“Were you talking to her, telling her what happened?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you tell her you planning to buy an ice cream for him and things like that?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” said the witness.
“Thank you very much, Mr. Deal,” Ed Rucker said.
The jury at the moment must have been very puzzled by all the ice cream fixation from lawyers on both sides.
Former Ole’s employees were called, and it was astonishing how vivid the memories were after fourteen years. Jim Obdam told his terrifying story of trying to lead Ada Deal and her grandson Matthew in utter darkness. And of the dense black smoke, and of praying, and managing to get outside where the flesh fell from his burned wrist onto the ground.
And Anthony Colantuano told of seeing his fellow employees Jimmy Cetina and Carolyn Krause earlier that evening, but never seeing them again. He made the jury understand how unbelievably fast a heavily fueled fire can move when he said that one minute he saw nothing and then the next minute, “I saw fire, flames and everything coming toward me!”
The jury heard from a provocative witness, the wife of a police sergeant, who testified that when John Orr got arrested she’d seen his photo in the newspaper, and she’d recalled having seen him in Ole’s the evening before the disaster.
Rucker’s questions were effective, but the witness was adamant, some might say too adamant for an event so far in the past.
He asked, “So it’s been fourteen years since you’ve seen the man with your own eyes?”
“Yes,” she answered. “It’s been fourteen years since I saw him in the store.”
“And you’re one hundred percent sure that this is the same man?”
“Yes, sir, I am,” she said.
She testified that she’d been on crutches at the time, that the man had almost walked into her, and she’d noticed he was wearing a basket-weave belt like police officers wear on duty.
Rucker asked, “Was the man wearing glasses?”
And she gave an extraordinary reply. “He was not wearing glasses at the time. He had sunglasses in the left front pocket of his shirt, and they had black wire frames.”
Sometimes a witness’s memory can be too good, so Rucker asked when was the next time that she’d had occasion to remember his face, and she said, “I saw his picture on television several years ago when apparently he’d been arrested for some other fires.”
The witness then testified that after realizing where she’d seen the face before, she’d wanted to tell the South Pasadena police about it, but her husband had told her not to do it. She explained that she did not have a good rapport with “a certain captain.”
“And had you made reports of your ability to identify people prior to that incident?” Rucker asked.
“Yes, sir,” she answered.
“And had these prior reports resulted in you not being on such good terms with the captain?”
“Correct,” she answered.
“How many other individuals have you reported that you were able to identify as someone you’d seen and later learned had committed crimes?”
“There have been two or three other large cases in South Pasadena where I have been able to tell the department that I’d seen individuals either committing a crime a week or two before they actually committed a larger crime.”
“And is this based on seeing their photographs in the newspapers?” Rucker asked.
“One was. Two of them were not.”
Further testimony revealed that the first time the witness officially had spoken with anyone about seeing John Orr was when her police sergeant husband got called to testify to Mike Cabral’s grand jury and his wife had accompanied him there.
Of course, many media observers were thinking that her memory had been jogged by television or newspaper reports, but the witness said that the only television coverage she’d ever seen on John Orr was on the night of his arrest.
Then Rucker asked, “Had you read anything in the newspaper?”
“We do not receive the newspaper,” the witness answered. “Our dog eats anything that comes near our yard.”
The fire chief of South Pasadena, William Eisele, was called. Fourteen years earlier he’d been the fire captain who arrived a few minutes after the alarm was given. Eisele told of the event, about how he’d tried to enter and attack the fire. He told of seeing John Orr shortly after his arrival, and how the defendant had asked if he could shoot some photos. He gave important testimony about not seeing much smoke when he’d arrived, but his testimony would be attacked on cross-examination. He told of trying to ventilate the roof, and of having to bring his man down due to the danger of the roof collapsing. And he described a second fire that had occurred at about the time of the Ole’s fire, a short distance away at Von’s Market.
After the noon recess Ed Rucker reminded the fire chief that at his grand-jury testimony he’d indicated that they hit the “seat of the fire,” meaning the ceiling, this being a defense attempt to prove that the fire took place above the ceiling in the attic space.
And then to explain his client’s quick arrival at the blaze, Rucker asked, “Mr. Orr showed up at the fire and you saw him there, is that right?”
“That’s true.”
“And was it normal for arson investigators from adjoining jurisdictions to show up at fires?”
“That’s true,” the witness said.
“You didn’t find it abnormal for an arson investigator to take photographs of a fire?”
“No.”
“And without some fire-fighting equipment with him, you wouldn’t have sent him into contact with that fire?”
“No no no no,” the fire chief said. “He was an investigator.”
“And during the course of the evening, several investigators from the adjoining jurisdictions showed up, did they not?”
“We had investigators all the way up to the state and federal level that showed up at the scene. We had everyone there.”
“It was your opinion at the time that the point of origin was in the attic space?”
“It appeared to be the southwest corner attic space. This is just what it appeared,” the witness answered.
“And you felt it was a low smoldering fire that occurred over a period of time in the attic?”
“Those were the findings of the investigators,” Eisele replied. “I used the information gathered from the investigators.”
“And it was your personal opinion at that time, that the fire, after smoldering in the attic area, broke down through some point in the ceiling?”
“That would be my opinion,” said the fire chief.
Mike Cabral later said of the witness’s troublesome testimony, “I was just trying to get through it.”
So far, Cabral’s case was not going well, and the Fire Monster was silent.
During the second day of trial an investigator for Von’s Grocery Company testified about a fire that took place at Von’s, a few minutes from Ole’s, at about 8:00 P.M. on the night that Ole’s burned. He said that the morning after the calamity, he’d had occasion to speak with John Orr. The witness testified that the defendant told him that the Von’s fire had been intentionally set by a smoldering cigarette.
Rucker tried to portray the Von’s fire as another accident, or perhaps a diversionary fire set by juveniles who wanted to shoplift. But on redirect, Mike Cabral asked, “Did the defendant explain something to you concerning potato chips?”
The witness nodded. “About the volatility of the chips. The oils in the chip, and why the fire was so big in such a small area.”
“Had you ever heard before of a fire in a potato-chip rack?”
“No.”
“What about since?”
“No.”
Ed Rucker had no questions on recross. The jury was going to learn about Pillow Pyro fires and potato-chip fires, so this witness had not been helpful to the defense.
The importance of po
tato-chip testimony was nailed down by the next witness, Dennis Foote, of the Los Angeles Fire Department, who’d been phoned by the defendant on the morning after the Ole’s blaze. The witness testified that for four years prior to the Ole’s fire, he’d been putting together information about a fire series in and around the city of Los Angeles that had taken place in retail commercial businesses during afternoon and early evening hours. He said that he’d investigated a fire at a store like Ole’s, called Builder’s Emporium, and that the fire had begun in the polyfoam section much like other fires he’d been tracking.
This was deceivingly dangerous testimony for the defense because the jury would eventually be hearing that the defendant had pled guilty to an arson at the same Builder’s Emporium store, and that an identical incendiary device had been used.
The next witness was called to provide more information about diversionary fires on the night of the Ole’s disaster. Scott McClure, a Pasadena fire investigator, said that a fire alarm came in at 6:45 P.M. on the night in question for a fire that had occurred at Albertson’s Market. McClure had determined that the fire was incendiary in nature, and that it had broken out in the potato-chip racks. The witness said he’d called dispatch, asking for John Orr’s location.
He said, “With the experience that he had, I always relied on his word as being the Gospel. I admired his work. So anything he said, I felt comfortable with.”
This was another potentially dangerous witness for the defense, so when it was Rucker’s turn, he began by establishing a time line that he hoped would prove that John Orr could hardly have set three fires in such a short period of time. He asked McClure to estimate how long John Orr had been at Albertson’s and the witness said about fifteen or twenty minutes.
There was a great deal of talk about incendiary devices, and which was more common than another, but one could not help but take away from the day’s proceedings that having three fires in retail businesses so close to one another in time and distance, whether incendiary or accidental, had never happened before in the experience of any of the local fire investigators.
On the last day of the week, the first witness called, whom the defense had no wish to cross-examine, was Karen Berry, née Karen Krause, the sister-in-law of Ole’s victim Carolyn Krause. She told of the night of the fire, and that she’d been a community-service officer for the Glendale Police Department.
“What if anything did the defendant later say to you concerning the fire?” Cabral asked.
The witness answered, “In discussing the investigation he was somewhat disappointed and upset because it was not being investigated as an arson.”
“And did he say anything else concerning that?”
“Yes, he said there had been a number of other such fires in home-improvement companies, specifically the Builder’s Emporium in North Hollywood, where a fire had been started in a polypropylene mattress which was subsequently extinguished by the sprinklers. He said there was a possibility that the Ole’s fire may have been set the same way.”
“Did the defendant say anything else to you concerning the nature of the cause of that fire?” the prosecutor asked.
“Yes. In the previous fire that he mentioned in North Hollywood, he said that a time-delayed device had been set in the polypropylene mattress.”
“And did he tell you anything concerning the autopsies of the individuals who died in the Ole’s Home Center fire?”
“Yes. He expressed disappointment because there were no investigators present at the autopsy for any of the victims. He felt the materials that may have been given off by such things, such as polypropylene mattresses or other flammable items, may have left particles of some material in the victim’s lungs or in their tracheas. Or there may have been some gases present that might have otherwise been absorbed in the body that could’ve been discovered during the autopsy.”
There were many good reasons for Rucker not wanting to cross-examine this witness, and it was not just because of the defendant’s distress that the Ole’s fire had been called an accident. It was the dreaded name of Builder’s Emporium.
For the next several hours the jury was going to hear from the first of the experts who were going to offer opinions as to whether the Ole’s fire was or was not correctly called an accidental fire. The first of these was Wayne Martin, a retired fire-protection engineer and civil engineer, who had served for twenty-two years with the Los Angeles Fire Department.
The witness testified that he’d been contacted in 1993 by the D.A.’s Arson Task Force to review all the reports available from the Ole’s fire. He quickly got to the point by saying that he did not agree with Sergeant Jack Palmer that the disaster had probably been caused by an electrical fire in the attic.
He said that if it had been an attic fire reaching temperatures of one thousand degrees or more, he would expect the flashover to take place in the attic first. He explained that the venting of the roof by firefighters is done to allow the smoke and gases to escape, so that the firemen can see open flame and sometimes the fire’s source, in order to more effectively extinguish it.
The defense quickly launched an attack on Martin’s credentials. The witness said that he’d never served with the Arson Investigative Section, and had never testified as an arson expert in a court of law. He made it clear that he’d only been called upon to give an opinion as to whether or not the Ole’s fire was consistent with an attic fire.
Ed Rucker did a thorough job with questions about what the witness did not know about the Ole’s fires, about neighbors of Ole’s who did smell or see some smoke that must have vented from the roof. The defense attorney demonstrated a thorough understanding of what materials were used in the roof composition, and he asked hypothetical questions about ceiling tiles and wind directions, designed to cast doubt on the witness’s opinion about the fire’s point of origin. Rucker tried to get an admission that if some ceiling tiles were missing, an ember could have dropped through, igniting a second fire on the retail floor of the building.
The entire testimony of the witness could be summed up in one question and one answer, both of which came after hours of repetitive and technical questions and answers. It boiled down to this: Did the fire start up and drop down? Or down and climb up? Which is more likely?
When court resumed on Monday of the second week, John Orr’s friend and colleague Jim Allen, formerly of the state Fire Marshal’s Office, was called. One of the first answers he gave that was helpful to John Orr was that he couldn’t say if the fire had started in the attic or on the floor of the building.
But what was not helpful to the defense, and what any layperson could readily understand, was that this man whom Allen called a social friend as well as a colleague had never mentioned to him that there were two potato-chip fires that evening. And further, that John Orr had been at one of those and was the official investigator at the other. That was an extraordinary thing for his friend to have kept from Allen when they were at the Ole’s investigation the next morning.
Cabral asked, “Would knowledge of those two fires have had some impact on your investigation?”
Allen answered, “Yes. I would’ve spent more time with the sheriff’s lieutenant who ordered us out, by trying to convince him that there had been other fires, therefore we really needed to thoroughly investigate this one.”
Mike Cabral called another L.A. Fire Department employee, James Daneker, who had earned a doctorate in pharmacy prior to joining the fire service. Captain Daneker had more than twenty-five years service with the LAFD, and was to testify only to fire dynamics. Daneker’s job had been to use the radio recordings of the fire department to try to establish at what point during the Ole’s fire some of the things described by witnesses had occurred. He said that if there had been a genuine attic fire, flames would’ve come out the roof before coming out the doors, because fire obeys the laws of physics and chemistry.
As before, when it was Ed Rucker’s turn, he went directly at the qualifications
of the witness, pointing out that Captain Daneker’s educational background was in pharmacy, not fire dynamics. Daneker countered that he was currently in command of Fire Station Number 39 in Van Nuys, and that he’d qualified in court as an expert on fire cause and origin on many occasions. Like other witnesses, the fire captain stressed that he was not there to say that the Ole’s fire was an arson, or anything else about the cause, but merely to say that in his opinion the origin had not been in the attic.
Again, Ed Rucker conducted a lengthy cross-examination about the witness’s knowledge of the building materials that went into the construction of Ole’s roof and ceiling, but the witness kept giving direct, simple answers to very complex technical questions. And no matter how long the questioning went on, or how the questions were framed, the witness kept returning to the laws of physics. He might as well have had Isaac Newton sitting on his lap.
After hours of questioning, Rucker pointed out that Sergeant Jack Palmer of the L.A. Sheriff’s Department, and many other arson investigators at the scene, had called the fire an accident, and asked if those reports would have at least been useful to the witness in forming his own opinion.
But the fire captain replied, “Not necessarily, because those were all investigations after the fact. And what’s important to me in deciding whether or not Ole’s was an attic fire was the dynamics while the fire was still going on.”
Like the trained pharmacist he was, the fire captain relied on the properties of matter, and that was that. His time on the stand could have ended in twenty minutes, and the jury could have accepted it or not. But it ground on from both lawyers until the witness had to repeat his opinion in every possible way without exiting the English language.
The dogged prosecutor finally arrived back full circle, and mercifully concluded with, “And fire is always going to be trying to rise?”
The witness said, “Yes. That’s one of the rules of physics, the transfer of heat.”
The prosecution’s next witness was Frank Randall Holmes, an electrical contractor and electrician with about thirty-seven years of experience. It was his and his father’s company that had done the electrical work for Ole’s a few years before the night of fire.
Fire Lover Page 27