John Leonard Orr
| John Leonard Orr | |
|---|---|
| Born | April 26, 1949 |
| Other names | The Pillow Pyro |
| Occupation | Fire captain, arson investigator, novelist |
| Criminal penalty | Life imprisonment |
| Conviction(s) | Arson, mass murder |
| Killings | |
| Date | October 10, 1984 |
| Killed | 4 |
| Weapons | Incendiary timing-device |
John Leonard Orr (born April 26, 1949) is a former fire captain and arson investigator for the Glendale Fire Department in Southern California and novelist who was indicted and later convicted for serial arson. Orr had originally wanted to be a police officer, but had failed his entrance exam; instead he became a dedicated fire investigator and career fire officer. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s Los Angeles was plagued by a series of fires that cost millions of dollars in damages and claimed four lives. John Orr was found to be the cause of most of those fires. During his arson spree, Orr was given the nickname The Pillow Pyro by arson investigators.
His modus operandi was to set fires using an incendiary timing-device, usually comprising a lit cigarette, three matches wrapped in ruled yellow writing paper and secured by a rubber band, in stores while they were open and populated. He would set small fires often in the grassy hills, in order to draw firefighters, leaving fires set in more congested areas unattended.
On October 10, 1984, in South Pasadena, California, a major fire broke out at an Ole's Home Center hardware store located in a shopping plaza. The store was completely destroyed by the fire, and four people died in the blaze, including a two-year-old child named Matthew. On the following day, arson investigators from around southern California converged on the destroyed store, and declared the cause to be an electrical fire. However, John Orr, as an arson investigator, insisted that the cause was arson.
Investigations later showed that the fire started in highly-flammable polyurethane products, which caught fire very quickly, causing the fire to flashover very rapidly. After his arrest in 1991 and subsequent conviction for a series of other arson fires not related to the 1984 Ole's fire, Orr was charged with arson in the blaze by investigators due to a forensic re-evaluation of the causes of the fire, circumstantial evidence and a highly detailed description of a similar fire in his novel Points of Origin that bore several almost perfect similarities with the real-life 1984 fire. Orr was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 1998.
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