‘Profiler’ Uses Newest Tools to Smoke Out Arson

The way he sees it, Karl Anglin has fire in his blood. His father was a deputy fire chief in Lubbock, Texas. Anglin has worked in the profession for 25 years, including a stint as an FBI arson “profiler” for the unit in Quantico, Va., made famous by the 1991 movie “Silence of the Lambs.”

These days, Anglin heads up the Arson Task Force for the Los Angeles office of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. But where his father investigated fires with basic tools and a sleuth’s intuition, Anglin and his contemporary colleagues have a more high-tech arsenal of weapons at their disposal.

That includes cutting-edge computer modeling to test theories on the origins of suspicious fires; a national database of known arsonists, incendiary devices and statistics about fires, which went online in early 1998; a forensic crime lab with electronic sniffers capable of detecting trace elements of flammable vapors and chromatographs to distinguish gasoline from furniture polish. The unit’s surveillance equipment includes tracking devices that can be attached to suspicious cars as well as night-vision glasses and video cameras mounted at strategic spots in the national forests.

Most recently, the ATF has added a fleet of $400,000 vehicles that are a cross between a fire truck and a crime lab on wheels. The vehicles enable agents to begin investigating as they roll up to the scene.

While they won’t ever replace a trained investigator, these high-tech tools “can assist us greatly,” says Anglin, 42.

Computers allow arson investigators to “read” the fire, determine how much heat it generated and track its progress back to its point of origin. Additionally, modeling helps investigators narrow the possibilities by eliminating what didn’t happen.

For instance, on days with high humidity, fires will generally burn themselves out unless helped along by say, lighter fluid. Certain materials--such as foam rubber--burn faster than others. Knowing whether the space under a door is a half-inch or two can tell investigators how quickly the fire spread.

“Technology plays a bigger role every day in helping us solve arson crimes,” says Mike Metassa, who heads up the arson group in the ATF’s Santa Ana office.

That’s especially important since arson fires traditionally are among the hardest crimes to solve. Since introducing high-tech tools, the arrest rate has risen from the single digits to more than 20%, Metassa says.

Pay scales rise with experience. Beginning arson investigators start at about $35,000 annually and can earn up to $70,000, industry experts say. Supervisors can make about $100,000, but after retirement they can earn several times that amount consulting for insurance companies and other private-sector groups, Anglin says.

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Freelance writer Denise Hamilton can be reached via e-mail at hamilton@loop.com.