Ex-Glendale Fireman Accused of Arson Murders : Grand jury: John Orr pleads not guilty to indictment charges that he killed four people in a fire he allegedly set in 1984.

A grand jury in Los Angeles on Thursday indicted former Glendale Fire Capt. John L. Orr, the arson investigator who turned arsonist, on charges he murdered four people in a 1984 fire he allegedly set at a hardware store in South Pasadena.

The indictment replaces other murder and arson charges filed against Orr earlier this year, eliminating the need for a lengthy preliminary hearing in Municipal Court, Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael J. Cabral said.

The case, which includes grand jury testimony from 108 witness and more than 88,000 pages of documents, instead will head directly to Superior Court, where a trial is scheduled to begin Sept. 12.

At his arraignment Thursday morning before Superior Court Judge James A. Bascue, Orr pleaded not guilty to the charges in the indictment. In addition to the four murder counts, Orr is charged with committing multiple murders, a special circumstance that could bring a death sentence.

Orr also is charged with 21 additional arson counts that accuse him of setting fires in Glendale, La Canada Flintridge and Burbank in 1990 and 1991.

The arson charges include two notable blazes: A Nov. 22, 1991, fire on the back lot of Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank that destroyed a set where “The Waltons” television series was filmed, and the June 27, 1990, firestorm that destroyed 67 homes in the College Hills area of Glendale.

Orr investigated the College Hills fire, ruling it was incendiary in origin, Cabral noted.

The murder charges stem from an Oct. 10, 1984, arson at Ole’s Home Center on Fair Oaks Avenue in Pasadena. Killed in the blaze were customers Ada Deal, 50, and her grandson, Matthew Troidl, 2, and employees Carolyn Kraus, 26, and Jimmy Cetina, 17.

Orr, a 17-year-veteran of the Glendale fire force, is serving a 30-year federal prison sentence after being convicted in U.S. District Court in Fresno of setting three stores ablaze in the Bakersfield area while attending an arson investigators conference there in 1987.

Last year, he pleaded guilty to three additional arson counts--one for a 1990 fire at a Builders Emporium in North Hollywood and two more on the Central Coast while attending another arson investigators conference in Atascadero in 1989.

Investigators in Los Angeles renewed their investigation of the 1984 Ole’s blaze after those arrests, particularly after Orr’s unpublished novel surfaced. The manuscript, titled “Point of Origin,” includes a detailed description of a hardware store fire similar to the one at Ole’s.