All language subtitles for Very Scary People s03e12 Firestarter 2.eng

It is terrifying to most people, the
unpredictability of it, the swiftness of

it, the radiant heat.

It is truly terrifying.

Sure, the arsonists, they're criminals,
but they don't divorce themselves from

the crime. They stay very close to it.

Welcome to Very Scary People. I'm Donnie
Wahlberg.

During the evening in October 1984,
Ole's, a home goods store in South

California, erupts in flames.

Shoppers and employees scramble to
escape the raging inferno. But four

lose their lives that night, including a
two -and -a -half -year -old and his

grandmother. Although investigators call
the fire an accident, the truth is far

more sinister.

As the years go by and more fires are
set, a pattern emerges.

Investigators realized there was a
serial arsonist on the loose, and he

one of their own. The hunt is on to find
the fire starter.

The night of October 10th, 1984, was
game two of the World Series.

And Ole's Home Center, a store in South
Pasadena, California, was open for

business. A handful of people were in
there. Two of the people that were

shopping at the store was a grandmother
and her two -and -a -half -year -old

grandson. I was working at the back of
the store, and I heard somebody yelling,

hey, we need to clear the store, and I
noticed that there was a column of

He immediately began to lecture the
customers out of the store.

I saw that pillar of smoke, a wall of
flames.

The smoke became so thick that he
couldn't see anymore. He began feeling

the back of the building, heading
towards where he knew a fire door was.

It just seemed like forever, but then I
was like, I'm going to push these doors

open and I can get out to freedom.

In less than five minutes, this fire
went from a small fire to a fully

12 ,000 square foot building.

I remember seeing smoke coming out of
those doors, and it was just black.

I knew that there would be people that
perished in the fire.

In all, there's four people that died in
this Holy Fire.

My grandbaby, he would have been three
in January.

He was with his other grandmother, and
I'm sure she did everything she could

him.

I found out that evening that two of my
co -workers passed away.

I was very saddened to hear that.

The captain is trying to direct his
rookie firefighters into this massive

When John Orr shows up, he was the fire
investigator for the city of Glendale.

Most of the people involved in fire
investigation in Los Angeles County knew

John Orr was.

His reputation was almost larger than
life. He had a knack of showing up on

scene and being able to relatively
quickly identify the point of origin of

fire where other investigators had been
stumped by until his arrival.

Orr was very, very good at fire
detection. Why?

That was his life.

It was part of him. It was all
-consuming for him.

If a fire ever turns out to be arson,
that is a good idea to have some crowd

shots.

John was known for telling all these
investigators that the bug is always in

crowd.

So you should video it so you can figure
out whether somebody's showing up at a

bunch of your fires, and then you'll
know that that person is the arsonist.

Or tells them, there's something
happening here that you are missing.

And they ignore it.

If this is an arson, the potential
victims inside will be homicide victims.

Most arsonists do not set fires in
buildings that are occupied, except for

who intend to kill those people inside.

Other mysterious fires began erupting in
businesses, frequently in the Los

Angeles area. And many of these fires
had something in common. A homemade

incendiary device frequently found at
the scene.

and that device was a relatively simple
design but very effective. A cigarette

that had three matches attached to it by
a rubber band, and it was placed inside

a piece of folded, yellow -lined notepad
paper.

The device is obviously a signature, but
the MO goes beyond that. The fires that

we were looking at were commercial
businesses in the middle of the day when

they're occupied.

We had most likely a serial offender.

Arsonists had been starting fires, and
we decided that it would be prudent to

form a task force.

We went out and talked to all of the
investigators and see if they had had

fires that met that same M .O. One
investigator remembered that years

similar incendiary device was found in a
fire about 100 miles north of Los

Angeles in the city of Bakersfield, and
it had a fingerprint on it.

When they first found it, there was no
match for the print.

But investigators decided to test it
again.

And this time, they got a match.

A phone call came in from the sheriff's
lab.

He says, you got John Orr's fingerprints
on it.

It made no sense that his prints should
be on a device from Bakersfield.

As unbelievable as it was, John Orr was
our suspect.

The excitement of the fire and... He was
a top instructor, a top... Voice for

firefighters and arson investigators.

He was so well known in the state and so
well respected.

If we were going to put a case together
on that, we had to have an ironclad

case.

As we're starting to get into our plans,
we learned that he's making a trip out

of town to a training conference in the
Central Coast area of San Luis Obispo.

And the opportunity that he may start a
fire and we can catch him in the act

was... too critical for us to pass up.

We needed to get a warrant from the
court to authorize us to put a tracking

device on his vehicle.

He left on a Saturday morning.

John gets in his car and begins the
drive to Central California with ATF

agents following him. And one of the
things they discover is that he's not

to follow.

Fortunately, we had aerial surveillance
because once he got out on the

interstate, he was driving at 90, 100
miles an hour using his emergency light

when someone got in his way.

He's forcing them to drive at these
crazy speeds, weave in and out of

pedal to the metal the whole way.

Usually the plane flies in circles to
try to keep a vehicle under

So he was driving so fast that the
aircraft was actually paralleling him up

freeway.

Once he arrived at his hotel in San Luis
Obispo, in the middle of the night we

had a couple of our tactical people
crawl underneath his car and attach the

tracking device.

Now, it's not like what you might
imagine the things are today.

This is a brown circular magnetic thing.
It was basically a unit that sent out a

radio sound.

And the louder the sound was meant the
closer you were to the vehicle you're

tracking. So in the end, it helped us
stay close by, but you really had to

a line -of -sight surveillance.

We watched him every day during the
conference. The second day, he was being

followed by one of the agents and went
into a drugstore.

He's there pretty quickly and leaves.

So what the heck did he get?

Once he left, the agent ran in and asked
the clerk what he had bought, and the

clerk said, oh, he bought a soft drink
and a pack of cigarettes.

Well, that's really interesting because
of all the people that are at this

firefighting conference, the one person
who is the most adamantly against

smoking is John Orr. And he's just gone
into this drugstore and bought a pack of

smokes.

A cigarette, obviously, was part of each
one of the devices we recovered, so we

were really keyed up that something was
going to be happening. On his drive back

to Los Angeles, we had the surveillance
teams all geared up for it when the

class ended.

And no more than five minutes into it,
he pulled into a car wash in the city of

San Luis Obispo.

I drove downtown to get the car wash,
and as I was walking away from it, I

noticed a wire hanging down from the
back.

And one of the agents realized that the
tracking device had somehow become

dislodged, and he had noticed the
antenna from it. So I got down there and

discovered this magnetically applied
device on the car.

When he identified the tracking device
in his car, we figured, this is it. It's

up. How are we going to handle it?
What's our tactic? Are we going to grab

I mean, we've got to do something.

But lucky for investigators, it didn't
seem like he realized he was being

tracked. He thought he had a bomb on his
car.

So he gets in the car and drives as fast
as he can to a police range where they

handle explosive devices.

And while he's doing that, investigators
call ahead.

From the airplane, they radio down to
the agent. Don't let him know it's a

tracking device.

Tell him you're not sure what it is.
You'll analyze it, and you'll get back

him. John arrives, runs into the range,
and says, Hey, I'm a fireman, and I

think there's a bomb attached to my car.

A day later, the bomb tech called John
and told him, I took the device apart.

It's a hoax device.

Somebody's just messing with you.

We hoped that that story would work.

Within a few weeks, he's attending
another training conference. One of our

agents is actually attending the
training with him and trying to keep an

him. And he suddenly seems to disappear
from the training during a break.

And around that same time, a trash
barrel right outside the conference

has a small fire erupt.

And within minutes afterwards, the agent
inside sees John again.

And we're thinking to ourselves, does he
just know that we're here and is he

screwing with us? Or is this just a
coincidence?

Investigators suspected John Orr of
having set dozens of fires, and so they

out to interview witnesses at each of
those scenes.

In between scrambling to handle the
surveillances, we're still trying to get

witnesses interviewed, and we needed a
photo lineup for John Orr.

We went out to the very first witness at
one of the stores that had a large

fire, and when we showed the photo
spread, she immediately picked John

photo up.

She says, oh, he's been in here several
times.

And I said, well, when was the last
time? And she said, the morning of the

probably 15 minutes before the fire.

It was a remarkable start to being able
to get solid witness identification.

We were getting our arrest and search
warrants in order when I got a call from

his supervisor.

He pulled out a letter. He says, I found
my secretary typing this this morning

for John Orr.

When I read this letter, I couldn't
believe what I was reading.

My novel is fiction, but it's based on a
real arsonist who has again hit the L

.A. area this year doing over $12
million in damage.

It is my feeling that the arsonist could
be a firefighter.

He was, in fact, trying to solicit a
publisher to read his manuscript.

By 1990 or so, I had already had half a
dozen articles printed or published in a

national fire magazine.

And I thought, well, I might be able to
write the novel.

The first thing I did when I got the
manuscript was pull myself up in an

and read it in its entirety, and I found
it to be very scary.

It's frankly floored, me and everybody
that read it. The manuscript was called

Points of Origin, and it's basically the
story of a firefighter who is a serial

arsonist setting fires in commercial
buildings throughout the state of

California.

I knew about serial arsonists because
I'd arrested so many of them and went

ahead and made it a firefighter gone bad
type plot line.

I'd seen lots of novels that had cops
that had gone bad, but I'd never seen

where a firefighter had gone bad.

In some ways, it was more like a diary
than a fiction.

He was using different names for
businesses, but in reality, describing

exact fires that we were investigating
him for being responsible for.

we were able to say, okay, this is that
fire.

Everything in this book likely really
happened.

The Oles fire is depicted in the book as
Cal's fire, is what he calls the

location. He specifically references the
grandmother and her two -and -a -half

-year -old grandson who died, and then
makes one comment that he had no way of

knowing unless he came in contact with
her, and that was that...

She had taken him for mint chip ice
cream at the Baskin Robbins.

When we went out and spoke to the
surviving grandfather, we asked him, did

go to Baskin Robbins? And what he
actually told us was, no, what we had

we had told the two -and -a -half -year
-old that if he behaved himself while we

were shopping in the store, we would
take him to Baskin Robbins afterwards.

and his favorite ice cream was mint chip
ice cream, which was the exact ice

cream that John Orr referenced in the
manuscript.

The killer overheard that conversation,
and that conversation showed up in the

text of the fictional work.

It was a Friday, and I had just
completed the final examination.

28 statewide investigators in Glendale.

I was at a class that John had put
together.

I didn't know that he was the focus of
the investigation, and a short time

afterwards, I was dispatched to a fire
at the Warner Brothers lot.

Located within the city of Burbank is
Warner Studios.

I would say having a fire at the Warner
Brothers lot is a rarity.

I met up with the head of security.

I looked at the fire scene.

The fire was already out.

I looked at some of the burn patterns in
the floor.

The fire was starting to look more and
more like it was an arson fire.

So being that I had finished the class
that day, I called John. We're eating

dinner, and I was requested by
Investigator Steve Patterson.

He got me on the phone and said, Hey,
John, we had this fire over here, the

Warner Lot.

I'd like you to come over and take a
look at it.

He asked me how to get into the lot, so
I told him that I would be at the gate

waiting for him on his arrival.

I waited there at the gate, and it
seemed like I had been waiting there for

quite a while. I got on the radio, and
John, hey, I'm over here at the gate

waiting for you to come in. Where are
you?

He said, oh, I'm already at the scene.

I'm wondering, he said he didn't know
how to get into the lot.

Never reached out to Steve, told him he
found his way there.

Just left Steve out there. I found out
from the head of security later on that

John had been on the lot a number of
times.

His wife worked at the studios and he
would come there and have lunch with her

on occasion.

And we know that just before the Warner
fire ignited, John Orr's vehicle was

parked just outside the gate.

One day, John Orr left the office, did a
drive around the town in just a circle,

and went right back to the office.

They realized shortly thereafter that
along the route he had taken, there had

been a fire started in some brush just
off to the side of the road.

So it was frankly concerning to us that
he was going to start a fire and someone

was going to get hurt. We decided we had
to move on the case and make arrests.

I was with a boyfriend of mine, and we
went to his parents' house. And they

said, hey, Lori, you've got your dad on
the TV. You've got to come check this

out. And the first thing I saw was my
dad in handcuffs. The city's top arson

investigator is himself charged with
arson. And then they were describing

he was being arrested for arson.

And, of course, I really thought it was
a mistake. There's no way he could do

that. Orr spoke to Inside Edition about
the moment of his arrest.

It was a total surprise.

I'd come out of my house on my way to
work like I do every day of the week,

days a week, and starting to get into my
car, and suddenly surrounded by about

18 to 20 federal and local
investigators.

In his briefcase and in his car, we
found cigarettes, matches, rubber bands,

materials for the incendiary device.

At one point, I told him, we've even
recovered a device from one of the

and we lifted your fingerprint off.

You would expect an innocent person to
say, no, you didn't. You couldn't

possibly get my fingerprint off it.

He says, well, how many prints did you
get?

Why would you even ask that question
unless you were trying to find out what

evidence we had against him?

After I was arrested, my family, which
included my two daughters, came to the

house, and they were in total support of
me.

He wasn't very talkative about the
obvious situation that he was under

arrest. We asked a few little questions.
Now looking back, I wish I would have

asked a million more questions at that
moment.

My dad was my hero, my sister's hero,
and we looked at him as the world's

He just was really doing no wrong in our
eyes.

At first, I'm thinking there's no
possible way John would have been

setting fires.

To me, it just was out of the realm of
my thinking.

His colleagues in the fire department,
they all thought he was really a good

guy. A guy like Orr has such a mask,
such a facade of normality, that it's

almost impossible to detect something is
wrong unless you know what he did.

Nobody considered him to be a pyromaniac
or deviant in any particular way.

I found out later on John was there
videotaping the fires prior to the

of the fire department.

He had a video of the first in -fire
companies arriving on scene.

How was he there before the first
responders got there unless he was

for the fire?

We found a number of videos, buildings.

homes where he was taking videos before
a fire occurred and then taking video

after the fire occurred.

One of the videos showed a beautiful
mansion on a hillside, and then the next

clip is the building on fire and the
brush burning up the hillside to the

My goal was to find out, how did John
Orr become the fire monster that he was?

Welcome back to Very Scary People.

John Orr was setting fires all over the
state of California for the better part

of a decade.

But after years of evading the law,
investigators finally have their elusive

arsonist behind bars.

Orr is diagnosed as a pyromaniac, an
impulse control disorder, the

urge to light fires.

What is it about setting fires that is
so alluring to pyromaniacs? Why would

someone risk everything?

Career? family freedom, in order to
wreak havoc and destruction or even kill

with just the flick of a flame.

Pyromania is a compulsion and a drive to
set a fire.

The best way to understand pyromania is
that it's an abnormal sexual arousal

pattern where setting the fire itself is
sexually arousing for the individual.

The power and the sense of control and
dominance that the pyromaniac achieves

watching the fire consume everything,
it's that type of activity which is so

arousing. It's stimulating to be so
powerful to be able to annihilate an

entire section of town.

But an individual doesn't wake up one
day and say, I think I'll go out and set

bunch of fires. That sounds like a good
idea.

No, it begins years earlier in the
offender's mind.

As far as I know, my dad always wanted
to be either a policeman or a fireman.

I've never heard any story that he's
ever wanted to be anything else.

My mom and dad met in high school, and
my dad entered the military shortly

graduating, and so my mom and dad got
married at that point.

When my dad got out of the Air Force,
they went back to Los Angeles.

He went through most of the process
until he got to the psychological

evaluation.

He was

in

the training.

and he just wasn't physically fit
enough.

I could pass the physical aspects of it.
So I was terminated from the L .A. Fire

Department in 1973.

For him, it must have been devastating
because he wanted in so bad.

It just seems like it was a desperation
for him to go into that field.

It was my dream job.

I thought I was well qualified for it,
and I should have applied myself harder.

Todd adds somewhere that the Glendale
Fire Department was going to be hiring.

And within four months, I'd been hired
by the Glendale Fire Department.

And about 1978, I started taking fire
investigation and police -type courses,

and we started making names for
ourselves.

We actually arrested more people for
arson than had been arrested in Glendale

the last seven years.

His personality and sense of control and
needing control.

was why he was really good at his job.

He rose through the ranks, and then he
went on to fire captain.

I would often see him on the news
talking about fires and talking about

people, animals, and, of course, being
proud that he was one of those

firefighters. And I'd go to school and
tell all my friends that, you know, did

you see the news last night? My dad was
on there. We have some very good leads,

and some of the evidence matches up with
this individual and ties him into the

fires. He did like the limelight. Or as
somebody who wanted to be authority. He

definitely wanted to have a position
with it.

He had a tremendous need to be dominant,
in control.

And these are all some of the motivating
characteristics that you commonly find

in serial offenders.

But as his career was thriving, it
turned out John Orr wasn't all that

all. One day my mom came home from
shopping and my dad had left a Dear John

letter saying that he was leaving.

She went out looking for him.

She did actually see him driving around
at that moment and he had two women in

his car.

From what I know now, my dad was never
faithful to anybody.

I've known of him cheating on every
person he's ever been with.

Everything that I did, As far as
investigating, John was based on the

manuscript.

If all these fires are true, what did he
do in his personal life?

He describes how the arsonist tied up
his girlfriend.

Was he tying up his girlfriends? Was he
doing all the same activity that he

described in the book?

I found out who one of his girlfriends
was.

He said he would rip her clothing off
and he would tie her up to the bed.

He had had sex with her that way.

It was basically a mock rape.

It doesn't surprise me at all that
there's deviant sexual behavior in his

background.

I also interviewed one of his wives, and
she told me that he had actually put a

pillow over her face one time.

He held a gun to a pillow, and then he
told her, I'm going to blow your hat

In July of 1992, the first of John Orr's
trials began.

For the next six years, he would be in
and out of court, suspected of arson and

attempted arson in dozens of fires.

We brought John Orr to trial in Fresno.

Florida fires in 1987.

The ATF put together the fact that John
Orr was coming from Southern California,

attending the California Conference of
Arson Investigators, and setting fires

coming and going from the conference.

And they charged him in the federal
courts with these five fires.

During one phone call with him from
jail...

I remember him saying that it was a
fireman that was lighting these fires

that he knew who it was, but that he
couldn't say it over the phone because

phones were recorded by the jails. I
just automatically thought that he would

get out of these charges and everything
would be fine.

Orr is responsible for the arson fires
of retail stores, which

resulted in substantial damages.

The jury convicted him of three of the
fires and acquitted him of two. And the

court sentenced him to 30 years in
federal prison.

After the conviction, I was transported
down to Los Angeles for eight more

counts of open -for -business retail
files in the Los Angeles county area.

The day before trial in Los Angeles, he
decided to plead guilty to three counts.

So they agreed to a plea that he would
not serve any additional time for the

convictions in Los Angeles.

That was the worst thing in the world I
could have ever done. The fact that I

had pled guilty to three counts in the L
.A. County area, that opened the door

for the state prosecution to show that I
had a propensity for setting fire at

retail stores that were open for
business.

We also charged him with a fire in the
community called College Hills of

Glendale. It was the largest fire in the
city of Glendale's history.

And they also charged him with the crime
for which he would face the death

penalty, capital murder for the Ole's
Home Center fire in South Pasadena.

In all, there's four people that died in
this Ole's fire.

Among them were Ada Deal and her
grandson, Matthew Troital. We charged

four counts of murder.

I've spent the last five years
prosecuting exclusively arson cases, and

to...

see one of the fire service involved or
even charged with anything serious.

Orr spoke on camera to Inside Edition
about his deep preparation for trial.

I'd spend at least eight hours a day
working on my case, and my attorney

me several times a week.

And it's just as busy now as I used to
be. It's the biggest investigation I've

ever been involved in.

Most of our focus on motive was power,
for making the fire department go to

where he wants them to go by setting
fires.

We established that he had a signature
pattern of committing crimes, that a

could look at it and say, if you did
this one, probably, beyond a reasonable

doubt, you did this other fire.

The prosecutor summed up his murder case
by telling a jury that an unpublished

fictional novel by a Glendale fire
captain detailed this fire because he

arsonist who set it.

I was watching TV and they were saying
that my dad wrote this book.

And I had no idea that my dad had ever
written a book. Why wouldn't he mention

that to me?

That's when I started to realize that
there were parts of him that I didn't

know.

Once I read even the first chapter, it
scared me because everything that he was

describing was things that I remember
from my childhood.

If this book wasn't fiction, what else
about what they're saying is true?

I think that he believed he could beat
it.

John was cocky and dismissive of the
state's case.

I know better than you. I know better
than the state. I know better than the

prosecutors.

He was definitely trying to keep up an
image to the family and to me.

And I kind of even think that he even
knew that if he was convicted, he would

need us to testify for him to not get
the death penalty.

The co -prosecutors say they expect to
finish late tomorrow or early Wednesday.

Then the defense takes over with the
case going to the jury late this week.

The defense, the crux of their argument
was he had already admitted all the

fires he did, and he didn't do these.

That was really it.

They can suspect him of every fire
that's ever committed, and that's what

they're doing.

Typically in arson cases, they don't
have much evidence, so they can suspect

of any fire that's ever started.

There is no such thing as a slam -dunk
case as a prosecutor.

No matter how good you think your case
is, no matter how strong you think the

evidence is, you never really know what
12 members of the community are going to

do when they get that evidence.

So it was nerve -wracking, and the jury
was out for almost three weeks.

The jury came

back with a guilty verdict as to all of
the homicides.

And convicted him of all of the College
Hills houses that burned.

He was, however, acquitted of the fire
on the Warner Brothers lot.

I was devastated.

I realized that I would never really see
him in the free world again.

It was just gone in one day, in one
minute.

After the verdict came in, the penalty
phase was going to start and we would be

testifying.

In a death penalty case.

One of the things a defendant often does
is show a jury why his life is worth

saving.

John didn't have a lot of saving graces,
but he did have Lori, his daughter.

So I just go into, I need to save my dad
mode.

I had to walk up to the stand, and I did
spot my dad off to the side, and, you

know, we made eye contact, and at that
point I expected him to smile or...

say I love you or thank you maybe or but
he just stared at me like I was a

stranger when I was on the stand they
put a picture of my son who was one or

at the time if they spare his life would
I still have a relationship with him

and would I let my kids have one with
him I did say yes I absolutely would

my dad I love him all the things you
would expect a child to say and all the

things that I regret saying now.

John Orr had been convicted of murder
for setting the 1984 fire at Ole's Home

Center in South Pasadena that killed
four people.

And now he was facing the death penalty,
largely as a result of Lori's

testimony. John got a life sentence
instead of death.

I remember thinking, okay, now I won't
have to watch him die, and I did enough,

and I won't have to carry that guilt
around forever.

I felt that justice was served.

He was never going to get out of prison,
and he'll never come out and hurt

anybody else.

But he's still gone for the rest of my
life.

I can't celebrate birthdays with him.
He'll never walk me down the aisle. The

list just goes on and on when you lose a
parent.

Over the years, I really just gathered
as much information as I could to come

my own conclusions about my dad.

My family was worried about turning me
against my dad when I was believing he

was innocent, so they didn't tell me
these things that they knew about.

One of those things was My mom, who,
when she was married to my dad, he was

leaving for work and she was looking out
the window and he had put down the

visor of the car and cigarettes fell
onto his lap.

My dad's always been an adamant non
-smoker.

At first he tried to deny it, but she
kind of kept at him a little bit.

Finally he admitted that he did have
cigarettes and that he was lighting

brush fires.

For me, that information was...

like the nail in the coffin, he's
guilty.

It's as simple as that.

John was five or six when he set his
first fire.

That was documented to some friend of
his that was interviewed.

They were averaging 70, 80 fires a year
for the 10 years leading up to John's

arrest. The year after his arrest, they
had two fires in the area.

We determined that the fires had went
down in Glendale, Burbank, Pasadena by

about 75%. The drop in fires tells me we
arrested the right person.

After I was arrested, there was a lot of
publicity focusing on the L .A. County

area where they're citing these supposed
statistics of the arson drop.

One thing they didn't consider was I was
arrested in December, and we had a wet,

rainy season in 1992.

These people build up all kinds of
defense mechanisms in their own mind.

know exactly what they did. But for them
to give you the satisfaction of

admitting that and telling them that,
that almost never happens.

If we had not been able to identify John
Orr and arrest him, there certainly

would have been more fires.

I've got one appeal that's in front of
the California Supreme Court is to

proclaim my innocence.

There wasn't sufficient information.

Looking back now, my dad's manipulated
me my entire life. You know, I didn't

know it at the time, but he's a master
manipulator and he was doing that.

from day one.

After I came to the conclusion that he
was guilty, I wrote him a letter saying,

I really think that you did these
horrible things, and I need you to

that you didn't.

Like, this is your last chance.

In my daughter Lori's final letter to
me, she said that she would not

communicate with me until I confessed to
my crimes and admitted guilt to the

arson cases.

And I've always told her that I'm not
going to do that. I can't do that. I

confess to something I didn't do, even
at the risk of losing the connection

her, which I ultimately did.

That just wasn't enough for me. So I cut
off the relationship.

It's heartbreaking to me.

I'm not at all surprised that
notwithstanding the plea from his

the truth, that he doesn't do it. It's
very, very typical.

You could go into the state prison.

And nobody's 100 % guilty.

Some people have called John Orr the
most prolific arsonist in the history of

the United States.

I first was made aware of being called
the most prolific serial arsonist of the

20th century after I was arrested, and
it kind of devastated me to hear that.

I do not believe that John Orr was
convicted of all the fires he was

for. We didn't even charge all the fires
that I know he was responsible for. I

believe he has set in excess of 2 ,000
fires.

I think John Orr is someone who led a
double life. On one hand, he was a very

skilled fire investigator who was really
on top of his game.

And on the other hand, he led a secret
life of setting fires, abnormal sexual

behavior with his wives and partners.

The fact that a man who is in a career
to save people from The tragedy of a

is the one putting them in that tragedy
of fire is probably the largest betrayal

someone could admit.

He betrayed his family. He betrayed the
fire industry, all of his co -workers,

everyone that had ever been involved
with him. Everything was a betrayal.

To this day, John Orr continues to
proclaim his innocence, despite his two

convictions. We spoke with him by phone
from Mule Creek State Prison in

California. He insists that his case was
mishandled by his attorneys.

He's appealed his convictions multiple
times, even filing for a writ of habeas

corpus, a motion for freedom. It is very
rarely granted, and there is no other

path to freedom for John Orr if it is
rejected.

I'm Donnie Wahlberg.

Thanks for watching.

Good night.

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