Serial Killers versus Serial Arsonists
It is almost impossible to imagine being enveloped in a sense of overwhelming devastation while watching one’s home go up in flames – not just the loss of material objects, or the loss of family heirlooms imbued with sentiment, but also the nostalgia of memories of births, raising children, celebrating birthdays, the intricacies of marriage, mourning the death of grandparents and even just mundane everyday living are all erased from the physical world. Dreams of future events and growing old in that home literally go up in smoke. Like ash, a fallout of human emotions such as hopelessness, despair and total ruin descends on the ego, evaporating any hope of meaningful existence. The pain is amplified a thousand times, when loved ones lose their lives in those fires. Yet the victims of arson are mostly delineated to statistics. We do not know much of their lives, not as much as we do know about the lives of the victims of serial killers.
Why do serial killers capture a morbid fascination, but serial arsonists do not? In a survey respondents answered serial killing is much more personal and intentional while death during an intentional act of arson, is incidental. Many serial arsonists claim they did not mean to kill anybody when they lit the fires.
When several victims die in these arson events, can we define the perpetrator as a serial killer? A serial killer is differentiated from other mass murderers by a subconscious, intrinsic, hidden motive to kill a specific victim typology, in a specific way. Serial arsonists’ motives are apparent, not hidden. The FBI’s manual The Firesetter classifies arsonists by motives such as adult revenge; jealousy; the ‘would-be-hero’; thrill-seeking, and of course there are those who commit arson to conceal a crime and the financially motivated arsonists who benefit from insurance payouts. Arson can also be politically motivated, such as setting fire to government buildings, or it can be part of social uprising and riots.
Pyromaniacs are generally not regarded as comorbid with arsonists, because pyromaniacs are psychologically motivated. They do not set fires for revenge or financial motive. In psychology it is defined as an impulse control disorder and the fire acts as a release for a build-up of psychological tension. The element of fire itself holds a fascination for them.
Pyrophiliacs are those who are sexually aroused by fire. Not all pyromaniacs are pyrophiliacs. Not all pyromaniacs and pyrophiliacs are killers. In rare instances, such as the Jeppe Pyrophiliac cases in South Africa, did both perpetrators independently of each other derive sexual pleasure from setting the bodies of their murdered victims on fire.
David Berkowitz
David Berkowitz was an American serial killer in the 1970’s who killed six victims and wounded 11 people from 1975 to 1977, using a firearm. Following his arrest in 1977 during the house search at 35 Pine Street, Yonker, New York, detectives found diaries where Berkowitz meticulously made note of more than two thousand fires he had set in New York City between 1973 and 1975. Berkowitz confessed he was also the “Phantom of the Bronx” who set the fires in brush, abandoned cars and buildings. It is noteworthy, not only was Berkowitz an honorary discharged soldier, he was also a volunteer fireman in the Bronx.
Despite the entries in his diaries, there was no evidence linking Berkowitz to the fires, so he was never charged nor found guilty of the arson.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx is burning
Yet the 1970’s was dubbed the ‘Decade of the Bronx Fires’, since an estimated 80% of the housing in the South Bronx was lost due to fires. The contemporary narrative was that the fires were started by the residents, who once they were classified as homeless due to fire, would have qualified for upgraded housing facilities. According to the Bronx Surveillance, (2020) a total of 250,000 people were displaced and the state pool insurance payout was 10 million dollars. Yet due to redlining – a policy delineating neighbourhoods with a 5 – 10% Black or Puerto Rican population – the South Bronx residents did not qualify for housing loans nor insurance. Twelve fire companies were not operational at that time since New York City was bankrupt and those that were operational arrived late or not at all. During the peak, there were 30 fires every two hours and every building had burnt at least once.
The communities lost their homes and possessions in these fires and the emotional cost I have already discussed, so they had no motivation to set them. According to historian Bench Ansfield, in his 2025-book Born in Flames The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City, the landlords collecting insurance money initiated the fires and they may have paid delinquents to set them. The 5th June 1975-edition of The New York Times headlined eight landlords and their associates were indicted for arson, attempted arson, possession of firebombs and bribery. Among these were the highly-publicized case of Imre Oberlander and Yishai Webber, two Brooklyn-based landlords who were caught driving to one of their buildings whilst wearing blackface, with explosives in their vehicles. Numbers vary that between 200 – 400 people were killed in these fires. The fact is, they were not just numbers – they were people.
Peter George Dinsdale Lee
Another serial arsonist was British Peter George Dinsdale-Lee, a contemporary of David Berkowitz, who confessed to 11 acts of arson, and pleaded guilty to 26 counts of manslaughter. Lee spent much of his childhood in children’s homes and was physically handicapped. At the age of nine years, he set fire to a shopping precinct, causing 17,000 pounds worth of property damage.
Lee was arrested after three boys had succumbed to burn wounds after their home in Selby Street, Hull, England was set alight in 1979. Their mother, Edith Hastie was pushed out of the window by her eldest son Charles, who remained trapped with his two brothers. Their three sisters were not at home. Six months later, Lee confessed to setting the home on fire. Apparently he had been abusing 15-year-old Charles for sexual favours, who had threatened to report him to the police if he did not pay him and the family had made fun of him for being in love with the eldest daughter. This was a personal motive. Then Lee surprized detectives by making a starling confession that he had set nine more fires during the previous seven years in Hull. A total of 26 people had died in the blazes, including a six-month-old baby, a young mother and her three small sons, and 11 elderly men in a residential home. Many others had suffered burn wounds and smoke inhalation. Lee admitted he knew two of the families, against whom he had held a grudge, but the rest he set on fire because he was devoted to fire. Since 2022 several of his convictions were overturned, including those of the old age home, and he is now deemed responsible for the deaths of 12 people.
Lee’s motive presents a challenge – he had a revenge motive, but since there is no apparent motive for a nine-year-old boy to burn down a shopping mall, I would profile him as a pyromaniac. Setting the fires probably relieved his stress as a disturbed child. He is reported to have said he knows when his fingers begin to tingle, that he will start a fire.
Lee received relatively little national publicity, possibly because he was convicted of manslaughter rather than murder, and because the trial of Peter Sutcliffe the Yorkshire Ripper serial killer, which was a much more high-profile sensational case, was ongoing at the same time.
John Leonard Orr
The title of the most prolific serial arsonist in America does not belong to David Berkowwitz who claimed to have set two thousand fires, but to John Leonard Orr, an arson investigator for the Glendale, CA fire department. Federal ATF agent Mike Matassa believes that Orr had set nearly two thousand fires between 1984 and 1991. Orr’s modus operandi was to set fires using a timed device, usually comprising a lit cigarette with three matches wrapped in ruled yellow writing paper and secured by a rubber band in shops while they were visited by customers. He would set small fires in the grassy hills in order to distract firefighters, leaving fires set in more congested areas unattended. In 1984, a major fire broke out at an Ole’s Home Center hardware store in South Pasadena. Four people including a two-year-old child were burnt to death. Orr was finally identified with a fingerprint. He denied having set the fires, but in his home, investigators found a novel he had written called Points of Origin, which tells the story of Aaron Stiles, a fireman who is a serial arsonist. In the book one of the fires corresponds with the San Pasadena 1984 fire. Orr claimed that the character Aaron Stiles was a composite of arsonists he had arrested. Orr can be profiled as a pyromaniac.
It has been reported that roughly 100 American firefighters are convicted of arson each year, but there is no official tracking of firefighter-arsonists.
Julio González
In 1990 the Bronx was hit by another blazing tragedy when a fire broke out at the Happy Land social club, at 1959 Southern Boulevard. The Happy Land club was located in a building managed by Jay Weiss, the primary leaseholder, and Morris Jaffe, who had leased it to Elias Cohen. An eviction order was served on Cohen, but three days before the court date, the club burnt down. Although firefighters managed to douse the fire within five minutes a total of 87 people were killed, most of them Hondurans celebrating Carnival. Six people survived, including Feliciano, the lady who checked the coats. She informed the investigators her boyfriend, Cuban refugee Julio González had harassed her at the club and was evicted by the bouncer around 3 am. Gonzales threatened to come back – and he did. He doused the only staircase exit to the club with gasoline and set it alight. Gonzales’ motive was jealousy and revenge.
Paul Kenneth Keller
In a short period of six months spanning 1992 to 1993, Paul Kenneth Keller, set multiple fires in Seattle, Washington in which three people died at the Seattle Four Freedoms House retirement home. Keller claimed he was molested by a volunteer fireman when he was 12 years old, which motivated him to set the fires, however he reportedly began setting fires at the ages of eight or nine years. Keller was obsessed with firefighting. He would intercept where fires had broken out on his ER scanner and rush to the sites and he collected firefighters’ paraphernalia. Keller volunteered to work with the fire department, but he was dismissed twice.
According to Dr. Gary Grenell, a clinical psychologist who assessed him, Keller fits the profile of a pyromaniac. “Fire endowed the weak child, Paul Keller, with power,” he wrote. However, unlike pyromaniacs who feel a sense of relief when they set fires, Keller told Dr. Grenell he did not enjoy setting the fires. “When I knew I had done them, I was sad, not excited. No joy. Just confusion or remorse. I thought, `There goes somebody’s business.’ “ Keller confessed to setting 87 fires and pleaded guilty to 35. He is serving 107 years in prison and will be eligible for parole in 2079. FBI profiler special agent John Douglas’ profile of Keller was as close to a 100% fit.
Thomas Sweatt
Almost a decade later, Washington was once more the backdrop to a serial arsonist, Thomas Sweatt, who set over 350 fires, between 2003 and 2004. Yet Sweatt claimed he had been setting fires for 30 years. Four known victims had died in his fires.
Much like the previous arsonists, Sweatt had an interest in a military career, but he was rejected by the United States Navy in the 1970’s. Sweatt admitted he was sexually aroused by men in uniform and he was obsessed with the Marines. Ironically it was a Marine Corps security camera that recorded his vehicle at the scene of a car set on fire by a barrack. He was finally identified by DNA on some of the crime scenes. Sweatt was a fast-food outlet manager.
Sweatt pleaded guilty to various counts: possession of destructive devices; destruction of buildings by fire resulting in personal injury; possession of destructive devices in furtherance of a crime of violence; first-degree premeditated murder (felony murder) and second-degree murder. This guilty plea came at a price – his motive for the fires was not to be revealed. The only indication of motive is that Sweatt admitted the fires released his stress. Sweatt was probably a pyromaniac and he is serving a mandatory life sentence since 2005.
It would behove investigators to deep-dive into the history of these pyromaniacs since it is clear from their profiles that they began setting fires at a young age and these can amount to hundreds of fires and unsolved arson cases.
I have discussed before how the actions of a serial killer impacts on a community several decades later– by illustration the Station Strangler case in Mitchells’ Plein in Cape Town. Likewise the arsons in the Bronx in New York also sent ripple effects through a community, passed on from one generation to another. The ‘Decade of the Bronx Fires’ happened in the 1970’s, and half a century later, in 2025, historian Bench Ansfield revisits the devastation in his book Born in Flames The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City.
Does the serial arsonist not cause as much destruction and devastation as the serial killer? Is the victim who dies due to the act of an arsonist not as valuable as a human being, as the victim of a serial killer? We cannot denigrate their value by referring to their deaths as ‘incidental’.