Fire Lover

by Joseph Wambaugh

  “Then what happens?”

  “Then they either have to do something or they deteriorate.”

  “Tell us a little bit about pyromania,” Giannini suggested.

  “It is one of the diagnostic categories in the statistics manual,” said the witness. “Pyromania is the underlying requirement or need to set fires.”

  Dr. Markman said that male fire setters outnumber females overwhelmingly, and that some studies have put it at nine to one. He said that there are three categories of pyros, the first being the crazies who have to save the world, the second being those with a need for revenge or profit, and the third being those who set fires in order to dissipate internal anxiety.

  “Is there an evil intent in the setting of fires for those in the third category?” Giannini asked.

  “No,” the witness said. “There’s no consciousness or willingness to either injure people or destroy property. The goal is to have the fire. The fire is the goal. Unfortunately, fire consumes.”

  “So that leads to the obvious question,” Giannini said. “Is Mr. Orr, for example, able to control his fire-starting compulsion?”

  “Well, Mr. Orr is not psychotic,” said Dr. Markman. “If he had anxiety that was intolerable, and he had the need to act to dissipate the anxiety, and that need was based on setting a fire, if a policeman were right there, he wouldn’t set a fire. However, ultimately he would have to set a fire.”

  “Did you find any indications of early childhood symptoms of pyromania?” asked Giannini.

  “He did talk of match playing. We see that in children, overwhelmingly in boys. Much of it has to do with unresolved parental conflicts.”

  The witness said that the conflict usually involves father identification when boys are no longer competing for their mother’s affections. In case of childhood fire setting, people don’t seem to get concerned because the fires are usually set in garbage cans. He finished by saying that the controlled environment of a jail relieves the fire setter of his anxiety.

  When Cabral cross-examined, he elicited an opinion that pyromania affects less than 1 percent of the population, and was told that the defendant had only admitted to childhood match playing, not to childhood fire setting.

  “Who gave you information about him setting some fires after he was tracked?” Cabral asked.

  “Well, Mr. Orr’s position on all three visits was that he did not set any of these fires. So the information came in discussions with Mr. Giannini and Mr. Rucker.”

  “And Mr. Orr says even the fire where they found his fingerprint, he didn’t set?” Cabral asked.

  “That’s correct.”

  “Even the fires he pled guilty to? He maintains he’s innocent?”

  “He said that that was done as a result of a plea bargain. He felt that he was somewhat undercut in terms of the plea bargain that was given.”

  “Have there been a lot of studies on the course of treatment for pyromaniacs?”

  “Not really,” the witness said, “because of the limitation in the treatment population and the longevity required to treat. These are longstanding problems and have to be dealt with over years.”

  “We really don’t know whether or not it’s treatable at all?”

  “It is treatable. Can you cure someone of it? You could probably get to the point where he can control the impulse, and maybe convert that symptom into something else that would be more socially tolerable.”

  “Did you review anything else?”

  “Oh, yes. I reviewed his novel. And I did have his report from the city of Los Angeles with regard to his psychological testing when he’d applied to get on the police force.”

  “And he talked to you about that? His rejection by the LAPD?”

  “That to me was a significant event in his life.”

  “He’s still disturbed by that even today?”

  “He denies it, but I believe he is.”

  On redirect, Giannini asked, “Given the history and diagnosis of pyromania, and the reasons for it being the release of anxiety, what would admitting to having set fires mean in terms of his psychological balance?”

  “Oh, my, it would be devastating! It would destroy the orderliness of his life. It would demonstrate to him that he’s been a failure all of his life.”

  While the jury was out, the lawyers and the judge haggled over yet more prosecution witnesses that Cabral wished to call, women John Orr had dated between or during marriages.

  One of them, who’d worked for the city of Glendale, was called for the purpose of demonstrating that the defendant’s propensity for fire setting was not restricted to the compulsive variety described by the psychiatrist. With certain legal parameters specified, the judge said he might allow her testimony, but wanted to hear what she had to say, so she was called while the jury was out of the courtroom.

  She testified that her relationship with John Orr had begun one month before the Ole’s fire, and at the time she’d owned a Chevrolet Camaro.

  Cabral asked her, “What did you tell the defendant about your car?”

  “Just that it was a pain,” she said. “That it was overpriced, and I wished I’d never bought it.”

  “And in response to that did he say anything to you?”

  “We were discussing how vehicle fires can be conceived as an accident, that if I didn’t want my car he could take care of it. Just never to ask any questions.”

  “Did he explain how a fire could be set and not detected?”

  “Yes, he did. Taking paper towels and putting them underneath the dashboard and setting them on fire. It would be determined to be an electrical problem.”

  “What happened after that?”

  “Nothing. I never discussed it again. It was never an option in my mind.”

  Ed Rucker asked one question: “Did Mr. Orr ever say to you that he would burn your car?”

  “No,” she said.

  Rucker then argued to the court that John Orr had not offered to commit an act of force or violence, that there were no steps taken to burn the car, and that this testimony was not proper rebuttal to anything that the defense had brought up.

  The judge did not agree that the defendant had not made an offer to burn the car. Cabral argued that it was rebuttal to Dr. Markman’s testimony regarding compulsive fire setting, saying that burning for profit was a whole different matter. The judge decided that her testimony would be allowed.

  Then the judge wished to hear from another ex-girlfriend of John Orr, this one a former police officer, who took the stand with obvious discomfort.

  When asked by Cabral, “Did you have a relationship with John Orr?” she answered, “I did.”

  “Do you see that person in court today?” Cabral asked.

  “It’s been twenty years,” she answered, looking at the defense table. “I think that’s John right over there.”

  The witness testified that she’d dated the defendant for about six months, and then Cabral asked, “Did you discuss with him events surrounding his application to the Los Angeles Police Department?”

  She said, “I believe he mentioned that he had applied, and was not offered a job. But I don’t really remember why.”

  “Did he explain to you anything about how he felt about that event?” Cabral asked.

  “He seemed quite disappointed,” she replied.

  “Did he seem angry at being rejected?”

  “It has been twenty years,” she said.

  “Did the defendant ever tell you during this relationship how he felt in relation to police officers?”

  “I seem to recall that he felt like he was smarter than the average cop.” Then she said, “And he probably is.”

  “Did he ever do anything that you considered to be playing games to get away with things?”

  “Whenever we would meet on duty, he would like to kiss me while I was in uniform, which I was very uncomfortable with because we were not supposed to do it. But he would kiss me on duty. It didn’t happen often,
a very few times.”

  “Anything else like that?” Cabral asked.

  And at last, the courtroom rail birds were going to get a chance to hear something titillating. About John Orr getting his mongoose milked by an honest-to-God cop. In full uniform. In a place where they could both get caught and fired. The risk! The symbolism of it all!

  But what did the rail birds get—those poor old pensioners who wander the courts, clickety-clacking when they whisper because they can’t afford Fixodent? What did they get?

  “Are you referring to an incident in the basement of the firehouse?” she asked Cabral.

  And of course, he was. But Mike Cabral faltered and said, “No, I’m not.”

  And the judge, knowing full well what had gone on in the firehouse basement, proved Cabral’s trepidation was well grounded by saying, “We’re not.”

  Cabral forged on halfheartedly: “Did you feel that the defendant had the attitude that he was going to do things to get away with it, and pull the wool over the eyes of the police department?”

  “I seem to have the impression that he had that kind of attitude. John is a very bright man, and I believe he knew it.”

  “Did you form some conclusions about the defendant’s behavior?”

  “I think he has some sociopathic tendencies, but I am not an expert witness on sociopaths,” she replied.

  “Did you find him to be manipulative during your relationship?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how would that show itself?”

  She said, “It’s been so long, Mr. Cabral. I really can’t come up with any examples.”

  Gathering his courage for one last try, Cabral asked, “Other than the basement incident?”

  “I am sorry?” she said, not quite hearing him.

  “Other than the basement incident?” he repeated, louder.

  “Yes,” was all she said.

  And Mike Cabral’s yin and yang must have been fighting the impulse to yell: “Yes, girl, the basement incident. Spit it out. Why do you think we flew you here? The goddamn basement incident!”

  But Cabral uttered a plaintive: “I have no further questions, Your Honor.” And he gave up.

  The judge was not impressed that this witness had demonstrated anything relevant regarding John Orr’s alleged need to strike back at law enforcement, so he said, “I don’t think you have made it, Mr. Cabral. I will sustain the objection by the defense. Thank you.”

  “I am free to leave?” the witness asked, relieved that she was not going to be made to tell the world what she’d told Cabral about “manually manipulating” him in the basement of that firehouse, about the weasel whacking from a real cop in a real uniform, wearing a real police shield, not a bogus badge like the one he’d carried as a Sears security officer.

  As she was walking by the counsel table John Orr gave her a wave and mouthed: “Thank you.” And she got outraged!

  She waited outside the corridor for Cabral, and demanded to go back on the stand and tell everyone about the “incident in the basement.” How dare he think she’d slanted her testimony for him!

  “Too late,” Cabral told her. Too late. Too freaking late.

  Then the Glendale city employee was called, and told the jury the same story to which she’d testified out of their presence about the inferred offer to torch her car for insurance money.

  Rucker didn’t bother to cross-examine her, and the people at last rested. But then the four lawyers and the judge haggled over jury instructions, variations of those the jury had already heard. And they went on and on about mitigating factors, and aggravating factors, and they started citing cases, until even the most die-hard rail birds had flown to more promising feeding grounds in their never-ending search for stories more wretched than their own.

  When the jury was brought out for the last time, they were read the jury instructions, and Judge Perry reminded them that there is no burden of proof in the penalty phase, and that this time the defense would have the last word.

  Sandra Flannery was the first prosecution lawyer, and she said, “Well, I thought I would begin by wishing you a good morning, but I do have to say, to come to you on behalf of the people of the state of California and ask you to impose the penalty of death causes me hesitation to ever call this a good morning. But that is what I am here to do. And I do ask you to choose for John Orr the penalty of death.”

  She told them that they were the “conscience of the community,” and that they were here “because of John Orr’s choices.”

  “It was not an impulsive act,” she said. “It was an act done with great deliberation. It was a choice. With each match that John Orr took out of that matchbook he made a choice. As he positioned those matches on that cigarette in just the right manner, at just the right position to create the amount of delay that he wanted and that he needed, he made a choice. He used his specialized knowledge of fire dynamics to set a fire in a place and in a manner that would send that fire racing against life itself. That was the choice.

  “He could have set his device anywhere he wanted. But he chose to go onto the side where there were no ceiling sprinklers. He made that choice. You see, when it came to his own personal safety, and the safety of his family, John Orr was keenly aware of fire dangers and chose to prevent them. But when it came to the safety of the people at Ole’s, John Orr was keenly aware of the fire dangers and chose to exploit them.

  “He knew, based upon his specialized knowledge of fire dynamics, that by going to the housewares department and choosing to place his ignition device in the polyfoam, he would be setting a fire of inescapable proportion. John Orr would like you to believe that he was driven by some obsessive compulsion to set fires, and yet if that were the case, how did he restrain himself enough to make it to the polyfoam stack, which he knew would ignite as though it were petroleum itself?

  “He alone knew how many minutes separated life from death. He was as much a killer as someone who shoots their victims face-to-face. Only how John Orr did it was with so much more terror and deception. Under the guise of being the protector of good, John Orr was in fact the perpetrator of evil.

  “John Orr, through his job, was given power, but that power was not enough. He needed more power and he wanted more power, and he set his fires to gain that power. I guess you could say that knowledge is power. If that is the case, then isn’t it also true that secret knowledge is secret power? He had secret knowledge and that gave him secret power over the lives of other people through setting the fires, watching their reactions, seeing who would survive.

  “How long did his delay last? Ten minutes perhaps. When you deliberate in the jury room, take ten minutes to be alone with your thoughts. Ten minutes is a very long time to reflect upon what is the right thing to do. And yet in those ten minutes did John Orr make the choice to turn around?

  “He could have gone back. He could have extinguished his device. But instead he chose to let his device burn and extinguish the lives of Carolyn Krause, Jimmy Cetina, Ada Deal, and Matthew Troidl. Then, as the fire burned and ravaged the inside of that building, where was John Orr? He was outside taking photographs.

  “The defense has suggested to you that there’s some type of obsessive-compulsive behavior going on, driving John Orr to set these fires. A doctor came in and suggested that in three interviews he had gotten to know the real John Orr. But I suggest to you that each of you have gotten to know the real John Orr. John Orr’s fires were moral decisions. He chose to set them. The mere inability to understand why someone can do something, and have an outlook on life that is so different from yours, doesn’t transform that outlook into a mental illness.

  “John Orr had an attitude about life. His attitude was that he wanted power, that he was superior to others, that he could create circumstances and situations that no one could figure out but him. He had secret knowledge that gave him secret power.

  “To not require the ultimate penalty for the ultimate crime would be to diminish and devalue tho
se lives that were taken. It would be an act of cruelty to the victims, under the mistaken belief that you are extending compassion to the defendant. If John Orr is permitted to live and replay the Ole’s fire and its pleasure over and over and over again in his mind, then it will be as though he has killed Carolyn Krause, Jimmy Cetina, Ada Deal, and Matthew Troidl over and over again. Thank you.”

  It was easily Sandra Flannery’s best work. Lawyer-spectators in the courtroom were impressed with her flashes of eloquence in a long trial that had seen so little of it.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Peter Giannini began, “John Orr will be punished in this case. As a society you will be protected from him. The only question is not will he get out of prison. The only question is when. Will he die, because you say he must die, by lethal injection? Or will he die when God decides that he dies, if he is sentenced to life without the possibility of parole? It is a long, slow, tedious kind of death. Is it worse than death? I don’t think so. I think life is sacred. Every life is sacred. John’s life is also sacred.

  “Every one of you individually is being called upon to make one of the most difficult decisions of your life, and it is not a collective decision. It is your decision individually. There is nobody else to turn to. If every single one of you doesn’t agree that death is the appropriate punishment, it isn’t.

  “What did God do? What did he do when Cain killed Abel? He put a mark on his head, set him out to wander alone in the world. He banished him. He gave him life without the possibility of parole.

  “The prosecutor said in her closing statement that the ultimate crime deserves the ultimate punishment. You have to ask yourself, is this the ultimate crime? There are thousands of homicides in the county of Los Angeles every year. Very few of those are death-penalty cases where you get to first-degree murder with special circumstances. Where you have to start talking about the possibility of a penalty phase. What does that mean in this case? The only special circumstance charged against John Orr in this case is that more than one person died in that fire. If everything else about this case was the same, everything else you had heard in this case was identical, but only one person died in that fire, we wouldn’t be in this phase of the case. There’d be no penalty phase.”