Pod Insights Infamous America ARSONISTS Ep. 1 | John Orr: “Point of Origin” About this episode By the mid-1980s, John Orr is a respected arson investigator for the Glendale Fire Department in Los Angeles. He might not be the easiest person to like, but he has a good reputation in Los Angeles County. At the same time, a serial arsonist is setting fires across the metro area. On October 10, 1984, the worst case scenario finally happens: a fire at Ole’s Home Center in South Pasadena turns deadly.
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1:07 Speaker 01 October 10th, 1984, was a typical evening in South Pasadena, a neighborhood in the greater Los Angeles area. It was a Wednesday night, and the entertainment on television was a little thin. It was the era of shows like Kate and Ally, Cagney and Lacey, The Jeffersons, The A-Team, The Dukes of Hazzard, Dynasty, Dallas, Highway to Heaven, Magnum P.I., The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Cheers, Night Court, and Hill Street Blues. On NBC that night, legendary baseball TV announcer Vin Scully was calling the second game of the World Series between the Detroit Tigers and the San Diego Padres. 19-year-old Jim Obdom
1:50 Speaker 01 had wondered why it was so quiet in Ole's Home Center that evening, and then he remembered the World Series game. People who may have normally stopped by the store after work had probably postponed the errand so they could watch the game. Ollie's was a popular chain of home improvement stores that had more than thirty locations in Southern California in the 1980s. Ollie's sold hardware supplies, electrical supplies, building materials, paint, decorative items, basically everything needed to design or repair a house. That Wednesday in October 1984, Jim Obdom's quiet evening was about to come to an end, and it would be replaced by chaos and terror.
2:33 Speaker 01 Around 8:00 PM, customers and employees started noticing smoke in Ollie's Home Center. For most, like Jim Obdom, they saw the grayish-white smoke that rapidly filled the huge store. For those who were near the aisle where patio accessories were stored, they saw the flames. A small fire had sparked in that aisle, and the flames raced through the highly flammable items with ferocious speed. Obdom was near the back of the store when the smoke became apparent. He hurried toward the hardware section to investigate, and when he turned a corner, he backpedaled from a wall of flame.
3:15 Speaker 01 A fire alarm blared, and then, the lights went out. People were already rushing for the exits, but those who were deeper in the store now faced near-blackout conditions and a noxious, blinding haze. Jim Obdom was one of those people. As he groped through the building toward a door, a 911 call alerted emergency workers. Mercifully, a fire station was just three blocks away. The first fire engine to arrive at Ollie's found a scene that didn't look extraordinary, but firefighters quickly learned that looks were deceiving. After just a few minutes, the fire inside the store had become a raging inferno.
3:56 Speaker 01 As truck after truck arrived to battle the blaze, the first fire captain on the scene became frustrated when he learned that some of his resources were being sent away. When he shouted into the radio to ask why a truck was going in the wrong direction, he heard that there was a second fire happening at the same time just a few blocks away. The captain was astonished. There were two fires at the same time at big retail stores that were just a couple blocks away from each other. That was an incredible coincidence, unless it wasn't a coincidence. At the moment, he didn't have time to worry about it. The fire at Ollie's Home Center was a roaring, hissing monster that was devouring the building with remarkable speed.
4:40 Speaker 01 The captain would have to leave it to the arson investigators to make assessments about coincidence. As it happened, an arson investigator was already on the scene. The fire was only a couple minutes old, but John Orr, the arson investigator for the Glendale Fire Department, was already there. Orr's primary responsibility was to investigate fires, not to fight them with a hose. But in an emergency like the situation at Ollie's, the fire captain still found it odd that John Orr wasn't offering to jump in and help. Instead, Orr was standing near the captain's truck, taking pictures of the burning building. Fire crews were trying to fight their way into the building.
5:23 Speaker 01 Customers and employees like Jim Obden were trying to fight their way out. Four people wouldn't make it. And outside, John Orr took pictures, like a man who visits an historic location or witnesses something life-changing and wants to preserve the memory forever.
5:52 Speaker 01 From Black Barrel Media, this is Infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season, we're telling the stories of two of the most notorious arsonists in American history, John Orr and Paul Keller. This is Episode One, John Orr: Point of Origin.
6:14 Speaker 01 John Orr didn't necessarily have a lifelong dream to become a firefighter, but it was clear that something drew him to the profession. Like most kids with natural curiosity, he had marveled at a couple fires that happened in his neighborhood of Highland Park in the Los Angeles metro area. Three of his classmates, who were siblings, had accidentally set fire to a couch in their house, and the blaze had all but burned the house down. John and his two older brothers stood in a rainstorm and watched firefighters battle the fire. Another fire in an alley near his house had afforded him a closer opportunity to watch the firefighters work. Those were in the 1950s, and as a child of the post-World War II era,
6:58 Speaker 01 he was coming of age during the Vietnam War. When he was 16 years old, his mother left the family without warning. His father had struggled through two failing businesses, and there were obviously deeper problems in the marriage than John had realized. John didn't see his mother for three years, and his parents never reconciled. His two older brothers were out of the house and starting their own lives by the time the marriage imploded. And as John navigated high school and the difficult situation at home, he began to realize what all young men of his age realized at the time. If he didn't go to college, there was a good chance he would go to Vietnam. In 1967, on his 18th birthday,
7:42 Speaker 01 he enlisted in the Air Force.
7:47 Speaker 01 John had met a captain with the Los Angeles Fire Department at Career Day at his high school, and the captain had said that firefighting experience in the military was a great way to get started on a career with the fire service. John went to basic training in Texas and then to jet mechanic school in Illinois before he wrangled a position at firefighting school. When he finished basic training in 1968, he married his high school sweetheart, Jody, and she went with him to his first assignment, a two-year tour in Spain. After Spain, they spent two years at a base in Montana. In 1971, after four years in the Air Force as a firefighter, John Orr received an honorable discharge.
8:31 Speaker 01 Jody was pregnant with their first child, and John applied to the Big Four in L.A., the Los Angeles Police Department, the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, the Los Angeles Fire Department, and the L.A. County Fire Department. Nothing happened for a while, but later in 1971, he heard from the LAPD, and they invited him to do the tests to see if he would be a good candidate. He quickly passed the written test, the physical test, the interview, and the medical exam. The final test was a psychological evaluation, and that was when the process fell apart. It revealed a lot of things that had been happening in the background.
9:12 Speaker 01 John now had two young children, but his marriage to Jody was falling apart. He worked at the Sparklets Bottled Water Company and spent most nights after work drinking until 2:00 a.m. LAPD evaluators learned that John Orr's superiors considered him a lazy, immature, know-it-all employee. The LAPD officially rejected John Orr as a candidate, and the psychologist called John emotionally unstable. That began John's lifelong love-hate relationship with police. He craved approval from the department and individual officers, but he rarely received it.
9:51 Speaker 01 The craving caused him to be known as a wannabe cop in the years to come. After John Orr was rejected by the LAPD, he was rejected by the Los Angeles Fire Department, and the next three years were rough. He quit his job at the Sparklets Bottled Water Company. He started working for two different fast-food restaurants, and then quit both of those jobs. He had no steady income, and his marriage to Jody was crumbling. In 1974, out of desperation, he applied to the Glendale Fire Department, one of the lowest-paying departments of the 55 in Los Angeles County.
10:31 Speaker 01 To his delight, he was accepted. He passed all the tests, completed the training and the probationary period. And one year later, he was a firefighter. That same year, he divorced Jody, left his family and started a new relationship. That relationship led to the first of three marriages he would have over the next 10 years. And at the time, he The weather's getting colder, and maybe some thoughts are starting to drift in the direction of holiday gifts. Even if you're not there yet, it's still time for sweatshirts and hoodies, in most places, which I wear almost every day while I'm working. My newest purchase from Quince is the Flow Knit Performance Hybrid Pullover Hoodie.
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11:55 Speaker 01 Filled an urge to become a crime fighter as well as a firefighter. He took an off-duty job as a security guard at a 7-Eleven convenience store, and then a Sears department store. He relentlessly pursued shoplifters and thieves of all kinds, which was how he became known as a wannabe cop. When he was on duty at the fire department, he requested a position in which he patrolled the hills above Glendale and examined the brush and the wealthy properties to prevent fires. Coincidentally, it was during that same time that a series of small, unexplained fires started in the brush-covered hills above Glendale. Everyone suspected arson, but a suspect was never identified.
12:39 Speaker 01 Then came the series of fires at Webb's department store, and the trend that would be catalogued over the next 15 years.
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13:56 Speaker 01 In January 1977, two years after John Orr became a full-time firefighter for the Glendale Fire Department, an arsonist targeted Webb's Department Store in Glendale. Webb's was the first department store in the city. It opened in 1917, and it was celebrating its 60th anniversary in 1977 when the suspicious fire started. Over the course of three weeks in January, three fires started in the building. The first two were relatively minor, but the third was devastating. On a Wednesday evening, one hour before closing, a fire erupted in a storage room on the second floor of the building. The fire alarm blared,
14:37 Speaker 01 and all the customers and employees escaped. As luck would have it, John Orr had been working his off-duty job at Sears Department Store just a block away. According to him, he was driving home when he spotted the flames at Webb's and quickly joined the fire crews who were battling the blaze. They fought the fire for two hours and successfully put it out, but the store was destroyed. It was the beginning of the end for Webb's Department Store. An early estimate said the fire did one million dollars worth of damage, which would be more than five million today. That hit, plus the rise in competition, forced Webb's out of business seven years later. Like the fires in the Glendale Hills, the arsonist was never identified.
15:27 Speaker 01 One of the men who was responsible for tracking the growing number of suspicious fires in LA County was Dennis Foote, an arson investigator for the Los Angeles City Fire Department. Sometime around 1980, he began building a file on fires that were suspected to be arson. Soon, he saw similarities. All the fires had occurred in retail businesses like grocery stores, or home improvement stores, or department stores. They had all happened in the late afternoon or early evening, when the stores were guaranteed to have customers, which was the case at Webb's Department Store in 1977. In the department stores, the fires usually started in piles of highly flammable materials.
16:10 Speaker 01 In the home improvement stores, the most common point of origin was in the aisle that stocked foam products like cushions for patio chairs. The chemicals that were used to make the foam were incredibly flammable. In grocery stores, the fires almost always started in the aisle that was crammed full of bags of potato chips. Soon, Dennis Foote nicknamed his file of suspicious fires "The Potato Chip File." John Orr himself would explain the potato chip strategy to a fellow arson investigator four years in the future, on a night that changed everything. But in 1980, as Dennis Foote was charting the suspected arson fires, John Orr was earning his dream job.
16:53 Speaker 01 In his first five years with the Glendale Fire Department, and as an overly enthusiastic security guard on the side, he had earned a reputation as a zealot. He wasn't interested in the traditional life of a firefighter. He didn't care about hanging around the firehouse until the bell rang, and then rushing to the scene of a fire. John Orr was clearly passionate about fighting crime, even as a fireman. The one job in the fire department that blended the roles of firefighter and police officer was arson investigator. Arson was a crime. Arson investigations were criminal investigations. And best of all, for John Orr, arson investigators were allowed to carry guns, like real cops.
17:37 Speaker 01 In California law, arson investigators were defined as law enforcement officers. In 1981, John Orr became the first official arson investigator for the Glendale Fire Department. He was partnered with an arson investigator for the Glendale Police Department, and together, they solved a number of cases. But like John Orr's marriages, his professional partnerships didn't last long. He could be abrasive and arrogant, but even with his difficult personality, he started to earn respect as an arson investigator. Before long, he was regarded as one of the go-to authorities on arson. And of course, all the time in the background, LAFD arson investigator Dennis Foote was
18:22 Speaker 01 compiling his list of suspicious fires in and around Los Angeles. In a single night in 1984, he added three entries to the list. That was the night John Orr explained the potato chip strategy to a fellow investigator, and the night Ole's home center burned to the ground.
18:46 Speaker 01 Wednesday, October 10, 1984, was a crazy night for the communities of Pasadena and Glendale. They sit right next to each other in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. That evening, the second game of the World Series started at about 5:30 PM local time.
19:07 Speaker 01 The game kept many would-be shoppers at home. Many, but not all. There were three fires in two hours that night, and the third would end in devastation and tragedy. The first alarm was for an Albertson's grocery store in Pasadena. The fire likely started between 6:00 and 6:30 p.m. It turned out to be a small fire that didn't cause much damage. And when the arson investigator, Scott McClure, showed up at about 6:45, he quickly found the point of origin, the spot at which the fire started. It was in an aisle that was packed with bags of potato chips. About an hour later, McClure requested the help of one of the most respected arson investigators in the area, John Orr.
19:51 Speaker 01 Orr arrived a couple minutes later, so quickly that it was like he was already nearby. When Orr learned the situation, he said he believed the fire was arson, and he explained why.
20:07 Speaker 01 Orr said bags of potato chips were great fuel for fire. When the flammable foil material of the bags, mixed with the oils of the chips, it formed a combustible combination. After the brief tutorial, and with the situation under control, Orr left McClure to wrap up the investigation. Within thirty minutes, McClure started hearing frantic radio calls about the dangerous situation that was unfolding just seven miles from his position. At Ole's Home Center, just before 8:00 p.m., people in the store started noticing smoke. Fear and panic didn't set in right away, but they intensified exponentially. Jim Obden was in the back of the store when the smoke started filling the aisles.
20:51 Speaker 01 He hurried toward the aisle that seemed to be the source of the smoke, and at about that time, a voice made an announcement over the speaker system in the store. No one could understand the words, but it was only a few seconds later when people started shouting, "Fire!" Customers and employees tried to find their way to the exits through the thickening smoke. The fire alarm blared, and then the lights went out. In the darkness and smoke, the exits became difficult to find. Jim Obden was disoriented. He was choking on smoke, and his vision was limited. He knew there was a fire exit in a room at the back of the store, but he decided he couldn't make it. Obdom bent low and touched the walls as he felt his way toward a different exit.
21:36 Speaker 01 He found the door and burst outside just before he feared he wouldn't make it. In another part of the store, an employee led a coworker and a few customers toward a fire exit in the electrical department. Flames raced toward them as they opened the door and ran outside. At that moment, a flashover happened in the store. Supercharged heat essentially exploded. The energy threw everyone outside like they had been shot out of a cannon, and they were extremely lucky to survive the violent event. Inside, the fire tore through aisle after aisle of fuel, with racks of foam items like patio cushions and then hardware supplies, fabrics, paints, chemicals, and electrical supplies.
22:20 Speaker 01 The store was like one giant fuel tank. A fire station was only three blocks away, and the first crew was on the scene lightning fast. From the outside, the situation looked serious but manageable. Inside, the fire was completely out of control.
22:41 Speaker 01 When the first crew arrived, smoke hung lazily above the roof of Ole's Home Center. It wasn't billowing from the windows and doors, and flames weren't tearing apart the structure. As firefighters leapt down from the truck and prepared to go to work, they spotted their first flames. The flames were lunging out of a door at the back corner of the building. The fire captain and his crew pushed through the door and instantly learned the full extent of the danger. The interior of Ole's Home Center was an ocean of flame. Everything was on fire. It was a blinding inferno that would leave them baffled in the aftermath. They had arrived about as fast as was possible, since their station was so close.
23:26 Speaker 01 They had received the alarm probably less than five minutes after the fire had started. And yet, in that short space of time, the fire had engulfed the inside of the store. It had intensified with such frightening speed that firefighters found it hard to believe afterward. The group who had tried to enter the store were forced back outside by the power of the fire. On the roof of the huge building, a firefighter cut a hole in the structure in order to release some of the energy and smoke that had built up inside. By essentially pulling some of the fire up through the roof, firefighters hoped to create space to work inside. But that didn't happen. A geyser of fire shot up into the sky, and the venting did nothing to help the situation inside.
24:14 Speaker 01 The fire roared and hissed as crews from all over the area started arriving to help the embattled men of the First Fire Company. By one account, 32 fire companies responded to the blaze with 125 firefighters. The weather's getting colder, and maybe some thoughts are starting to drift in the direction of holiday gifts. Even if you're not there yet, it's still time for sweatshirts and hoodies, in most places, which I wear almost every day while I'm working. My newest purchase from Quince is the Flowknit Performance Hybrid Pullover Hoodie. It's a long name, but it's ultra-soft, lightweight, and amazingly affordable. Three big retailers are charging $118 to $158 for the hoodie.
24:58 Speaker 01 At Quince, it's $45. Same quality, same eco-friendly standards, lower price. So whether you're thinking of yourself in the cool temperatures or thinking of someone else in the future, give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know it was Infamous America. It's the best way to support the show. But even with all the support, the first fire captain on the scene was furious when he heard an update on the radio. A fire engine was on its way to the wrong location.
25:42 Speaker 01 It was driving away from Ole's Home Center, and the captain shouted into the radio to find out why. The reason was that a fire was burning at a Vons supermarket in the potato chip aisle a few blocks from Ole's Home Center. That one wasn't nearly as serious, but it left the captain mystified. In addition to being curious about the speed and ferocity of the fire at Ole's, he had to wonder, what were the odds of two accidental fires happening within a few blocks of each other and within a few minutes of each other? It sounded impossible that both fires could be accidental. He didn't have time to ponder the answer, though he did take note of one other curious thing at around that time.
26:24 Speaker 01 Glendale arson investigator John Orr was standing near the captain's fire engine. That wasn't strange in and of itself, and yes, John was primarily an investigator, but he was still a firefighter. Instead of offering to help battle the blaze, John was holding a camera, and he asked if he could take some photos. The captain said sure, and he quickly dismissed the odd question to continue mobilizing the small army of firefighters who were attacking the fire from all angles. As John Orr snapped pictures, the roof of Ole's Home Center collapsed and spewed flames and sparks high into the night sky. The crews poured thousands of gallons of water onto the fire, and it still took hours to extinguish the flames.
27:09 Speaker 01 They rode ladders from their trucks way up high to shoot streams of water down onto the crumbling ruins of the store. But it was clear that the scene was a disaster. Ole's Home Center was completely destroyed, and four people had not made it out alive. A grandmother named Ada Deal had been shopping with her husband Billy and their two-year-old grandson Matthew when the fire started. Billy became separated from Ada and Matthew. Billy made it out of the store, barely, but Ada and Matthew did not. The other two victims were employees, seventeen-year-old Jimmy Satina and twenty-six-year-old mother of two Carolyn Kraus.
27:55 Speaker 01 Carolyn's sister-in-law worked for the Glendale Police Department, and she knew John Orr. Several days after the fire, John showed up at the Glendale Police Department to speak to the sister-in-law. It appeared as though he was trying to offer a consolment in a roundabout way. He told her he believed the fire at Ollie's was intentional, and his visit was prompted by his deep disappointment over the lack of investigation and the quick rush to judgment that the fire was accidental. He noted another recent fire to illustrate his point. A few days after the Ollie's fire, a home improvement store in North Hollywood called Builders Emporium suffered a small fire. Luckily, the sprinkler system put it out before any serious damage was done.
28:41 Speaker 01 And that luck gave investigators valuable clues. The fire had started in a mattress that was stuffed with the same type of foam that was in the cushions at Ollie's Home Center. Just as important, investigators found the device that had started the fire.
29:00 Speaker 01 The device was categorized as "a delay device", a simple system that allowed the arsonist to get away from the location before the fire started. Essentially, it was the timer on a bomb. In the case of the device at Builders Emporium, it was a device that arson investigator Dennis Foote had noted in his potato chip file. The device was easy and effective. Three matches were tied to a cigarette with a rubber band, and bundled inside a piece of yellow notebook paper. The device would give the arsonist about fifteen minutes to leave the area after the cigarette was lit. When the cigarette burned down, it lit the matches. The matches lit the notebook paper and created a small flame.
29:44 Speaker 01 If the flame touched something highly flammable like a foam mattress or a foam chair cushion or a bag of potato chips, it quickly ignited a fire. If the fire started in a place that was packed with other foam products or similar types of fuel, it roared into an inferno with dizzying speed.
30:04 Speaker 01 The signature delayed device was not found at Ollie's Home Center, but that doesn't mean it didn't survive the fire. Unfortunately for arson investigators, they would never know. The man who controlled the investigation wanted to wrap up the process quickly and cleanly. Sergeant Jack Palmer of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department decided to classify the fire as "undetermined", which meant they didn't know exactly where or how the fire started. Investigators, including John Orr, had been at the scene at 7:00 a.m. the next morning after the fire. After about 90 minutes, Palmer had made up his mind. He knew that the other two fires that night had been deemed arson,
30:47 Speaker 01 but since they had both started in aisles of potato chips and not the types of things that were available at Ollie's, he dismissed them as "unconnected".
30:58 Speaker 01 Two men vehemently disagreed with Palmer's assessment. One was Jim Allen, an investigator with the California State Fire Marshal's Office, and the other was John Orr. Jim Allen had walked through the charred ruins of Ollie's with John, and Allen had marveled at the speed with which the fire must have moved. But Orr never mentioned the fact that stacks of foam products, which were great accelerants, had been stored in a corner of the building. Nor did he mention that two more fires had happened that night, both of which were deemed arson. Jim Allen wouldn't learn those facts until much later. In the moment, Allen agreed with Orr. Palmer's investigation, such as it was, was too fast.
31:42 Speaker 01 But Palmer was a 25-year veteran of the powerful LA County Sheriff's Department, which had jurisdiction over the case. Palmer had essentially declared the fire an accident, and that was the end of it. A few days later, a small fire burst to life in a foam mattress at Builders Emporium in North Hollywood. The signature delay device of a cigarette and the matches was recovered. It was clearly a case of arson. Two months after that, the same type of device was found in a partially burned stack of foam products at a home improvement store in Pasadena. And wouldn't you know it, that fire was at another Ollie's Home Center. The pattern was clear.
32:23 Speaker 01 A serial arsonist was targeting big retail stores with the intent of causing significant destruction and loss of life. But that didn't mean the arsonist would be easy to catch. The firebug, as firefighters called a serial arsonist, was clever, and investigators would have to wait more than two years to find their first usable clue. Next time on Infamous America, John Orr has the perfect cover for his activities. No one suspects a serial arsonist might also be a firefighter. But that starts to change after a series of fires in 1987.
33:04 Speaker 01 A fire captain finds a clue and a pattern, and he promotes a theory no one wants to hear. After a second series of fires, John Orr becomes a suspect for the first time. But it will be a long and difficult road toward proving the suspicions. That's next week on Infamous America. Members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week for new episodes. They receive the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials, and they also receive exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com.
33:47 Speaker 01 Memberships are just $5 per month. This series was researched and written by myself and Rhea Perroin. It was produced by Joe Garra. Original music by Rob Valier. I'm Chris Wimmer. Thanks for listening.
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