John Leonard Orr

John Leonard Orr (born April 26, 1949) is an American convicted serial arsonist, mass murderer and former firefighter. A fire captain and arson investigator in Glendale, California, Orr was convicted of serial arson and four counts of murder; he is believed to have set nearly 2,000 fires in a 30 year arson spree, most of them between 1984 and 1991, making him the most prolific serial arsonist in U.S. history.

During his arson spree, Orr had several nicknames: the Pillow Pyro due to the location of the fires inside stores; the Frito Bandito, due to starting some of his fires using potato chips; and the Coin Tosser for incorporating coins into his incendiary devices. Orr's modus operandi was to set fires using a timed device, usually comprising a lit cigarette with three matches wrapped in ruled yellow writing paper and secured by a rubber band, in stores while they were open and populated. He would also set small fires in the grassy hills in order to distract firefighters, leaving fires set in more congested areas unattended. He would sometimes be part of the firefighting crew that investigated the fires.

Orr was born in Glendale, California, and grew up in a family of three children in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. His father Joe was a machinist, and his mother Leora was a secretary. His parents divorced when he was young. As a child, Orr was enthralled by two neighborhood fires that were extinguished by the Los Angeles Fire Department.

Orr attended Eagle Rock High School before joining the United States Air Force at age 17. During his enlistment he married his high school sweetheart Jody. After being discharged from the military in 1971, he sought employment in the Los Angeles Police Department but failed the psychological exam, and the Los Angeles Fire Department found him physically unfit. Orr studied fire science while working day jobs, and in 1974 he secured employment with the Glendale Fire Department, one of the lowest paying departments in Los Angeles County. Orr rose through the ranks as an arson investigator, attaining the rank of captain.

On October 10, 1984, in South Pasadena, California, a major fire broke out at an Ole's Home Center hardware store. The store was completely destroyed by the fire, and four people were killed: Matthew Troidl, a two-year-old child; Ada Deal, Matthew's 50-year-old grandmother; Carolyn Kraus, a 26-year-old mother of two; and Jimmy Cetina, a 17-year-old employee. The following day, fire investigators from around Southern California converged on the destroyed store, and declared the cause to be an electrical fire. However, Orr insisted that the cause was arson. Orr was correct, of course, because he had set the blaze. It has since been speculated that Orr wanted his work to be recognized. Investigations showed that the fire was deliberately started in highly flammable polyurethane products, which caught fire very quickly, causing the fire to flashover very rapidly.

In January 1987, a convention for fire investigators from California was held in the city of Fresno. During and after the convention, several suspicious fires were set in Bakersfield. This, combined with the recovery of a single unmatched fingerprint left on a piece of notebook paper as part of a time-delay incendiary device, led Captain Marvin G. Casey of the Bakersfield Fire Department (BFD) to suspect that a fire investigator from the Los Angeles metropolitan area was responsible for the arsons.

During March 1989, another series of arsons were committed along the California coast in close conjunction with a conference of fire investigators in Pacific Grove. By comparing the list of attendees from the Fresno conference with the list of attendees at the Pacific Grove conference, Casey was able to create a short list of ten suspects. Orr was on Casey's short list, but everyone on this short list was cleared of suspicion when their fingerprints were compared with the fingerprint that Casey had recovered from the piece of notebook paper found at one of the arson crime scenes. Orr's fingerprint did not match.

In late 1990 and early 1991, another series of arson fires broke out in Southern California, this time in and around the Los Angeles area. As a result, a large task force, nicknamed the "Pillow Pyro Task Force" was formed to apprehend the arsonist. On March 29, 1991, Tom Campuzanno of the Los Angeles Arson Task Force circulated a flier at a meeting of the Fire Investigators Regional Strike Team (FIRST), an organization formed by a group of smaller cities in and around Los Angeles County that did not have their own staff of arson investigators. The flier described the modus operandi of the suspected serial arsonist in the Los Angeles area. Scott Baker of the California State Fire Marshal's Office was at that meeting, and told Campuzanno about the series of arsons investigated by Casey and about Casey's suspicions that the perpetrator was a fire investigator from the Los Angeles area. Consequently, Campuzanno and two of his colleagues met with Casey, obtained a copy of the fingerprint that Casey had recovered, and this time matched it to Orr on April 17, 1991, with the help of improved fingerprint technology. By cross-referencing the print with a database of all past applicants for law enforcement posts in Los Angeles County, they discovered that the print was an exact match to Orr's left ring finger.