, who was imprisoned in Mexico under the name of Jaime Saille Higuera, which the district attorney’s office knew as an alias Martinez had employed in the past. He said he expects a decision to be made this week on whether or not to drop the Laguna Beach arson charge.

“Information has come to our attention, since we filed the case, indicating that perhaps Mr. Martinez did not set the fire and was in prison in Mexico. We are investigating Mr. Martinez’s alibi,” Evans said.

Despite this development, Martinez was arraigned Monday for allegedly setting the Laguna Beach fire, which occurred Oct. 27 of last year, damaging or destroying 441 homes and causing $528 million in damage.

Appearing in Municipal Court in Laguna Niguel, the man known to Orange County authorities as Martinez entered a plea of not guilty. Officials from the district attorney’s office said that, after conferring with their investigators in Mexico, they tried unsuccessfully to postpone the arraignment at which Martinez was formally notified of the charges against him.

At the arraignment, Deputy Public Defender Jim Egar, who was representing Martinez at the hearing, angrily denounced law enforcement officials for repeatedly interrogating the defendant without his attorney being present. He said Martinez has had an attorney since one was appointed for him in Fullerton Sept. 20.

Martinez’s Mexican prison record was confirmed just four days after Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi, Orange Fire Chief Larry J. Holms and other law enforcement officials held an elaborate news conference to announce that they had captured the man who “willingly and maliciously” set one of the nation’s costliest and most horrifying fires.

News that Martinez may no longer be a suspect in the case upset and disappointed Laguna residents and prompted Martinez’s public defender to criticize the district attorney’s office for filing a criminal complaint before it had thoroughly investigated the case.

“It’s looks like they were a little premature,” said Deputy Public Defender Frank Ospino, who is also representing Martinez.

Martinez became a suspect in the Laguna fire after he was arrested Sept. 16 on suspicion of starting three fires in Fullerton. Martinez told investigators he lit the Fullerton fire as well as other “big fires” including Laguna’s and one in Riverside County last month. He said he started the Laguna fire to commune with a demon god named “Gotam.”

Even though Martinez’s confession seemed bizarre, investigators said they took him seriously because of detailed information they say he gave about the fire. Martinez had led investigators to the exact flash point of the blaze and told them that no accelerants--only matches--were used, sources said.

Capizzi announced at Friday’s news conference that prosecutors had ample evidence against Martinez and that they were “comfortable” they had the man “responsible” for the fires.

But the case against Martinez started to unravel less then 24 hours later when his mother, Teresa Campos, said that her son confessed to the crimes because he was afraid that he had been marked for death by Mexican mobsters and that he suffers from mental problems.

“He hallucinates,” said Campos, who--along with other family members--attended Martinez’s court hearing Monday.

Campos, who lives in Fullerton, said she could have proved to authorities that her son had an alibi, but she was only contacted by law enforcement officials on Saturday, after charges were filed and the news conference held.

Campos had even contacted Fullerton police Sept. 19 to tell them that her son, whose real name she said is Jaime Saille, was missing. She gave police a photograph of her son, but they did not immediately realize that the man she said was Saille was the man they had in custody.

She added that she too is in contact with Mexican officials who are supplying her with information that she hopes will free her son.

“I’m almost certain that he’s going to be released,” she said, “I will soon have in my hands the proof that he didn’t do it. . . . I’m expecting it any second.”

Asked if her son would recant the confession he apparently gave authorities, Campos said, “Yes. . . . He told me he told the police that he set the fire only because he didn’t want to spend all his life in the streets hiding from somebody. He said, ‘I did it because I wanted to stay in prison longer--for protection.’ ”

Prosecutors said they first became aware of Martinez’s alibi Saturday, after Campos was quoted in a newspaper as saying her son could not have set the fire because he was in prison in Mexico. Investigators were sent to interview Campos that same day and to the prison in Mazatlan Monday.

Two Orange County district attorney’s investigators spent almost four hours in the walled Mazatlan prison Monday morning, in search of information to verify or disprove Campos’s claim.

For much of the time, they huddled in the office of Aguayo, the prison warden and director, who said the investigators compared the records of the man they know as Jose Soto Martinez with those of Jaime Saille Higuera.

The investigators showed Aguayo a grainy photograph of a sullen, unsmiling Martinez, whom Aguayo said she immediately recognized as her former prisoner, Saille.

She said Saille was a petty thief who had been jailed from May 15, 1993--five months before the Laguna fire--until July 8, 1994--eight months after the fire. He had been convicted of burglary of a residence, where he reportedly stole some radios.

In addition to Aguayo, prisoners from Saille’s cellblock also told investigators that the man in the picture was the same quiet prisoner who had lived among them.

“He never gave us a problem. He was very tranquil,” said the prison’s commander, Marduk Urenda, who said that Saille was the kind of prisoner who avoided fights.

When Saille first arrived in the prison in 1993, he underwent a medical examination and a doctor noted in prison records Saille’s complaint about being haunted by ghosts and spirits. According to Aguayo, the medical report also indicated that Saille admitted that he was a drug user since the age of 15.

Saille never tried to escape from the prison, which holds about 1,080 inmates, added Aguayo.

She said she is convinced that Saille couldn’t have slipped out of the jail to California, because of the daily system of checking prisoners in the morning and in the evening.

Even if the Laguna fire charge against Martinez is dropped, he will still face charges of setting three fires in Fullerton, district attorney officials said. Riverside officials said they consider Martinez a suspect in the Aug. 5 fire at Green River. Martinez family members, however, have offered another alibi, claiming that he was with them when the Riverside fire broke out.

As word spread that Martinez may not be the Laguna Beach arsonist, many fire victims said they were disappointed but did not want an innocent man to be wrongly convicted.

Marsha Bode, director of the Laguna Fire Relief Coalition, said she was disappointed. She said knowing who was responsible for the devastating blaze would have aided the fire victims’ recovery by ending one aspect of the uncertainty that has plagued many in the fire’s wake.

“It’s like false hopes. It’s too bad to find out it’s not true,” she said.

Laguna Beach Mayor Ann Christoph agreed: “The idea of kind of closing the chapter (on the fire) was somewhat of a consolation. And close to the anniversary date, it would have been nice.”

But if Martinez could not have sparked the fire, “it’s probably good to find out right now rather than later,” she said.

“Clearly, I don’t think anyone wants to see the wrong person in jail for a crime if they are not the responsible party,” said Laguna Beach Police Chief Neil J. Purcell Jr., who also attended the district attorney’s news conference.

Laguna Beach Councilwoman Lida Lenney, who was mayor of Laguna at the time of the fire, said initially she was “very excited when we thought they had caught the arsonist. We suffered a terrible trauma and it would be nice to know that whoever caused that trauma wouldn’t be able to do it again.”

“But I began to be terribly concerned whether they had the right man. As our police chief said, we don’t want the wrong man sitting in jail,” she said.

A pretrial hearing for Martinez was set for Wednesday and a preliminary hearing is scheduled for Oct. 11.

Egar said that his office intends to send its own investigator to Mexico Tuesday to gather all relevant jail documents on Saille from the prison in Mazatlan.

“We want to make sure the information, including fingerprints that the district attorney’s office may have collected, are of the same person,” Egar said. “We will send our own investigators to maintain the authenticity of the information that the district attorney’s office may have gotten down there.”

Egar carefully avoided answering all questions relating to Martinez’s confessions, or to prosecutors’ assertions that he was able to take investigators to the exact point where fire department officials believe the Laguna Beach fire was started.

Asked what his client had told him regarding his whereabouts during the fire, Egar said, “There are attorney-client privilege issues, and I’m certainly not about to divulge them and tell you the nature of our conversations or any information that we’ve learned in regard to this case.”

Egar said that he had only inherited the Martinez case the day before the arraignment, and he didn’t want to risk any misstatements in answering such questions.

Times staff writers Michael Granberry, Rebecca Trounson, David Reyes and Martin Miller contributed to this story.