Ex-Glendale Fire Captain Gets 30-Year Term for Arson

FRESNO —  Former Glendale Fire Capt. John Orr, proclaiming his innocence, was sentenced Monday to 30 years in federal prison for setting fire to three stores in the San Joaquin Valley in 1987 as he drove home from an arson investigators conference in Fresno.

Imposing the maximum sentence for three counts of arson, U.S. District Court Judge Oliver W. Wanger called Orr a “danger to the community.” He told the nationally acclaimed arson investigator that he had betrayed “the highest trust placed in you as a law enforcement officer.”

“This sentence serves as an example to any other law enforcement officer who would betray the public’s trust,” Wanger said.

In a lengthy and at times defiant statement, Orr, 43, repeated his charge that the government manufactured the case against him. He said his offers to take a polygraph examination had been spurned by prosecutors. He argued that prosecutors had disregarded the truth by using his unpublished novel “Points of Origin” as evidence against him.

Throughout the trial in August, prosecutors maintained that Orr took facts from the fires he set as grist for the 418-page manuscript. Orr insisted Monday that the story about a firefighter turned arsonist was fiction.

“Of the 29 fires I described in the book, only three bear any similarity to the real fires set in the valley,” Orr said.

The 17-year veteran of the Glendale Fire Department faces trial in Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo counties on eight counts of arson.

The judge rejected a defense motion for a new trial. Orr’s attorney, Douglas McCann of Glendale, had argued that the government engaged in a pattern of misconduct.

McCann said prosecutors had injected their own opinions during closing arguments and misstated the evidence against his client.

Orr was convicted of setting fire to the Family Bargain Center in Tulare and the CraftMart and House of Fabrics stores in Bakersfield on Jan. 16, 1987.

Similar incendiary devices were used in each fire. Prosecutors said it was a “miracle” that no one was hurt in the fires. Wanger fined Orr $225,000 for damage to the stores.