In light of the recent string of car fires in LA, here's a look at six notable arsonists.]]>

Image credit: REUTERS/GENE BLEVINS/LANDO

Over 50 fires gutted cars in Los Angeles this past weekend. While most of the damage was limited to vehicles, some of the flames caused destruction to adjacent property, including to a home that once belonged to Jim Morrison. LA has not experienced this many fires since the 1992 riots. On Monday police detained a person of interest, 24-year-old German national Harry Burkhart, who was seen on security footage near one of the fires.

While some people start fires for insurance money or to cover up crimes, arsonists set fires to feel control—and, in many cases, sexual excitement. Profilers say arsonists have few close relationships; they start blazes to feel important. Many only have a high school education, but some of the most prolific showed a surprisingly high degree of intelligence.

Below are 6 of the most notable arsonists. Most are infamous because of the damage they inflicted, but others are remarkable because of their sociopathic behavior.

1. Julio Gonzalez

Number of Fires: One
People Killed: 87

Story: After immigrating to New York City during the Mariel Boatlift in 1980, Julio Gonzalez was working as a warehouse employee when he met Lydia Feliciano, who became his girlfriend. A decade later, after losing his job and getting dumped, a drunk Gonzalez visited Feliciano while she was at work as a coat-check girl at the Happy Land Social Club, an illegal bar in the Bronx. Feliciano begged him to leave, and Gonzalez shouted threats while being thrown out by the bouncer.

After purchasing a dollar’s worth of gasoline at a nearby gas station, he returned to the club, where he poured the gas over the stairs (the only exit) and threw a match on it. The fire burned so rapidly that patrons didn’t have time to stop what they were doing and flee. Fire investigators found the dead stopped mid-life. Feliciano was one of the six survivors.

Capture: Gonzalez watched the firefighters battle the blaze, then went home to nap. When police interviewed the survivors, Feliciano told them about her fight with Gonzalez. Gonzalez admitted to setting the fire. He didn’t even get rid of the evidence—his gas-soaked clothes were still in his apartment. He was found guilty of 174 charges of murder (two for each person who died) and was sentenced to 25 years for each count, for a total of 4,350 years. The punishment is mostly symbolic, because he will serve the sentences concurrently.

2. John “Pillow Pyro” Orr

Number of Fires: About 2,000
People Killed: Four
Cost: Tens of millions of dollars of property damage

Story: John Orr hoped to be a Los Angeles police officer, but didn’t make the cut. Instead, he joined the Glendale Fire Department as an arson investigator. His coworkers thought Orr was strange—he chased down shoplifters and burglars in his fire truck. But they admired his dedication and his uncanny ability to be the first firefighter on the scene. He always knew where the hydrants were, the best way to put out each fire, and how to find the cause of the fire. His colleagues never suspected that Orr was the man they had dubbed the “Pillow Pyro.”

Orr used the same incendiary device for all his blazes: a cigarette attached to a book of matches wrapped in paper with cotton and bedding (hence the nickname), secured with a rubber band. The cigarette would burn down, and the matches would ignite the paper and bedding. In 1984, a fire at a local hardware store killed four people—including a 2-year-old child—and destroyed the building and nearby establishments.

Capture: During an arson investigators conference in Bakersfield, Calif., in January 1987, several suspicious fires broke out. At one of the fires, investigators found a single fingerprint on a piece of notebook paper. Two years later, during another fire investigators conference in Pacific Grove, an outbreak of small fires occurred. Bakersfield’s arson investigator compared the participants at both conferences and found 10 people attended both. By 1991, the investigators formed the Pillow Pyro task force and published a profile, noting the suspect was most likely an arson investigator from the greater Los Angeles area. The fingerprint found at the first conference was compared to those of the 10 attendees of both conferences; it matched Orr’s fingerprint. When he was arrested in November 1991, police found cigarettes, rubber bands, and binoculars.

His literary aspirations contributed to his downfall. He wrote a manuscript, called Point of Origin, describing a fireman who was an arsonist, which became damning evidence. He wrote: “To Aaron, the smoke was beautiful, causing his heart rate to quicken and his breath to come in shallow gasps. He was trying to control his outward appearance and look normal to anyone around him. … He relaxed and partially stroked his erection, watching the fire.” Orr is serving life plus 20 years for arson and the four murders.

3. Raymond Lee Oyler

Number of Fires: 24
People Killed: Five
Cost: The fire destroyed over 40,000 acres, amounting to more than $9 million in damages

Story: Raymond Lee Oyler was a 36-year-old dim-witted mechanic in Riverdale, Calif. (His own lawyer characterized him as dopey.) He trained for three months to become a volunteer firefighter, but quit. Yet his love affair continued. He began starting small fires, but minor blazes weren’t enough—he became obsessed with lighting a mountain on fire. He started more and more fires by attaching a Marlboro cigarette to a pack of matches, placing it in the brush, and lighting the cigarette. After bragging to his girlfriend about his fires, she threatened to leave him if he didn’t stop, so he quit — for six months, before starting again.

In October 2006, investigators say Oyler placed his trademark incendiary device in a gully near Esperanza Avenue in Cabazon. The Santa Ana winds fed the fire and it spread at speeds up to 40 mph, with flames leaping more than 100 feet into the air. The 1,300-degree fire melted guardrails along Highway 243. A truck driver testified that he saw Oyler at a gas station in Banning watching the fire. He claims Oyler said, “[the fire] is happening just the way I thought it would.” A wave of fire rolled over five firefighters as they tried to save a house from the blaze; all five died.

Capture: A $500,000 reward was offered for any information related to the Esperanza blaze. Arson investigators were already looking at Oyler for two smaller fires set in early summer. Both of the cigarettes used to light the flames had Oyler’s DNA on them. Police officers first arrested him for the two smaller blazes and then later charged him for the Esperanza fire. While there was no DNA on the device that started the Esperanza blaze, it was identical to those with Oyler’s DNA on them. After a guilty verdict, a judge sentenced Oyler to death.

4. David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz

Number of Fires: 1,411
People Killed / Cost: Unknown

Story: The adopted son of Pearl and Nat Berkowitz spent most of his childhood alone. If he didn’t play baseball, he bullied the other kids. He was large and awkward. When Berkowitz tired of torturing Pearl’s parakeet, he started fires in buildings across New York and kept detailed diaries of each one. Berkowitz always felt everyone was out to get him; starting fires gave him a feeling of control.

Capture: Officials weren’t looking for Berkowitz for his fire-starting habits; they were too busy searching for the Son of Sam, who was terrorizing New York City. But it was Berkowitz’s love of that fires contributed to his capture. A few days prior to his arrest, Berkowitz started a fire outside his neighbor Craig Glassman’s door. The Son of Sam had alleged in a letter that Glassman belonged to a cult, which made Berkowitz kill six people and injure seven others. Berkowitz placed .22 bullets near the door in the hope of causing an explosion, but the fire didn’t burn hot enough to ignite the ammo. Glassman believed his odd neighbor Berkowitz set the fire, and he gave the police threatening notes that Berkowitz had sent him. Based on notes and an eyewitness description of Berkowitz, police arrested him, and he admitted to the six murders.

5. Peter Dinsdale, a.k.a. Bruce George Peter Lee

Number of Fires: More than 30
People Killed: 26 people died in 11 fires

Story: When Peter Dinsdale was just 12-years-old, he went to the house of a classmate, 6-year-old Richard Ellerington, in Hull, England. Arriving before 7 a.m., Dinsdale poured paraffin in a window and tossed a match into the house. The Elleringtons woke and rushed five of their six children from the burning row house. Richard—who was physically handicapped—didn’t make it out.

The Ellerington fire was one of many fatal fires that Dinsdale set from 1973 to 1979. Dinsdale was a pathetic case; his mother worked as a prostitute and neglected him because she disliked his freakish appearance and epileptic fits. Children made fun of him for his limp and deformed appearance, and adults called him “Daft Peter.” He wandered the poor neighborhoods of Hull at night, burning down houses. At 9, he burned down a lumberyard and a shopping district. He claimed to have started a fire in a nursing home that killed 11 men, but it was later deemed accidental. He watched a man stumble around his home ablaze after Dinsdale set the man on fire for clipping his ear. He squirted paraffin in the mail slot of a home, killing a mother and her three sons.

Capture: On December 4, 1979, Dinsdale doused the porch of the Hastie house with paraffin and lit it on fire. The four Hastie boys and their mother were inside; only one boy survived. The Hasties had bullied, stolen from, and threatened their neighbors, so it seemed everyone was a suspect. Charlie Hastie had allegedly forced Dinsdale to participate in homosexual acts and had blackmailed him. Dinsdale—who had changed his name to Bruce George Peter Lee in honor of martial arts legend Bruce Lee—had left spent matches and a can of paraffin outside the house, so authorities began an arson investigation. An anonymous caller claimed to have seen a car outside the house prior to the fire. Even though police didn’t suspect the driver of setting the fire, they had few leads and trailed the car. Eventually, Dinsdale admitted he set fire to the Hastie house. He said he didn’t want to kill them, only to scare Charlie. Then Dinsdale coolly admitted to 10 more fatal fires and showed investigators the location of each. Dinsdale pled guilty to 26 counts of manslaughter and remains in a psychiatric hospital.

6. Thomas Sweatt

Number of Fires: More than 350
People Killed: Two confirmed dead, but as many as five
Cost: Millions of dollars worth of damage

Story: When Thomas Sweatt saw an attractive man, he would follow him home, but instead of talking to the object of his affection, Sweatt would set fire to the man’s house or car. For more than 30 years, Sweatt set hundreds of fires in the metro Washington, DC, area. Sweatt often tossed incendiary devices into police cars and then watched them burn. Each time he set a fire, he used a similar gadget—he would fill a milk jug with gasoline and plug the opening with a piece of clothing that served as a wick. The wick burned plastic for more than 20 minutes and after the fire consumed the container, gas fumes escaped and caught fire. In two different fires, elderly women were unable to escape and later died.

Capture: At the scene of a fire in Arlington, Va., in December 2004, officials found a pair of pants from a Marine dress uniform. They retrieved DNA from the pants, which matched mystery DNA that investigators had obtained from a strand of hair and wicks from three incendiary devices found at other fires. (Sweatt often used his own clothing as wicks.) When investigators visited a Marine base in southeast Washington, Naval Criminal Investigation Services mentioned that a car often sat outside the base while the driver stared at the Marines. NCIS felt this man was responsible for several car fires on base, but they didn’t have proof, and the fires had suddenly stopped. For weeks, the police tailed Sweatt before asking him for a DNA sample, which he voluntarily gave. Police matched his DNA to the dress pants and the DNA found at three fires. Sweatt pled guilty to fires in DC, Virginia, and Maryland and is serving a life sentence in a federal prison.

In 2007, friend of mental_floss Dave Jamieson wrote an incredibly detailed (and just incredible) story on the letters he exchanged with Thomas Sweatt for the Washington City Paper. Go read it right now.

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Sometimes, people just need a little incentive. Here are 10 technology-related prizes that helped move us forward.]]> Sometimes, people just need a little added incentive. Here are 10 technology-related prizes that helped move us forward.

1. Orteig Prize

In 1919, French-born, New York City hotelier Raymond Orteig offered a $25,000 prize to the first pilot who made a solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean. For years, pilots gave it a shot and many paid with their lives. In May 1927, an unknown mail pilot arrived at Roosevelt Field in Long Island with a monoplane and intentions of winning the prize.

Veteran pilots laughed at his attempt to use a monoplane (biplanes were the standard), but on May 21, after more than 33 hours of flight, 25-year-old Charles Lindbergh landed at Le Bourget Airport in Paris. After his flight was certified, Lindbergh won the $25,000 prize and interest in flight increased dramatically—applications for pilots’ licenses increased by 300 percent, the numbers of licensed aircrafts increased by 400 percent, and U.S. airline passengers rose from 5,782 in 1926 to 173,405 in 1929.

The Orteig Prize is considered the inspiration for many other prizes and was influential in growing the airline industry to what it is today.

2. The Longitude Prize

Sailors found it difficult to determine longitude while sailing across the oceans. Most used dead reckoning, but this proved inaccurate (remember all those explorers who didn’t realize where they landed?) In 1714, the British Parliament enacted the Longitude Prize, offering £20,000 to the person who determined longitude within 30 nautical miles.

John Harrison was a poorly educated joint worker who became known for his precision clocks. In 1730, he started constructing the H1, a clock that worked for only one day, but provided excellent time and longitudinal measurements. He subsequently provided more and more prototypes until he created H4—and H5 and K1, basically copies of H4—which helped sailors pinpoint longitude. While many suspected his pocket watch was a fluke, it eventually became the standard. However, he didn’t win the prize until 1773, when he was well into his 70s.

3. Fredkin Prize

Edward Fredkin was an early innovator in artificial intelligence and computer science, creating the Fredkin gate, a circuit usable in reverse computing. In 1980, Fredkin issued a challenge to fellow computer scientists—$100,000 to the first team to build a computer that bests a chess grandmaster.

In 1996, IBM’s Deep Blue squared off against Garry Kasparov, a Russian grandmaster who achieved his title in 1985, at the age of 22. Deep Blue was a descendant of IBM computer scientist Feng Hsu’s ChipTest and Deep Thought—developed when Hsu was a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University. (Kasparov had easily defeated Deep Thought twice.) Deep Blue became the first computer to win a game against a reigning world champion, but Kasparov won the match 4 to 2. But on May 11, 1997, Deep Blue beat Kasparov in the final round of a tied, six game match. Kasparov demanded a rematch, but IBM dismantled the computer. On July 29, 1997, Hsu, Murray Campbell, and A. Joseph Hoane Jr. won the $100,000.

4. Kremer Prizes

We had been promised a future where everyone buzzes around with jetpacks, but human-powered flight has yet to become a reality. In 1959, Henry Kremer created a series of prizes to encourage human flight.

On August 23, 1977, Paul MacCready won £50,000 when his Gossamer Condor, a lightweight human powered flying machine, became the first to fly a figure eight around two markers. In 1979, MacCready won £100,000 when his Gossamer Albatross flew from England to France—the first human-powered aircraft to cross the English Channel. Bryan Allen piloted (or pedaled) both crafts. In 1983, a group of MIT designers won £20,000 when their MIT Monarch B craft beat the speed record by completing a 1.5 dm course in less than three minutes with an average speed of 32km/h. No word on when the rest of us can commute with a pedaled flying machine.

5. Ansari X Prize

In 1996, Dr. Peter Diamandis read an article about Charles Lindbergh and learned about the Orteig Prize. Ever since he’d watched the moon landing as a fifth-grader, he’d been fascinated by space travel. But he’d grown tired of waiting for space travel to become prevalent. After starting several private companies to encourage space travel, he decided to offer a prize for commercial space travel. He partnered with the Ansari family to offer the Ansari X Prize, a $10 million award to the first team that carried three people 100 km into space twice within a two-week span. (He founded the X Foundation, which awards a variety of prizes for technological achievements.)

After eight years of development, Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne, piloted by Brian Binnie, accomplished the feat, with the help of software and funding from Paul Allen. Rutan—known for building the aircraft Voyager, which traveled across the world without stopping or refueling in 1986—went on to work with Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic.

6. DARPA Grand Challenge

In 2004, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency within the Department of Defense) offered a $1 million prize to the first team whose unmanned vehicle traversed 150 miles of desert terrain. Not one of 15 teams made it past the eight-mile mark. DARPA upped the ante in 2005, offering $2 million to the first team to build an autonomous vehicle that travels across 132-mile course under 10 hours.

Stanford University’s vehicle, Stanley, a Volkswagen Touareg, chugged across the arid landscape at an average speed of 19.1 mph to finish the course in six hours and 53 minutes. Four other vehicles crossed the finish line, but many could not navigate the course within the 10-hour time limit.

In 2007, DARPA sponsored the Urban Challenge, in which autonomous vehicles had to travel a 55-mile urban course and heed all traffic laws. Of the six teams that finished the course, Carnegie Mellon University’s Tartan Racing team won. Their Chevy Tahoe, Boss, averaged about 14 mph and arrived at the finish line 20 minutes before the second place team. Boss interacted with the other robots in the course, pausing at a four-way stop sign, and adhering to California state traffic laws. Experts consider these robots smarter because they mingled with one another—without wrecking.

7. Society for the Encouragement of Industry

During the Napoleonic Wars, the general couldn’t wage war throughout the summer and spring because his food stores would go bad—negatively impacting his soldiers’ performance. So Napoleon offered a prize of 12,000 francs to the inventor who discovered a way to preserve food.

In 1809 1795, Nicolas Appert, a chef, began experimenting with preservation. He believed that food should be stored in glass bottles, much like wine. After about 14 years of experimentation, he presented the government with the Appert method—placing food in bottles, corking and sealing the opening with wax, then boiling the bottles in water. This method extended the freshness of perishable items. Napoleon was so pleased with this method, he personally awarded Appert the 12,000 francs. Years later, tin cans and Pasteurization improved the method to that of modern canning.

8. MPrize

Mice don’t live very long. The Methuselah Foundation, which supports extending human life in a healthy way, started the MPrize in 2003 to inspire researchers to extend the lives of mice—and eventually develop therapies that also work on humans.

The foundation awards two prizes to researchers—one for longevity and one for rejuvenation. David Sharp won a Special MPrize for Lifespan Achievement for his work on the first pharmaceutical intervention for elderly mice. Andrezej Bartke won an MPrize for Longevity for his growth hormone receptor gene knockout mouse. Steven Spindler used calorie restriction to halt the process of aging, which earned him an MPrize for rejuvenation. His mice lived an average of 1356 days with a diet that increased lifespan and reduced age-related diseases and cancers. The fountain of youth may be a low calorie diet.

9. Deutsch-Archdeacon Grand Prix de Aviation

Raymond Orteig was not the first Frenchman to support aviation by funding a prize. In 1904, Ernest Archdeacon and Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe pooled 50,000 francs to award to the first pilot who flew a one-kilometer circular course. Henri Farman, a former bicycle and auto racer, abandoned street races after an injury and turned to flying. He modified airplanes after receiving them from manufacturers. In 1907, he won the Archdeacon Cup (same Archdeacon) for flying 150 meters in one minute, 14 seconds—the first flight exceeding a minute in a non-Wright Brothers plane. In 1908, he completed the closed circular course of one kilometer in one minute, winning the 50,000 francs. His Henri Farman III plane became the most popular European biplane in use prior to the Great War.

10. The Google Lunar X Prize

Peter Diamandis, founder of the Ansari X Prize and the X Foundation, decided that one space-related prize wasn’t enough. He started the Google Lunar X Prize in 2007, encouraging privately funded companies to land on the moon before a government agency.

To do this, the X Prize Foundation, Google, and other partners offer a prize of about $30 million (the total prize money depends on whether the teams take certain incentives or not). The teams must build a rover and a lander and launch them prior to 2015. Once the lander rests on the moon’s surface, the rover must traverse 500 meters, send high quality images and video to Earth. Some teams plan on visiting historical sites on the moon for additional money. (Yes, there are historic sites on the moon; for example, the Apollo landing sites and the Sea of Tranquility.)

Each team must obtain 90 percent of its funding from private sources. One team, Astrobotic, announced it secured a launch with Elon Musk’s SpaceX on a Falcon 9 rocket in December 2013. If the team takes off on its scheduled date and everything goes smoothly, it will win the prize. No other teams have announced launch dates.

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