Arrest Ends 2 1/2 Years on the Run

A retired Los Angeles firefighter charged with beating his wife, stalking her and torching her car has been captured in Nevada after South Pasadena investigators pursued him for about 2 1/2 years.

It was retirement money that David Walter Pierson earned fighting fires for 27 years that led to his capture Sept. 18 in Laughlin, Nev., said South Pasadena Police Sgt. Mark Miller.

“They always say follow the money,” Miller said.

And that is what investigators did, initially pursuing leads for Pierson, a onetime long-distance truck driver, to Redlands and Missouri. Those leads didn’t pan out. But Miller said investigators later discovered that Pierson’s retirement checks were going to a Laughlin post office box.

Postal inspectors, who were sent Pierson’s photograph, confirmed that he visited it every Tuesday, investigators said. “Sure enough, he showed up within an hour of the [Nevada] fugitive task force staking the place out,” Miller said.

A Pasadena Superior Court judge is scheduled to decide at a Dec. 20 preliminary hearing whether Pierson, 67, will go on trial for arson, spousal abuse, burglary of a vehicle, stalking and three counts of violating a court order.

Pierson, formerly of South Pasadena, pleaded innocent to the charges and is being held on $225,000 bail. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison.

Investigators said Pierson fled California after witnesses allegedly saw him set fire to Pauline Pierson’s car and two other vehicles in a South Pasadena garage on April 19, 1999--just weeks after she got a restraining order against him.

“He was angry over the restraining order. It was the final episode in a series of violent acts since they married a few months before,” said Robert Jones, a South Pasadena Fire Department investigator. “He wanted revenge.”

After South Pasadena detectives drove Pierson from Nevada to South Pasadena, investigator Jones said, “[Pierson] confessed to the arson.” Pierson denied the other accusations, Jones said. Pierson’s attorney did not return telephone calls for comment.

Jones alleges that Pierson used a flammable liquid to ignite the fire that destroyed his wife’s car and two other vehicles and burned an adjoining structure and a utility pole in the 1800 block of Fremont Avenue.

Pierson and his now ex-wife were married Feb. 14, 1999. They were old friends who lost touch with each other only to be reunited three months before they married, investigators said.

Their relationship, however, apparently soon turned from good to bad. Investigators allege that Pierson beat his wife shortly after they were married, and have photographs of bruises on Pauline Pierson--now Pauline Hohmann--allegedly inflicted by David Pierson.

Hohmann sought a temporary restraining order against her husband on March 9, 1999, citing domestic violence. That month, a court commissioner granted the order forbidding Pierson from coming within 100 yards of her, forcing him to move out of their apartment. Within days, Hohmann’s car tires were slashed, police said. No one saw the perpetrator.

A few weeks later, however, witnesses saw Pierson enter his wife’s garage before it was enveloped in flames, police said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Phil Wojdak said the case is an example of relentless work by investigators. “They never gave up on looking for this guy,” he said. “He just assumed he’d be forgotten.”