Former Fire Official Denies New Charges : Courts: John Orr, an ex-Glendale investigator imprisoned for arson, is accused of setting 1984 blaze that killed four.

A former Glendale fire captain, already imprisoned for arson, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a new set of crimes, including the murder of four people who died in a 1984 fire he is now accused of setting.

The charges against John Leonard Orr, once an acclaimed arson investigator, also include arson for the 1990 College Hills brush fire in Glendale that destroyed 67 homes.

Orr, 45, a Los Angeles native, is already serving a 30-year federal prison sentence for setting six fires in the San Joaquin Valley and along the Central Coast.

Once a clean-cut fire official, Orr looked the part of an inmate, wearing blue prison garb, handcuffs and a graying beard Wednesday as he was arraigned behind a glass cage in Los Angeles Municipal Court.

A preliminary hearing for the new charges--26 counts in all--was set Feb. 2 before Municipal Judge Craig E. Veals.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Cabral said later that he doubted that the proceeding, in which prosecutors outline their case, would take place that soon because of the large volume of evidence that is expected.

He would not discuss his evidence in detail but acknowledged that it includes an unpublished novel written by Orr, entitled “Points of Origin,” in which the main character is an arson investigator who is also an arsonist.

The manuscript details several Southern California fires and served as a road map for prosecutors during Orr’s prior convictions in federal court. Among the fires described in the book is a Oct. 10, 1984, blaze at the former Ole’s Home Center in South Pasadena, which is part of the current case pending against Orr.

Orr’s defense lawyer dismissed the novel Wednesday as a purely “fictional account” and said the case against his client was circumstantial.

“I don’t believe there is any direct evidence connecting him to any of the crimes he’s been charged with,” Peter Giannini said.

Giannini also said Orr was “unhappy, anxious and very upset” about the new charges against him, and has been coping as well as could be expected in prison, where “he is now among the type of people he used to prosecute.”

Orr was transferred this week from the federal penitentiary at Lompoc to Los Angeles County Jail, where Giannini said he was being housed apart from the general population because he and authorities “fear for his safety.”

He was convicted in 1992 of three counts of arson stemming from a series of fires in the San Joaquin Valley, all at hardware stores or home-improvement outlets. The fires were set around the time of a January, 1987, state arson investigators convention in Fresno, which Orr attended.

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In 1993, Orr pleaded guilty to three more counts of arson, one for a 1990 fire at a Builders Emporium in North Hollywood and two more for fires in stores along Pacific Coast Highway near Atascadero in 1989. Like the Fresno-area fires, those along the Central Coast occurred around the time of an arson investigators convention attended by Orr.

Federal and local investigators continued looking into the unusual case even after the convictions.

In November, Orr was formally accused of setting a new group of fires whose origins were never solved. The new charges included four counts of murder stemming from the Ole’s fire, which killed two clerks and two customers, including a 2-year-old boy shopping with his grandmother.

Cabral said prosecutors will not decide whether to try the case as a capital offense--making Orr eligible for the death penalty--until after the preliminary hearing.

The new charges against Orr also include 18 counts of arson for the June 27, 1990, College Hills firestorm. Orr had served as the fire’s lead investigator.

The multimillion-dollar blaze also led to a tense standoff between the Glendale Fire Department and newly homeless residents, who accused firefighters of not doing enough to save their properties.

Orr also faces three new counts of arson for three brush fires set in the Glendale and La Canada foothills on Nov. 23, 1991, and one more count of arson for a Nov. 22, 1991, fire that destroyed the set of the TV show “The Waltons” on a back lot of Warner Studios in Burbank.