Man Sought on Murder Charges in Seattle Fire : Arson: Four firefighters died in tragedy. Suspect Martin Pang, a recent Valley resident, is owners’ son.

Prosecutors in Washington state filed murder charges Friday against a recent San Fernando Valley resident accused of arranging a fire at a Seattle warehouse that killed four firefighters, the worst tragedy ever to hit the Seattle Fire Department.

Four murder counts were filed against Martin Pang, 39, who has reportedly fled the country, and a warrant was issued for his arrest.

Pang is the son of Harry and Mary Pang, whose Seattle food-processing plant and warehouse burned Jan. 5.

Marilyn Brenneman, a King County, Wash., prosecutor, said Pang has not been eliminated as a suspect in the hunt for the arsonist, but alleged that he is at the least responsible for planning and directing the arson, which makes him liable for the deaths under Washington law.

According to court documents filed in support of the charges, which were revealed Friday, investigators said Pang had told many friends and associates over the last six years that the warehouse would burn down, and several of those interviewed said Pang had asked them to burn it. The documents describe Pang as worried that the family business was going downhill and eager to get the land to use it for his own business purposes.

According to the documents, Pang tearfully told a friend by telephone after the fire: “Nobody was supposed to get hurt; the building was just supposed to burn down.”

A source familiar with the investigation said Pang was believed to have lived in the Valley for several years until last year, and that he has been a frequent visitor since. His last known residence was believed to be in Van Nuys.

The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms office in Los Angeles launched a search for Pang in January, but he has eluded authorities since he was last sighted Feb. 12 in the Venice neighborhood.

His attorney, John Henry Browne of Seattle, said Friday that Pang called him Monday night from another country, which Browne refused to identify. “I lectured him sternly and told him he was about to lose me as his attorney if he did not turn himself in,” Browne said.

Browne said Pang was with a friend in Van Nuys the night of the fire and the next day he flew with his girlfriend to Seattle. Later that week Pang was interviewed by Seattle police; he flew back to California Jan. 9, the same day the ATF declared the fire an arson.

When Pang arrived in California, ATF agents watched as he loaded his car with boxes at his girlfriend’s home in Orange County and followed him the next day to his parents home in Mercer Island, Wash., Browne said.

At some later point, Pang returned to Southern California and subsequently vanished.

“We don’t really know where he is now,” Brenneman said. “But we are concerned that he may have left the country.”

The prosecution’s case was outlined in court papers that were submitted to a Washington judge.

One witness contacted an ATF agent in mid-December, telling the agent that Pang had said that his family’s business was in decline and was going to be “torched,” according to the document.

Two other witnesses told the ATF that Pang had suggested they remove their personal belongings from the warehouse, and one of the witnesses helped Pang move boxes of his belongings to storage lockers he had rented in November. After the fire, authorities seized photos, trophies, family mementos and financial records from the storage lockers.

Pang complained to a friend about his parents’ refusal to sell the declining business and later said that the warehouse would burn down in the next month and that it would look as if transients had set the fire, according to the court documents.

After the blaze, Pang told another person that a transient must have touched off the fire. “The defendant’s description of how the fire must have been lighted exactly describes how the fire actually occurred,” the document states.

In a conversation with a friend the day after the fire, Pang appeared nervous and worried about criminal charges and tried to throw suspicion on others, according to the document. Pang later telephoned the same friend and said he had been falsely accused of setting the fire and that he was going to take a long vacation.

Then Pang began crying and made the statement that “nobody was supposed to get hurt,” the document states.

ATF investigators have determined that whoever burned the warehouse was familiar with the building and the schedules of its occupants. The arsonist, for example, entered the basement by using a key or knew the key pad code to turn off the building’s alarm system, they said.

Frequently unemployed, Pang has been been supported throughout his life by his parents, who bankrolled his short-lived auto racing career, supported him while he pursued an acting career and paid for his cars, his house and child support payments, the document states. But over the last several years the family business began to fail and Pang began telling friends that he planned to use the warehouse property, valued at over $400,000, for his own business, it says.