Deadly Fire Not Arson, Jury Is Told

The murder trial of John Leonard Orr, a former Glendale fire captain turned arsonist, got underway Wednesday with defense lawyers arguing that faulty wiring--not arson--was to blame for a fire that killed four people in South Pasadena.

While acknowledging that Orr, 49, a former arson investigator, had pleaded guilty in 1992 to federal charges stemming from a series of arson fires in Bakersfield, attorney Ed Rucker told jurors the blaze at Ole’s Home Center in 1984 was not Orr’s handiwork. The defense will show that the fire began in the store’s ceiling as a smoldering electrical fire before exploding into the aisles below, he said.

“He has admitted he set fires,” said Rucker, referring to San Joaquin Valley blazes Orr set while attending a 1987 arson investigator’s convention in Fresno. However, Rucker said, “Mr. Orr is not responsible for this fire. . . . Nobody is responsible for this fire because it’s not an arson.”

In the state court trial--which was delayed by the federal court trial and civil actions--Orr is accused of more than two dozen felonies. These include four murder counts for the deaths of Ada Deal, 50; her 2-year-old grandson, Matthew Troidl; and hardware store employees Carolyn Kraus, 26, and Jimmy Cetina, 17.

A key prosecution exhibit is the manuscript of a novel Orr wrote about a firefighter turned arsonist, in which the protagonist sets ablaze a hardware store, killing a woman and her grandson.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Sandra Flannery told the jurors that Orr set the Ole’s fire, as well as others at a nearby Vons and Albertsons grocery stores to create a diversion.

Prosecutors said Orr arrived at the scene with a 35-millimeter camera, and when he was asked what he was doing there, he told a fire official, “Just passing by,” according to Flannery.

“John Orr claimed the Ole’s fire was arson . . . that he knew the identity of the arsonist,” Flannery said. “He was speaking from firsthand knowledge.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Cabral briefly summarized three other fires Orr is accused of setting, including a Nov. 22, 1991, blaze in the Warner Bros. back lot in Burbank--which destroyed the set of the television show “The Waltons”--and the 1991 brush fire that engulfed 67 homes in the College Hills area of Glendale.

Cabral said that Orr displayed a knowledge that went beyond his 17 years of experience with the Glendale Fire Department.

Orr theorized that an arsonist ignited the Glendale brush fire with a lighter, Cabral said, but “no one in any position of authority saw the device” that Orr said he found at the fire’s point of origin.

Cabral also told jurors he would introduce numerous videotapes and audiotapes of fires where Orr was present, including video Orr filmed of a Glendale fire before firefighters arrived on the scene.

The prosecutors’ presentation made no mention of Orr’s unpublished manuscript for a novel called “Points of Origin,” which tells the story of a firefighter-arsonist as he sets brush fires and ignites businesses across California.

Nevertheless, defense attorney Peter Giannini launched a preemptive strike against the novel, which he called the “prosecutors’ road map.”

“There’s no question John Orr had access to information contained in the book. He was the investigator,” said Giannini. “The fact the information is in the book does not mean he set them.”

A firefighter also wrote the story that became the movie “Backdraft,” the lawyer said, but that “doesn’t mean he set the fires any more than John Orr would.”

Giannini also attacked prosecutors’ contention that Orr used a signature device to set the fires, consisting of a cigarette, matches and a rubber band. “There’s nothing particularly unusual about it,” he said. Such a device was not found at any of the fires specified in the charges, Giannini said. “Not a single one.”