As Wildfire Today reported on October 20, Ricky Lee Fowler has been indicted for setting the Old fire which burned 91,000 acres in 2003 in southern California. He was charged with five counts of murder, one count of arson of an inhabited structure, and one count of aggravated arson with special circumstances. Five heart attack deaths have been linked to the fire which burned in the areas of Lake Arrowhead, Running Springs, and Big Bear.

The charges were filed just four days before the statue of limitations was due to expire. It could be difficult to prove that stress from the fire led to the heart attacks.

Here is an excerpt from a story by the AP:

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Proving that case, however, could be a challenge: all the victims had a history of heart disease, and prosecutors might be hard-pressed to get a jury to see murder in the medical mix.

Under state law, any death that occurs during the commission of a felony, including arson, can be charged as first-degree murder — but a conviction will hinge on how much time elapsed between the crime and the death and if any other factors contributed.

“There’s nothing inherently wrong with attempting a felony murder conviction in this case,” said Robert Weisberg, director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center at Stanford University. “But the judge could conceivably say I’m not even going to give this to the jury … because it’s too hard to say the fire actually caused the deaths.”

Prosecutors insist they have a strong case and are confident they can link the deaths to the arson.

Investigators pored over hundreds of tips, witness reports and other evidence over six years and were finally able to file charges Wednesday, just four days before the statute of limitations was to expire. Rickie Lee Fowler, a 28-year-old convict currently in prison for burglary, was indicted on five counts of murder, one count of aggravated arson and one count of arson of an inhabited structure.

He has not appeared in court and no attorney was listed in court records.

Following a phone tip, investigators interviewed Fowler several months after the fire, but didn’t have enough evidence to press charges. They went back to him in 2006 and 2008, when he finally provided additional information that helped detectives close the case, Supervising Deputy District Attorney Victor Stull said.

Stull would not say what he said, but defended the district attorney’s decision to charge Fowler in a potential death penalty case. He should have known that people could die — even from heart attacks — when he tossed a lighted roadside flare into the brush.

“You can anticipate someone having a heart attack every now and again, but (these were) three on the same day, within hours of each other and the others followed just days after,” Stull said. “The arsonist takes his victims as he finds them.”

Fowler’s case highlights a new determination to charge alleged arsonists with murder whenever possible in a region plagued by wildfires that repeatedly lead to firefighter and civilian deaths, said John Maclean, who has written four books on arson wildfire prosecutions.

Earlier this year, prosecutors in neighboring Riverside County won a death penalty conviction against Raymond Lee Oyler, an auto mechanic who set the 2006 Esperanza wildfire that killed five federal firefighters. Oyler is believed to be the first person in the U.S. to be convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in a wildland arson case.

Investigators are trying to determine who set the Station Fire, a wildfire north of Los Angeles that resulted in the deaths of two firefighters who drove off the road in thick smoke.

Maclean called the Oyler conviction a watershed moment for prosecutors seeking to stem arsons that ravage the region every fall.

“The lesson of the Esperanza Fire is that anyone who starts a fire deliberately is putting himself in jeopardy of the death penalty, even if there was no intent,” said Maclean, who is currently writing a book on Oyler’s case. “The cat’s out of the bag here. You don’t have to have an Oyler case anymore to go for first-degree murder or in fact to go for the death penalty.”

Like the other victims, McDermith had a history of heart disease, said his daughter-in-law, Lisa McDermith. He had a quadruple bypass in the early 1990s and was having trouble breathing in the thick smoke from the wildfire.

When he died, he was driving from his home in Highland to San Bernardino to retrieve his RV from a mobile home park so he could load it with clothing and camp out in a church parking lot during the evacuation. A crew checking electric wires nearby spotted him in distress and did CPR until an ambulance arrived, but McDermith was dead by the time he arrived at the hospital.

Another man, 93-year-old Charles Howard Cunningham, had a heart attack as he watched his home burn.

Lisa McDermith said because of the victims’ pre-existing conditions, she was surprised when a detective said Fowler would likely be charged with murder.

“Who knows how much longer these people would have lived? It was a very stressful situation with the fires, the smoke, they couldn’t breathe, they were starving for oxygen,” she said. “I think that exacerbated all of their health issues and I really believe that murder charges are justified.”

At the royal commission hearing that is reviewing information about the February 7 Black Saturday fires in Australia, a forensic behavioral scientist told the panel that some wildfire arsonists are indifferent towards causing death and may see starting a fire as a chance to empower themselves.

Here is an excerpt from an article in The Australian:

Professor Ogloff, who is head of Victoria’s state forensic psychiatric service and director of Monash University’s centre for forensic behavioural science, said bushfire arsonists could also become excited by total fire ban days and see them as opportunities to light fires with little chance of being caught.

He said he had dealt with arsonists or “fire setters” for whom days of high fire danger “enacts some of the thinking around setting fires”.

“What better time than when there are already fires all around and difficult to control then for them to go and set a fire which would have relatively little chance of them being caught,” Professor Ogloff said.

“At the time of these fires, and certainly in the days leading up to it, there is an increased interest, and in fact we have seen in some cases increased behaviour in the fire setting. So it is a problem.”

A number of Black Saturday bushfires under investigation by the royal commission are suspected of being deliberately lit, including the Murrindindi fire that killed 40 people and destroyed more than 500 homes.

Professor Ogloff said that at peak times, up to 80 per cent of fires in Australia were either deliberately lit or suspicious.

He said there was no single profile of bushfire arsonists, but they were more likely to be “social outcasts”, physically unattractive, lacking confidence and of low intelligence who may have a mental disorder and prior criminal convictions.

Bushfires were lit for a range of reasons, including arsonists attempting to increase their self-esteem or feel “in control of an otherwise dismal existence”. Lighting bushfires could be a “particularly empowering experience”, causing arsonists to become serial offenders to regain that feeling. Professor Ogloff said potential arsonists could be attracted to working as volunteer firefighters and go on to light fires, in some cases because they wanted to be seen as heroes. A study in NSW showed that 11 of 50 convicted arsonists were found to have been fire service volunteers.

He said criminal background checks and psychological screening would reduce the risk of arsonists becoming firefighters.

The hearing into the Black Saturday disaster, which killed 173 people and destroyed more than 2000 homes, resumes on Monday.

Homicide detectives investigating the Station fire near Los Angeles in which two LA County firefighters were killed, want to talk to a person who was seen leaving the scene of an arson fire that burned a few square feet six days before the Station fire began. 

Babatunsin Olukunle, 25, was spotted by U. S. Forest Service workers as he walked away from the August 20 Lady Bug fire that started six miles away from the origin of the August 26 Station fire. It was unknown whether he was thought to be involved in the fire or simply a witness.

Olukunle dropped out of the University of California in 2004 and according to Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Lt. Liam Gallagher, is a transient, is articulate and has an accent. 

LA County and the state have offered a $150,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of the person responsible for the Station fire.

The Associated Press reports that Los Angeles County prosecutors have filed arson charges against a 13-year-old boy they believe started the 2,100-acre Morris Fire near Los Angeles last month. Prosecutors in Pomona charged the boy yesterday with two felony counts: arson of a forest and recklessly causing a fire. The boy’s name was not released and he is not in custody. The District Attorney’s office says he must show up for a November arraignment; if convicted, he could be held at a juvenile facility until he turns 25.

The arsonist who torched off the Station Fire on the Angeles National Forest hasn’t been apprehended yet, but investigators do have a suspect in the ignition of the Morris Fire. And he’s 13 years old.

Prosecutors are discussing whether to file charges against the boy, who’s suspected of starting the 2,100-acre fire just north of Azusa, California. According to the L.A. Times, detectives presented the case yesterday to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office. They said the boy is “primarily responsible for igniting the fire.”

The Morris Fire took off on August 25 in San Gabriel Canyon — the same day the Station Fire started.
It was contained on September 3. According to an AP story, the 13-year-old suspect is not in custody, but the D.A.’s office says that charges will likely be filed today.

Southern California Public Radio reported that the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department has not identified the boy. Their report also noted that the ignition point for the Station Fire was miles away from that of the Morris Fire, to the northwest along the Angeles Crest Highway above Pasadena.
The search for the Station arsonist is also a homicide investigation, because of the deaths of Tedmund Hall and Arnaldo Quinones, two L.A. County firefighters who were killed on the fire.

———- UPDATE 09/18/09
Los Angeles County prosecutors say it could take two weeks before they decide whether to file arson charges. Jane Robison with the District Attorney’s office said the case is under review, but prosecutors want more information.

Brendan Sokaluk, 39, appeared on Tuesday in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court in Australia via video link from prison. He is facing 191 charges related to one of the fires that burned across Victoria on February 7, including 10 counts of arson causing death, intentionally causing a bushfire, criminal damage, recklessly causing injury, and possessing child pornography. 

The Magistrate set a pretrial hearing date for May 31, where 610 witnesses are expected to testify over six weeks. The hearing will determine if there is enough evidence to begin a jury trial.

Numerous fires burned in Victoria on February 7, Black Saturday, killing 173 people and destroying more than 2,000 homes. Mr. Sokaluk is charged with setting one of the fires which killed 10 people.