The Fire Captain Who Became an Arsonist and Mass Murderer _ The New Detectives

He was the reassuring face of the Glendale Fire Department, a nationally recognized arson investigator who appeared on television and taught hundreds of firefighters how to catch serial arsonists. But John Orr had a secret darker than any case he ever solved: he was the Pillow Pyro, the most prolific serial arsonist in American history, responsible for nearly 2,000 fires and four murders.In this episode, I uncover one of the most shocking cases featured on The New Detectives, the groundbreaking Discovery Channel series that aired from 1996 to 2004 and inspired the creation of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. The man who hunted arsonists for a living was setting fires himself — using a signature time-delay device made of a cigarette, matches, rubber bands, and yellow legal paper.The truth emerged only when investigators discovered an unpublished novel Orr had written titled "Points of Origin." The manuscript detailed the crimes of a firefighter turned serial arsonist — with chilling similarities to the 1984 Ole's Home Center fire in South Pasadena that killed four people, including a two-year-old boy. When confronted with evidence that his fingerprint matched a device left at one of his fires, Orr's mask finally slipped.Turn down the lights, put on your headphones, and press play — because the man who taught America how to catch arsonists was the one setting the fires all along.