Seeking clues in the ashes of an L.A. arson spree
Inside a mobile command center parked in the heart of Hollywood, Los Angeles City fire captains huddle around a bank of radios, monitoring six frequencies used by local law enforcement agencies.
It was here on Friday night and early Saturday morning that reports of car fires streamed in, one by one. As the firefighters charted the locations on an ever-expanding map pinned to the wall, it quickly became apparent they were following the path of a serial arsonist.
“He’s here, he’s here, now he’s here,” said Capt. David Perez, ticking off what by Saturday morning would be 16 new blazes.
By Sunday night, the total had reached at least 39 fires and several botched attempts, all linked to one or more arsonists over some 72 hours.
At a news conference Sunday evening, task force officials announced what may prove to be a break in the case — images of a light-skinned man in his late 20s to mid-30s, between 5 feet 8 and 6 feet 2 inches, with a dark ponytail and receding hairline whom authorities described as a “person of interest.”
“Obviously we’re getting close,” Perez said Sunday evening, watching a bank of televisions in the command center flash images of the person of interest. “We all just want this to end.”
The footage, captured Friday just before 7 p.m., shows a man dressed in black walking hurriedly with an odd gait out of a Hollywood parking structure. Within minutes, a fire was reported. Officials believe the same man appeared in a separate video that they did not release.
Faced with an elusive fire starter moving over shifting territory, authorities are trying to anticipate where in the vast Los Angeles area the arsonist may strike next. It is a cat-and-mouse game played out over a broad landscape from the eastern San Fernando Valley to West Hollywood.
As of Sunday at 9:30 p.m., no new arsons had been reported.
Authorities are holding the details of their investigation close to the vest, mindful of tipping off the perpetrator or sparking copy-cats. But veteran arson investigators say they are most likely combing the dozens of crime scenes for some kind of pattern.
Were the targeted cars expensive or cheap? Did they have in-state or out-of-state license plates? How long would it take a single arsonist to cover the ground between fires on any given night?
“Sometimes there are various patterns to these fires that arsonists are establishing unwittingly,” said Bradley Hamil, who was an arson investigator in San Bernardino for 25 years.
An arsonist in the Washington, D.C., area set a fire every year for more than a decade in fast-food restaurant parking lots before investigators finally found the pattern and linked the fires to a fry cook at the fast food chain.
Crime scene investigators have been hunting for forensic evidence — fingerprints left on a matchbook, DNA from skin cells left on a rag, a single strand of human hair — that survived the burn. Finding and processing such evidence from 39 fires could take weeks.
Meanwhile, the district attorney’s office has been searching criminal files for any arsonists who have come under suspicion in the last several years.
“Usually someone setting these types of fires will have some kind of history behind them,” said Brett Martinez, fire marshal in Suffolk County, N.Y., and an expert on arson investigations.
Most of all, investigators have been relying on shoe-leather detective work — asking around at local bars, scanning hours of video footage gathered near crime scenes and knocking on doors, hoping to find a witness who spotted an unusual person in the area late at night.
Arson is not uncommon. An average of 267,000 fires nationwide are set intentionally every year, and 20% involve vehicles, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Between 2004 and 2006, almost 28,000 intentional vehicle fires were set nationally, according to a more recent report from the agency’s Fire Administration.
Serial arsonists are often difficult to stop — nationwide, only about 15% of arsons lead to convictions, experts say.
“It’s going to be tough until they get some witness information or something left behind,” said Hamil.
Given those challenges, authorities also announced Sunday that 25 federal investigators would be added to the task force, in part to help local officials target areas for increased patrols in the hopes of catching the arsonist in the act.
“This has been a full court press by this department,” LAPD Cmdr. Michael Moriarty said, standing in front of large video screens showing slow motion images of the pony-tailed “person of interest” walking up a staircase two steps at a time and with his hands in his pockets.
Meanwhile, authorities are seeking the public’s help finding the man in the video, whom police would like to interview. Police officials also asked Los Angeles residents to keep the lights on in their garages and carports overnight and to lock car doors.
Anyone with information about the arsons is encouraged to contact investigators at (877) LAPD-247, or CrimeStoppers, (800) 222-TIPS.
Psychologists say there is no single profile for serial arsonists. But given the facts of the Los Angeles case, several experts painted a portrait of the likely suspect.
He is probably between 20 and 40 years old, a loner from a broken home who feels angry about something or someone, and feels unable to communicate it in another way.
The arsonists’ actions most likely had a precipitating event.
“This is a form of communication,” said Dr. Jeffrey Geller, an expert on pathological fire setting at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. “Something causes him to be enraged and he doesn’t know what to do with it.”
“Often over the course of their life they’ve fused an association between angry feelings and fire,” said Robert Stadolnik, a psychologist who runs FirePsych Inc., a treatment program for children and adult fire setters.
Half of all arson arrests involve juveniles, but experts say a teenager is unlikely in this case.
Why car fires? Cars can be a safe target for arsonists: easy to access, and less likely to lead to someone’s injury or death. But often that impression is an illusion; fires can easily sweep out of control.
In some cases, the perpetrator defies the profile. In October, police in Maine arrested a 65-year-old woman suspected of setting at least 15 fires. The suspect was identified when a witness saw a partial license plate of her car leaving the scene of a fire. Elderly women are among the least likely to commit crimes.
“There’s enough people in L.A., you’re not going to find the person from a profile,” Geller said.
But given that the person committing the arsons is likely out of control emotionally, some experts think he may soon make a mistake.
“I would expect that they will have this solved within the week,” Stadolnik said.
Times staff writer Andrew Blankstein contributed to this report.
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