Arson Survivor Could Face Murder Charges : Crime: San Marino man is too badly burned to be questioned in deaths of wife, children and housekeeper.

Authorities said Monday that they have sufficient evidence to file murder charges against the only survivor of a San Marino arson fire in connection with a scheme to kill his wife, three children and a housekeeper and then collect on a life insurance policy.

Leonardo Morita, 46, suffered extensive burns in the May 29 explosion and fire that gutted the family’s two-story home. Relatives will decide Wednesday whether to take him off life support at County-USC Medical Center, where he shows minimal brain activity, San Marino Mayor Bernie Le Sage said.

Police Chief Frank J. Wills, who is also San Marino’s fire chief, said authorities are ready to charge Morita with five counts of murder, but that “would be purposeless. He is not able to appear in court. Nobody expects him to live.”

Nancy Chen, whose family lived next door to Moritas, said the arson deaths were bad enough, but the fact the father could have been responsible was even more stunning.

“It’s completely beyond my imagination,” she said. “They were such a happy family; everybody was always laughing. It’s real hard for our family to take it that he could do something like this. I hope they find out something different. I won’t believe it until I hear it from his own lips.”

Overwhelming physical evidence, however, points to Morita as the suspect, San Marino and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department arson investigators said.

Morita recently had purchased a life insurance policy that would pay $500,000 at his wife’s death, authorities said.

Other indications of Morita’s guilt were that investigators found no forced entry to the burned-out home and discovered fuel cans at the scene from Morita’s workplace, the Hyperion Sewage Treatment Plant in Los Angeles, where he worked as a city electrician.

When firefighters arrived on the scene, a severely burned Morita staggered out to his driveway with the smell of gasoline on his clothes, deputies said.

Morita apparently tried to start the fire about 5 a.m. by pouring several gallons of gasoline on the house’s staircase to prevent his sleeping family from escaping, Le Sage said.

He poured out so much of the fuel, investigators said, that it leaked into the basement and was ignited by a water heater pilot flame, sparking a tremendous fireball.

The blaze was so intense that authorities could not immediately determine the sexes of the victims or whether they were children or adults.

Later, the dead were identified as Morita’s wife, Lucy, 45, and their three children, 10-year-old Clint, 14-year-old Krishna and 15-year-old Rama, and the family’s 25-year-old housekeeper.

Investigators had hoped Morita’s condition would improve so they could interview him. But he has contracted severe pneumonia and other complications and has been unable to be questioned.

The Moritas had lived in the United States for years but had retained Indonesian citizenship. They frequently attended functions at the Indonesian Consulate in Los Angeles and were members of the San Marino Community Church.