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Chapter One | Point of Origin

November 6, 2023·29 min·2 clips

Federal agents arrested a suspected serial arsonist and found a novel manuscript they believed was his diary of real crimes.

Host Cary Antholis opens by reading a letter dated April 17th, 1991, sent to the L. Harry Lee Literary Agency. The letter describes a manuscript called Points of Origin about a fictional arsonist setting serial fires in California, claiming the character is based on a real unidentified person. Thirty years after the letter circulated among literary agencies, Antholis frames this as the foundation of the Firebug story. He describes himself as a young Hollywood filmmaker who heard a news bulletin on the radio announcing the arrest of a real suspected serial arsonist — one whose home contained the same letter and manuscript. The feds concluded Points of Origin was not fiction but a diary. Antholis recalls taking the story idea that day to documentary producer Sheila Nevins, who encouraged him to pursue it. The central investigation begins with the Ole's Home Center fire in South Pasadena on October 10th, 1984. Ruben Ayala, the store manager, describes the fire starting suddenly near closing time, with no smell of smoke before it erupted across the building like a flamethrower. Two heavy metal fire doors dropped, sealing part of the store. Arson investigator Jim Allen was called in from the state fire marshal's office and drove to the scene overnight. At the parking lot, he encountered his friend John Orr, a captain with the Glendale Fire Department known as an exceptional arson investigator. Orr had been in the area investigating potato chip rack arsons, a series he attributed to a serial arsonist nicknamed the Frito Bandito. He believed Ole's was connected. The fire was devastating — the warehouse-sized building lost its roof, and 10 fire companies from across the county responded. Among the missing were a 17-year-old employee, a mother of two, a grandmother, and her two-year-old grandson Matthew. An on-scene interview with Matthew's other grandmother captures the exact moment the family became separated. Orr and Allen began investigating the scene at dawn, tracing char patterns toward the housewares section where polyurethane foam was stored. However, the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department arrived, took over the scene, and declared the fire accidental due to an electrical fault in the ceiling. Allen objected strenuously and was threatened with arrest if he did not comply. Bulldozers destroyed the potential evidence before a proper investigation could be completed. Allen's official report marked the cause as undetermined. Over a beer, Orr told Allen the investigation was pathetic and that the real cause was homicide. The novel Points of Origin then comes back into the frame: its fictional arsonist Aaron Stiles burns down a hardware store, kills five people including a grandmother and her grandson named Matthew, and the blaze is ruled an accident — an almost exact mirror of the Ole's fire.

As heard by us

A steady arson case that lets the evidence do most of the work.

Firebug starts with a 1991 letter that gives arson a strange kind of intimacy, and the episode keeps that idea in view as it moves through the fire at Ole's home center and the missing people counted in its aftermath.

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Why you'd press play

Follow a California serial-arson case as witness memory and fire-scene detail stack up.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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