D.A. Will Not Pursue Death Penalty for Orr

Lifting the specter of a death sentence against him, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said Wednesday that it would accept a life prison term for John Leonard Orr, the former Glendale arson investigator convicted of setting a series of fires.

Orr was convicted last month by a downtown Superior Court jury of setting fire to Ole’s Home Center in South Pasadena in 1984, killing four people, including a 2-year-old boy. Orr also was found guilty of 20 arson counts for setting a string of brush fires, including the 1990 College Hills wildfire that destroyed or damaged 67 homes in Glendale.

Last month, the jury deadlocked 8-4 on whether to recommend that the 17-year veteran firefighter be executed.

In the absence of a unanimous jury recommendation, Superior Court Judge Robert J. Perry was limited by law to imposing a maximum sentence of life without parole Sept. 17, unless prosecutors had decided to fight for the death penalty before a new jury.

“Virtually the whole trial would have been done over before a new jury to acquaint them with the facts” so they could make a “knowledgeable decision on a penalty,” said Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the district attorney. “After reviewing the case, we felt this was the appropriate action to take.”

Defense attorney Peter Giannini called the move by prosecutors to drop their pursuit of the death penalty “the appropriate decision in the case.”

During the five-week trial, prosecutors introduced evidence that Orr had engaged in a distinctive pattern of criminal behavior--setting fires during daytime hours, in polyurethane foam materials in occupied businesses, using a “signature” time-delay device made from a cigarette, matches, a rubber band and yellow legal paper.

Prosecutors buttressed their case by introducing “Points of Origin,” a manuscript for a novel Orr wrote detailing the activities of a firefighter who conceals his secret identity as an arsonist and “favors large brush fires but graduates to burning businesses.” The novel closely paralleled Orr’s real-life activities, the prosecution contended.

In the novel, the protagonist named Aaron uses a slow-burning incendiary device to set fire to a Pasadena hardware store called “Cal’s,” which kills several employees as well as a woman and her young grandson.

Before he was convicted in the state case, Orr already was serving a 30-year federal prison sentence after being convicted in 1992 on federal arson charges stemming from a series of hardware store blazes in the San Joaquin Valley around the time of a 1987 state arson investigator’s conference.

The next year he pleaded guilty to three additional blazes, including a 1990 fire at a Builders Emporium in North Hollywood and two others near Atascadero in 1989.