Unmasking a Killer Serial Arsonist

The story of how investigators unmasked the most prolific American arsonist of the 20th century.

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✦ Corrections ✦

There are two chapter IVs. My bad.

✦ Chapters ✦

00:00 Intro
01:49 On the Edge
18:03 Fires Everywhere
24:36 Sponsor: The White Vault
25:49 Escalation
35:26 Burn it All
39:20 Time to Find Out
46:53 Let the Games Begin
50:29 HE WROTE EVERYTHING HE DID OUT IN A BOOK AND TRIED TO GET IT PUBLISHED
55:25 A Strange Story
01:09:36 In Cold Blood
01:18:19 Mask Off

✦ Disclaimer ✦

This video is for educational purposes ONLY. The events described and shown are historically significant, and this educational documentary acts as a comprehensive recollection of those events based on journalistic evidence and reporting. The actions mentioned are in no way condoned. The video uses fictionalized 3D recreations to tell the story. Where possible, these are based on information that is in the public domain, but some creative license is used.

Music is provided by a combination of Epidemic Sound, Artlist.io and Tom Fox/Johnny Harris via @themusicroombyharris. The final outro song is 'Afterthought' by ‪@endlesswithdrawal‬, with his kind permission. You can listen to the song as well as lots of others on his Spotify (bit.ly/3UT90bO).

✦ References ✦

Newspaper articles and citations shown on screen notwithstanding, the bulk of the timeline and all other information is (mostly) from a mix of three sources. These sources contain first hand accounts from people who were close to either John and/or the investigation and are as follows:

Fire Lover: A True Story by Joseph Wambaugh (2002)
Burned: Pyromania, Murder, and A Daughter's Nightmare by Frank C. Girardot Jr. and Lori Orr Kovach (2018)
Firebug by Kary Antholis (2023)

While the distribution of information from the these sources is even(ish) - there are some significant gaps in each. For example, Wambaugh didn't speak to John Orr, Antholis did but of course didn't grow up with him as a father as Kovach did. Some of them seem to have missed certain information entirely, which I've excavated from newspaper arches. Please keep this in mind when listening to or reading any of these sources in isolation.