The Firefighter Who Was Caught Lighting Bushfires

July 8, 2019·30 min·2 clips

A 17-year-old firefighter describes borrowing his mum's car to light his first bushfire.

Julian Morgans hosts this Extremes episode, issued with a trigger warning for references to sexual assault. The guest, identified only as David, was a convicted bushfire arsonist who was caught in the 1980s at age 17. David grew up fascinated by fire — watching it for hours in a household fireplace as a child — and became a volunteer firefighter. His arson began as a way to create incidents he could respond to, giving himself a 'fix' of the firefighting experience. The pattern escalated from once a week or fortnight to every three days as he tried to stockpile enough incidents through summer to last the winter. He lit fires in areas he knew needed burning, ensuring he would be first at the fire station and first on scene. His final fire before being caught was lit nine days before his 18th birthday; a council bus spotted him emerging from a bush track and recorded his mother's number plate. His fire brigade captain, Don, came to see him and told him they had evidence. After hours of denial at a police station, and after officers struck him with phone books, David confessed. His mother was distraught. The following day, still in possession of his fire station key, David returned and set the fire station itself alight using newspapers from the storeroom. Police later found his fingerprints there but could not disprove his claim that they were from his legitimate firefighting duties, so he was not charged for that fire. At the court case, three months later, a psychologist, a psychiatric nurse, and a justice department official all testified against incarceration, noting David was at real risk of suicide in prison. The magistrate agreed, handing down 250 hours of community service and mandatory counselling with the condition that non-attendance would result in imprisonment. Through sustained counselling it emerged that the root of David's behaviour was a sexual assault he experienced at age 12, perpetrated by his 16-year-old best friend and the friend's companion. The assault occurred on Valentine's Day, at a beach, after the boys had been swimming. David was alone at home that night, with no family present, and told nobody because the perpetrators threatened to kill him if he did. He carried the secret for five years while his personality changed from cheerful to narcissistic, dark, and volatile. He describes the arson as misdirected rage — not knowing where to put his anger, he blamed society. David notes that none of his fires, to his knowledge, destroyed property or injured any person. Looking back, David says he does not regret what happened because getting caught was an intervention that likely saved his life; he believes he would not have survived the path he was on. He now advocates for earlier mental health intervention for people at risk of arson, arguing that his case took seven years to reach treatment when it could have taken months.

As heard by us

A disturbing true-crime episode that keeps returning to what was broken long before the fire.

A convicted bushfire arsonist recounts the first match he struck, the fires that followed, and the violence he says shaped his childhood. The episode's strongest stretch stays with David's own timeline, letting the unease build from one small burn to a much larger pattern, then…

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Why you'd press play

You want a convicted bushfire arsonist's confession that opens with the act and ends in trauma.

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