Fire Lover

by Joseph Wambaugh

  This agreement is not contingent in any way upon the outcome of any investigation, proceeding or subsequent trial.

  It would be extremely difficult to keep the Fire Monster out of the courtroom while John Orr’s attorney was fighting for his client’s life.

  By 1998, the high-power tank was loaded with crazies, and walking on the tier was dangerous. John could not believe that his guilty plea to the Builder’s Emporium arson attempt in North Hollywood would be used by the district attorney to prove that an identical fire in an identical store, Ole’s Home Center, had indeed been set by the defendant.

  John claimed that the legalese in his plea agreement had confused him, but that he’d been verbally assured by Giannini that it could never be used against him in the unlikely event of a future state prosecution. His attorney said, not true, that the plea agreement spoke for itself, and that his client had assured him that he’d had nothing to do with any of the crimes that the state had been investigating, especially the Ole’s fire.

  John’s fourth ex-wife, Wanda, had been put into near bankruptcy. All of his legal fees totaled $110, 000, and she’d come very close to losing her home. The only one of John’s women who had stayed in his life was his last girlfriend, Chris. She ran documents back and forth from Giannini’s office to the county jail.

  The defense had taken so long preparing its case that John Orr was numbed past suicidal thoughts. He alleged that Giannini would not return his phone calls and had thus become another of the lawyers that he hated. The only attorney left that he liked was Ed Rucker, but he claimed that he had not seen Rucker face-to-face for over a year.

  And at last, at long last, the court would not tolerate any more delay. The trial of John Orr was set for May 1998, and there would be no further continuances granted.

  In April of that year, Steve Patterson retired from the Burbank Fire Department after twenty-nine years of service. And it seemed that Mary Susan Duggan had nobody left to seek justice for her. It appeared that she had lost her champion forever.

  16

  THE FIRE MONSTER

  On Wednesday, May 6, 1998, in Department 104 of the Superior Court of the State of California for the County of Los Angeles, Judge Robert J. Perry had a question for the prosecution and defense teams standing at the bench.

  He said, “We have a request from the L.A. Times for a still-camera photographer to be present in the back of the courtroom. He’ll be shooting pictures of the attorneys during opening statements. Anybody have any objection to that?”

  Deputy District Attorney Michael Cabral, speaking for himself and his assistant, Deputy District Attorney Sandra Flannery, said, “The people don’t.”

  Edward Rucker, who stood a foot taller than the other lawyers present, with a crop of gray hair that made him look even taller, said, “I would object to it. I don’t see where publicity really advances what we’re doing here.”

  Peter Giannini said, “I think it’s distracting for opening statements.”

  The judge said, “You’ve persuaded me. I’m going to deny the request.”

  Thus began the murder trial of John Leonard Orr, with defense counsel demonstrating that they were not grandstanders and were fully aware that they were fighting for their client’s life.

  The sinewy jurist, a devoted jogger, read, through gold-rimmed glasses, the jury instructions that John Orr would never forget. He talked about reasonable doubt and the presumption of evidence. The part of his reading that produced fear in the defendant was when he said, “Evidence will be produced for the purpose of showing that the defendant committed crimes other than those for which he is on trial. This evidence, if believed, may not be considered by you to prove that the defendant is a person of bad character or that he has a disposition to commit crimes.

  “It may be considered by you only for the limited purpose of determining if it tends to show a characteristic, method, plan, or scheme in the commission of the criminal acts, similar to the method, plan, or scheme used in the commission of the offenses in this case.

  “Now, if there is evidence that the defendant set a different fire—not one charged in the twenty-five counts, but other fires which are not charged in the indictment—you can’t say, well, he set those other fires, therefore he must have set the fires charged in the indictment.

  “Evidence of the uncharged fires may be considered only if there is a uniqueness in the characteristics of the uncharged fires which helps identify the person who set the charged fires, if indeed a charged fire was set and not caused by an electrical short or some other accidental condition. We will be talking about these issues during the trial. If you are a little confused, don’t worry about it. I am sure the attorneys will straighten you out.”

  Sometimes on downtown jury panels you were looking at people you wouldn’t dare make eye contact with if you were out on the street. And you only did it in the courtroom because there was an armed bailiff standing by. But none of these jurors looked like they might have a gun in their glove box. In fact, one of them was a lawyer who’d once worked for the City Attorney’s Office as a prosecutor. And there was also a retired deputy sheriff on the jury. The defense apparently believed that these two potential enemies would go out of their way to be fair, and could explain complicated legal issues. John Orr didn’t agree.

  Except for the lawyer and the cop, the jury was an ethnic mixed bag of working folks, as one might expect to find on a downtown Los Angeles jury. And after hearing all that stuff about uncharged crimes, they probably thought: Confusing, Judge? Not at all.

  If you’re a fish, a strange fish.

  Most who saw John Orr at this trial, at this time of his life, were looking at a man who’d aged. Three and a half years in a county jail cage does that to a person, any person who’s had virtually no exercise or recreation. The defendant had lost the vigor that had been there at the Fresno trial. And now, wearing a mustache but not the beard that made him look professorial, he looked pale and soft and seedy.

  The prosecution’s opening statement was given by Sandra Flannery, a slender, articulate prosecutor with shoulder-length auburn hair. She was Cabral’s age but had limited trial experience.

  “A devastating fire was set on the evening of October tenth, 1984,” she said. “It stole the lives of twenty-eight-year-old Carolyn Krause, seventeen-year-old Jimmy Cetina, fifty-year-old Ada Deal, and her two-year-old grandson, Matthew Troidl.”

  She went on to describe Ole’s Home Center and the community of South Pasadena, with its one fire station only two blocks from Ole’s, stressing how quickly the fire department had arrived. She described how Captain Eisele, needing help desperately, learned that another engine company from Alhambra was being sent to a different fire several blocks away at a Von’s Market, a diversionary fire. And she said that yet another diversionary fire had been set at an Albertson’s Market in Pasadena.

  Sandra Flannery told the jury that 125 firefighters were needed to extinguish the Ole’s blaze, too late for the victims trapped inside, and that ten minutes after the first engine had arrived, Glendale arson investigator John Orr was standing by the fire truck with a thirty-five-millimeter camera around his neck, asking for permission to shoot photos.

  The jury was told that within twenty-four hours after the fire, the defendant had told Karen Krause Berry, sister-in-law of one of the victims, that the fire was an arson, and he later told her it had been started by an incendiary device placed within polyfoam products.

  Sandra Flannery said she would present evidence of another uncharged act, the arson attempt at the CraftMart store in Bakersfield, where a fingerprint had been recovered. And that the prosecution would present evidence that a time-delay incendiary device had been used to set fires in Atascadero, as well as at Builder’s Emporium in North Hollywood. And that the defendant had admitted to placing an incendiary device at each of those locations.

  There it was, those guilty pleas. The hissing Fire Monster was glaring at the jury, and John Orr’s lawyers kn
ew it.

  “These uncharged acts will be presented to you,” she said, “to show that the Ole’s fire was set as part of a common scheme, a modus operandi by which a distinctive time-delay incendiary device was used to set fires in similar types of materials at similar types of locations.”

  Mike Cabral, when it was his turn, addressed the jury to explain that the remaining counts of arson, counts five through twenty-five, mostly involved the homes that had been burned in the College Hills fire. He explained that they had finally charged the defendant with torching sixteen of the sixty-six, only those that had been burned to the ground.

  After recess, the jury heard from defense counsel Ed Rucker, whose job it would be to convince the jury that the Ole’s fire had been rightly called an accident. The towering defense lawyer immediately established that he was going to distance his arson count from the others that were being handled by Peter Giannini.

  He said to the jury, “You’re going to be presented with evidence of numerous fires. In an attempt to assist you in that, Mr. Giannini and I have divided the case up, so that I will speak to you only about the fire at Ole’s on October the tenth, 1984. If I question a witness, it’s going to be only a witness that has to do with Ole’s. And this is a fire that took place fourteen years ago.”

  John Orr described Ed Rucker’s style as “understated and gentlemanly.” A great deal of delicacy was required when he said, “The Ole’s fire was a tragic, tragic, fire in which four people lost their lives: a very young boy, his grandmother, and two young people. Tragic. If Mr. Orr is found not responsible for the Ole’s fire, we don’t get to the penalty phase, it’s not a death-penalty case. So, no matter what you decide on the other fires, it’s only the Ole’s fire in which we’re dealing with capital punishment, if you find Mr. Orr responsible for it.

  “We’re going to put on a defense. We’re going to call witnesses. And we will attempt to show you that Mr. Orr is not responsible for this fire. In fact, nobody is responsible for this fire. Ole’s fire was not an arson.”

  And then Rucker had to directly call attention to that hissing thing behind them.

  “You’re going to hear that Mr. Orr has admitted that he set fires. Now, this is a shameful thing. You’ll hear testimony that he admitted in federal court that he set three fires, and was sentenced to thirty years. This is where your oath as a juror is challenged. Are you going to make the system work?

  “We will present evidence that the Ole’s fire was an accidental fire that started up in an attic area. This is not the first time that the Ole’s fire has been litigated in court. There was a civil suit filed on behalf of the families of the deceased, and the case was tried, and what did they conclude? Nobody testified that this was an arson fire. Nobody. They all agreed that this was a fire started by accident, probably through some bad wiring up in the attic area.”

  Rucker gave the jury an idea of how attic fires start and smolder, and drop down through the ceiling. He said that when oxygen is introduced there can be an explosion, also called a flashover. He talked about the sprinkler system, and the fire doors, and the general contractor, and circuit breakers. It became quickly apparent to the media that this long and technical dissertation on fire cause and origin was just a prelude to what was coming.

  Rucker concluded with, “You’re not going to hear from a single witness who saw John Orr inside that store that night. In fact, you’re going to hear evidence that at the time this fire was first seen, John Orr was talking with another fire investigator concerning another fire. And I think the evidence is going to show you that this is not arson. And I think you’re going to be confident to return a verdict of not guilty on this fire.”

  When Peter Giannini had his turn, the jury got to hear that voice, fathoms deep, a voice that Stefan Stein said was a trial lawyer’s dream voice. He began by reminding the jury that his client was not a common criminal.

  He said, “One of the things that you know is that John Orr was an arson investigator. Whatever else he may have done, he was an arson investigator. He was highly respected in his field. He was a teacher of arson-investigation techniques, and he was at a lot of fires. He was at thousands of fires.”

  Peter Giannini couldn’t have appeared more unlike Mike Cabral unless he’d grown as tall as Rucker. He was slim, with dark hair combed straight back, resembling one of the bosses in Godfather II, but with an even better tailor. He looked like what he was, a prosperous attorney with a practice in Century City.

  Both he and Rucker were older and more experienced than the thirty-eight-year-old prosecutor, but both were about to learn why they called Cabral the Bulldog. It was not just for his appearance, but for his dogged approach, the way he kept plodding forward, chewing up witnesses in little bites. A workingman’s lawyer, never spectacular, never slashing and dancing away like the more flamboyant courtroom wolves that the public sees on television. He’d just take the blows like a bulldog does, with a blink, a shake of the jowls, and the resolve to lumber on, stubby tail wagging, until the opponent was gripped by unyielding jaws.

  Giannini went through the fires he had to defend, and only the College Hills calamity had real media appeal. Giannini talked about the Teletrac and the prosecution’s claims that John Orr was where he was not. And the defense lawyer tried to discredit claims that the incendiary device was a signature of the arsonist, but was rather a common device, so common that it was described in arson-investigation manuals. He described how feeble the witness identifications were, and then he got to the novel, something in which the media did have a real interest.

  He said, “You’re going to hear that John Orr wrote a book. And that the book is the prosecution’s road map for this prosecution. There’s no question that John Orr had access to fire information that is contained in the book. He’s a fire investigator. He was present at some of these fires. The Ole’s fire, for example, is described in the book. The fact that the incidents are in there does not mean that he set the fires. What it means is that he had access to the information.

  “We live in L.A. Everyone’s got a script or a book they’re trying to sell. When you’re putting together a manuscript, you try to put together the most exciting events that you can. The Ole’s fire was clearly an exciting event.”

  And then it was time for this lawyer also to confront the Fire Monster, but he did it obliquely. He said, “I think the evidence will show that John Orr was a highly respected investigator. His opinion was valued by his colleagues. The evidence will show that he has been brought to justice for those fires that he’s been responsible for. And that this final prosecution we don’t believe will be proved to your satisfaction.”

  The first witness for the prosecution was Billy Deal, looking frail and older than his sixty-six years. Mike Cabral asked a few questions to establish that he had been at Ole’s at 8:00 P.M. on October 10, 1984, and then he asked why Billy Deal had been there.

  “We went there to buy some home-improvement materials,” the witness said. “I was remodeling my home.”

  “Now, you said we,” the prosecutor noted. “Who is we?”

  “My wife and I and my grandson,” the witness answered bleakly.

  “Now, Mr. Deal, what was your wife’s name?”

  “Her name was Ada,” the witness answered. “Ada Deal.”

  “Did she have a nickname she went by?” asked Cabral.

  “Well, I called her Mommy,” the witness answered.

  And though fourteen years had passed since that terrible night at Ole’s Home Center in South Pasadena, it came flooding back and the witness sobbed as he answered the questions of Mike Cabral. And so did many observers in the courtroom, especially when Cabral asked the witness how long he had stayed in the parking lot of Ole’s Home Center on that night.

  The witness answered simply, “Twenty-two hours.”

  Cabral’s next question was, “Now, after splitting up with your wife in Ole’s on that night, did you ever see her or Matthew again?”

&n
bsp; “Not until I identified the bodies,” the witness said.

  John Orr’s novel was addressed indirectly when Cabral asked his last question, “Now, prior to entering Ole’s on that night, had you had a discussion with your wife and Matthew about what you were going to do after leaving?”

  “Yes,” said the witness. “As we were turning into the parking lot Matthew saw the Baskin-Robbins. And he wanted some goodies. And we told him we’d get him an ice cream after we got out.”

  “I have no further questions,” Cabral said.

  The defense lawyer knew he’d have to be very sensitive indeed with witnesses such as this one.

  “Mr. Deal,” Rucker said, “I understand it’s difficult for you.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Billy Deal.

  “Any time you want to take a break, just let me know,” Rucker said.

  “I’d rather get it over with,” the witness said.

  Rucker got right to the ice cream testimony. It was dangerous for the jury to think that John Orr might have put the discussion of chocolate mint ice cream in his novel because he was at Ole’s and had heard the child begging his grandparents for an ice cream.

  So Rucker said, “The only time that you discussed ice cream with your grandson was when you were in the car driving into the parking lot?”

  “To the best of my knowledge, yes,” the witness said.

  “You never discussed it in the store?”

  “I can’t recall,” the witness replied.

  “At any time you were out there in the parking lot, were you talking with people, family, friends?”

  “My daughter came over much later,” said the witness. “I don’t know when it was.”