Officials Follow Clues Pointing to Arson in Malibu

Investigators from at least four agencies probing causes of the Malibu fire scoured the hills above the seaside community Wednesday, emerging with evidence that the latest Southern California inferno appeared to be the work of at least one arsonist and may have been started by a pair of men in a blue pickup truck.

According to one law enforcement official, witnesses near the flash point of the blaze at 2680 Old Topanga Canyon Road spotted two white men speeding from the area in a blue pickup. At least one witness described that truck as a Ford Ranger or similar vehicle.

The initial descriptions of the truck’s occupants were sketchier, but investigators spent Wednesday canvassing possible witnesses and videotaping the scene. One witness said he was riding his motorcycle along Topanga Canyon Road when he spotted two men in a pickup truck. That witness, who met with arson investigators and homicide detectives Tuesday and again Wednesday, said the men were acting suspiciously.

Another witness who lives in the area saw the blaze as it was beginning and radioed Topanga Firewatch officials to report the fire. He, too, said he saw two men near the fire, and that neighbors told him they had seen two men leaving the area in a pickup truck. Investigators interviewed him at length Tuesday.

“They said they wanted to hypnotize me, to get me to relive it in some way, to find out who was responsible for this catastrophe,” that witness told The Times.

As they launched their probe of the latest suspicious fire to rip through Southern California, fire investigators from the city and county of Los Angeles were joined by sheriff’s deputies and agents from the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Unlike other fires from the past week, the latest blaze is under investigation as a possible homicide.

Homicide detectives joined the probe because at least one fire victim, film director Duncan Gibbins, was in critical condition, having suffered severe burns over much of his body. Gibbons died late Wednesday, meaning that whoever set the fire could be charged with homicide.

Homeowners and public officials at all levels have furiously denounced those responsible for setting many of the fires that scorched Southern California in the past week. Authorities from a host of agencies have responded by launching intensive investigations into each of the blazes. So far, they have concluded that at least seven of the major fires, and at least two of the smaller ones, appear to be the work of arsonists using road flares, newspapers and gasoline and other incendiary devices.

Many more fires remain under investigation, and arsonists could be found responsible once the final inquiries are completed.

Speaking at a command post for firefighters battling the Malibu fire, Gov. Pete Wilson announced Wednesday that the reward for the person or people responsible for setting that fire has grown to $125,000--an amount that matched later by a Los Angeles businessman, bringing to total to $250,000.

Wilson also said he supports increasing the maximum state penalty for arson to life in prison. Under current law, arson carries a maximum sentence of eight years if the fire burns an inhabited structure and nine years it causes great bodily injury. If the fire kills anyone, the arsonist can be prosecuted for homicide, which carries longer sentences.

Arson “in my judgment ranks on a par with child molestation,” an angry Wilson said. “These are people who ought to be locked up. . . . As far as I’m concerned, the interests of protecting people call for locking an arsonist up for as long as he is able to function and be dangerous.”

Although clues in the recent spate of blazes have been hard to come by, investigators do have leads in a few of the cases, mostly about suspicious individuals fleeing from the scenes of the fires’ origins.

In the case of a fire near Villa Park, witnesses reported a black Pontiac Fiero speeding away as the conflagration took hold. Authorities are searching vehicle records from four Southern California counties to identify owners of cars that match the car’s description.

Orange County authorities also believe that a pair of smaller fires--one in Dana Point and another in O’Neill Regional Park--were the work of arsonists using newspaper and gasoline. Witnesses spotted a suspicious person near the origin of the Dana Point fire. Investigators believe that person was driving a white Mustang.

Laguna Beach arson investigators questioned a 22-year-old Lake Forest man for several hours Wednesday in connection with recent fires in Orange County after he was arrested on suspicion of impersonating a fire officer, authorities said.

A search of the man’s green Volkswagen GTI yielded several items that investigators regarded as suspicious, said Capt. Dan Young of the Orange County Fire Department. The items included five phony picture identifications from fire departments saying the man is a firefighter, two Orange County Fire Department badges, a police scanner, a radio, a pager, a fire helmet and a protective coat.

Meanwhile, the FBI and other authorities are pursuing clues in a threatening letter sent to about 35 Southern California law enforcement agencies. The letter--in which the author says he will start fires unless authorities apologize for seizing property from him--is being analyzed by federal authorities in Quantico, Va., home of the FBI’s training center and its scientific analysis units.

Agents will not discuss their analysis of the letter, which is filled with epithets and grammatical errors. But sources close to the case said the seven-page note contains several potentially helpful hints. For instance, although the author identifies himself only as “Fedbuster,” he provides what he says is the first initial of the last name of the judge, prosecutor and agents involved in his case. If those initials are accurate, they would vastly narrow the field of suspects.

“If I get no satisfaction by the time we get a real good volatile fire season you’ll really regret it you’ll see,” the author wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Times. “They burned me now I’m going to burn back. I fight fire with fire. You like my puns chumps? Sizzle sizzle.”

Even if investigators determine who wrote the letter, it would not mean that the person is responsible for one or more of the fires that have swept Southern California.

“First we have to figure out who wrote it,” one law enforcement official said. “Then we have to figure out whether he actually did what he threatened to do.”

Although investigators are determined to thwart the devastating spree that has destroyed hundreds of Southern California homes in the past week, they acknowledge that it is never easy to solve an arson case. Successful arson probes often turn on luck, as well as on diligent investigative work that combines fragments of physical evidence with circumstantial clues.

According to FBI statistics, fewer than one in five arson investigations nationwide resulted in arrests last year, a number far lower than that for other major crimes such as rape or murder. Arsonists sometimes share certain characteristics, but they can run the gamut, from former nuns to nationally acclaimed firefighters, from those seeking revenge to meticulous psychopaths who plot their crimes in detail.

Some arson cases are solved because the culprits brazenly advertise their intentions. Just a few months ago, a former nun named Carole Lynne Alberts began threatening her former boss when she was fired from the Simi Valley McDonald’s where she worked.

Prosecutors said Alberts--who was described by her lawyer as mentally ill--left a note in her former boss’s car saying: “You will die and go to hell.” The note was written on a place mat and part of a knife blade was stuck through it, according to the probation report.

Later, Alberts twice tried to burn down her former employer’s home, first by lighting a gate and then by igniting a blanket soaked in gasoline.

Experts say that such cases--an angry person seeking vengeance and pursuing it so openly--are the exception in arson fires.

More often, blazes are set by people with deep-rooted but concealed psychological ailments. They often diligently research their fires and take intense satisfaction from watching them burn and seeing the chaos that they spark.

That makes the investigators’ job tougher, but what most complicates arson probes is that the fires destroy much of the valuable evidence. That often forces authorities to build cases on circumstantial evidence, a painstaking process that can take months or years.

In the early 1990s, for instance, a former firefighter trainee named Douglas Hunziker set fires for seven months before prosecutors charged him with setting 11 fires in the South Bay.

Early on, investigators were suspicious of Hunziker. The fires had been set at his home, a former friend’s home, a club where he worked and a driving school he attended. But Hunziker’s attorney argued that his client’s connection to those establishments was coincidental.

During his closing argument, Hunziker’s lawyer even read from the Guinness Book of World Records--citing cases in which a forest ranger was struck by lightning seven times, among other odd coincidences.

But the circumstantial evidence in that case was bolstered by one key eyewitness account: In January, 1991, an employee of the Red Onion nightclub in Redondo Beach told police that he saw Hunziker set fire to a toilet-seat dispenser in a restroom.

Arson experts say that is just the type of break investigators usually need--an eyewitness who saw something suspicious and can give a description. Or a fingerprint on the device that sparked the blaze. Or footprints or tire tracks or some other piece of hard evidence that corroborates a pattern of activity.

Without such evidence, arsonists are infuriatingly difficult to catch and convict.

Still, sometimes even the most experienced and methodical arsonists slip up. Experts say many fire-setters like to watch their blazes burn, a habit that sometimes allows them to be seen by witnesses. Many arsonists also keep records of their fires in diaries or logs. And, because many are driven and remorseless, they tend to keep on setting fires until they are caught.

All of those habits relate to the psychological disorders that psychologists say afflict arsonists. And such habits can make them vulnerable to persistent investigative work.

Take what may be the nation’s best-known arson case. In two cases, one in 1992 and another earlier this year, former Glendale Fire Capt. John Orr was convicted of setting a number of blazes in eastern and Southern California. Investigators probing those fires got their biggest break when they recovered Orr’s fingerprint from the charred remains of an incendiary device.

That was their most solid clue, but it was bolstered by a tantalizing bit of circumstantial evidence that eventually helped put Orr behind bars. Among Orr’s possessions was a manuscript of a 418-page novel in which Orr described the work of a serial arsonist.

The most spectacular blaze that Orr was accused of setting was at the Hancock Fabrics store in a Kmart shopping center in north Fresno. In his novel, Orr describes a fictional firefighter named Aaron Stiles who sets fire to a north Fresno fabric store near a Kmart.

“He felt fright but it excited him,” Orr wrote of the arsonist in his manuscript. “His fires gave him the much-needed attention he craved, providing him with feelings of importance and recognition. He was, after all, the only one who knew how the fire started. And didn’t that make him a very important person?”

Tracking an Arsonist

Investigating fires involves a methodical process that begins as soon as a fire is under control.

Locate origin of the fire: Investigators evaluate such things as wind conditions and burn patterns to find a source, sometimes relying on soot stains on rocks and charred areas of trees to determine a fire’s direction.

Eliminate other possibilities: Investigators consider every other possible cause. They look for cigarette butts, downed power lines, nearby roads or railroad tracks (trains can throw sparks) or even signs of spontaneous combustion.

Establish intention: Once investigators decide that the fire was started by an individual, they look for signs that it was intentional. The clearest such evidence is a timing device, which allows an arsonist to observe the fire from a distance.

PROFILE: Experts say arsonists often:

1) Are loners

2) Keep a record of their crimes

3) Like to watch fires they set

4) If not caught, strike over and over

Sources: Arson experts, law enforcement officials