Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: Anyone and everyone is welcome to the library. That's part
Speaker 2: of their glory. That's part of why they are such
Speaker 2: special institutions. That means that you can have people with
Speaker 2: ill intent coming into a library.
Speaker 3: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
Speaker 3: in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the
Speaker 3: podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,
Speaker 3: research for my many audio and book projects has taken
Speaker 3: me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down
Speaker 3: with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,
Speaker 3: and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true
Speaker 3: crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both
Speaker 3: good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the
Speaker 3: unpublished details behind their stories. Author Susan or Lean wrote
Speaker 3: a best selling book years ago that you've probably heard of,
Speaker 3: The Orchid Thief. It was made into a movie called Adaptation.
Speaker 3: Susan has now written another book, this one about an
Speaker 3: unexpected crime that might not have been a crime at all.
Speaker 3: A fire in the La Public Library destroyed more than
Speaker 3: four hundred thousand books in nineteen eighty six. Did they
Speaker 3: find out what caused it or who? Susan tells me
Speaker 3: the story at the center of her book, The Library Book.
Speaker 3: So I think we should talk about the book that
Speaker 3: you had that was just an incredible success, Not that
Speaker 3: this one hasn't been.
Speaker 1: But what book would people most know you for.
Speaker 2: Probably The Orchid Thief, I'm guessing, even though that came
Speaker 2: out twenty five years ago, but it's had a very
Speaker 2: long after life in the best sense that people continue
Speaker 2: reading it. But also because it was made into a movie,
Speaker 2: was made into the film adaptation, which is a somewhat
Speaker 2: iconic film of its moment, and I think a lot
Speaker 2: of people.
Speaker 4: Learned about the book because of the movie.
Speaker 1: Were you a screenwriter on that movie? I can't remember.
Speaker 2: No, No, I was not. I take no credit for it.
Speaker 2: I wish I could, but I didn't write on it,
Speaker 2: and I'm merely the happy recipient of brilliant screenwriting.
Speaker 3: Now this book that we're getting ready to talk about
Speaker 3: that was optioned, right, is it being turned into a
Speaker 3: movie or a TV series?
Speaker 2: A TV series, yeah.
Speaker 1: And are you participating in that?
Speaker 2: I am for the first time I decided that I
Speaker 2: wanted to have a hand in the process. So I'm
Speaker 2: working on developing that for television.
Speaker 3: Boy, what a different muscle you have to flex for that,
Speaker 3: isn't it? Or do you feel like it's sort of
Speaker 3: the same process.
Speaker 4: It's very different.
Speaker 2: I mean, part of it is obviously rooted in the
Speaker 2: same skill set.
Speaker 4: You know, it's about.
Speaker 2: Creating characters, it's about conveying emotion storytelling, and that is consistent.
Speaker 4: But television, film, you.
Speaker 2: Know, all of those media are all about visual storytelling,
Speaker 2: and everything has to be conveyed with a visual component.
Speaker 2: So that's entirely different from writing for the page, where
Speaker 2: there is no visual component and all of the description,
Speaker 2: all of the sort of interior conversation, is all on
Speaker 2: the page.
Speaker 4: So it's very very different.
Speaker 3: Now, I've had a couple of my books optioned, and
Speaker 3: you know, we got to the development stage and I
Speaker 3: remember having a discussion with the producer about the main
Speaker 3: character in the way that he was going to look,
Speaker 3: and we had different opinions on that. And so at
Speaker 3: what point do you have to let go of those
Speaker 3: sorts of things and just say.
Speaker 1: I need to stay in my own lane. And you know,
Speaker 1: once you.
Speaker 3: Once you sign that paper, they can do and you know,
Speaker 3: a lot of cases what they want to do with it,
Speaker 3: what they think is best.
Speaker 2: Well, I think the healthiest attitude is to let go
Speaker 2: right away option your work to people who you respect,
Speaker 2: and then step aside. I mean, if your ultimate goal
Speaker 2: is to maintain total control, you should probably not option
Speaker 2: your material to begin with. If what you want is
Speaker 2: to see the project develop, and you sign on with
Speaker 2: someone who you respect and who you think is smart,
Speaker 2: you have to go with the assumption that they're making
Speaker 2: decisions in the best interest of getting the project to
Speaker 2: move forward. And I've found that surprisingly easy. I feel like, look,
Speaker 2: I've written my work. I'm in a sense, I'm done. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you want to borrow my work and do something with it.
Speaker 4: I don't need to control that. That's your project.
Speaker 2: It's like loaning someone a piece of clothing and they
Speaker 2: wear it differently than you would wear it. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: you don't want to be in their room going no, no,
Speaker 2: you have to wear it with black tights and blue shoes.
Speaker 2: And if that's what you want, you shouldn't loan it.
Speaker 4: In the first place.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, Well, let's start talking about your book, which I
Speaker 3: know was published about what eight years ago, seven and
Speaker 3: a half years ago, but continues to have an afterlife,
Speaker 3: which we all hope for as authors.
Speaker 1: So that's good news for you.
Speaker 3: Let's start with the way that you think it makes
Speaker 3: sense to tell this story. Is it to sort of
Speaker 3: dig into the mystery of it and what happens, you know,
Speaker 3: from the very beginning, or is it to talk about
Speaker 3: you and libraries a little bit?
Speaker 1: What do you want to start?
Speaker 2: I guess it really is a bit of a hydra
Speaker 2: with many heads. The book began with my curiosity.
Speaker 4: About the day to day.
Speaker 2: Life of a big city library. It just struck me
Speaker 2: as an interesting story to tell that, to my knowledge,
Speaker 2: had never been told, which is like, what is it
Speaker 2: like day.
Speaker 4: To day in a library?
Speaker 2: And that was a very documentary sort of curiosity.
Speaker 4: I want to sort of.
Speaker 2: See the unfolding of life in a library and tell
Speaker 2: all of those little stories that weave in and out.
Speaker 2: Then I found out about this catastrophic fire that had
Speaker 2: occurred at the LA Library, which was the library I
Speaker 2: was going to write about, and it was the largest
Speaker 2: library fire in American history.
Speaker 4: It had occurred in nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 2: It destroyed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred
Speaker 2: thousand more. The library was closed for seven years after
Speaker 2: the fire, I mean the destruction and the extremely complicated
Speaker 2: process of rebuilding the collection of the library took a
Speaker 2: very long time. And the question, of course was who
Speaker 2: would set a library on fire? What would motivate you?
Speaker 2: You know, arson, Arson is a really interesting strange crime.
Speaker 2: It's usually done for money, or it's done by someone
Speaker 2: who has a pathological kind of fascination with fire, or
Speaker 2: it's done for revenge. Those are the three categories. There
Speaker 2: is no money to be gotten from burning a library.
Speaker 4: You know, those fires.
Speaker 2: Tend to be business owners who set their own business
Speaker 2: on fire to get insurance money, or you know, some
Speaker 2: version of that, and so's it's a particularly kind of
Speaker 2: funky crime because it's really trying to leverage their insurance
Speaker 2: money out of a business. Revenge you can understand, you know,
Speaker 2: somebody gets insulted by someone who owns a restaurant or
Speaker 2: a bar, and for revenge they set it on fire.
Speaker 2: That's also a sort of understandable kind of category. There
Speaker 2: are people who have the psychological fascination with fire, pyromaniacs
Speaker 2: who really are responsible for a lot of fires, frequently
Speaker 2: not in a place like the library, but you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of fires set in woods, fires set in
Speaker 2: smaller locations. And then of course it can escalate, and
Speaker 2: there have been many instances of people with psychological problems
Speaker 2: who have set a building on fire and people have
Speaker 2: been killed. It was a really interesting instance here in
Speaker 2: La where I live, of a whole rash of fires
Speaker 2: that were cropping up in the Glendale area.
Speaker 4: Nobody could figure it out.
Speaker 2: Finally, one of these fires was lit in a sort
Speaker 2: of home depot kind of store. The roof collapsed, two
Speaker 2: firefighters were killed, and the fire department, you know, were
Speaker 2: really activated to figure out.
Speaker 4: What is going on, We're having all of these arson fires. Well,
Speaker 4: who was it?
Speaker 2: It was a member of the fire department, in fact,
Speaker 2: a chief in the fire department, who was a firebug
Speaker 2: and who was setting all of these fires. He had
Speaker 2: written a novel about a fire captain who was a pyromaniac,
Speaker 2: and he was trying to sell it to get option
Speaker 2: to make a movie.
Speaker 4: I mean, this guy was hiding in plain sight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm not going to say that firefighters are pyramaniacs,
Speaker 2: but it's not the only time in the history of
Speaker 2: the world that a person a firefighter turned out to
Speaker 2: be someone who also had this pathological fascination with fire
Speaker 2: and to the degree that they were starting them. So
Speaker 2: circling back here, the question was, right, there's no insurance
Speaker 2: money to be gotten by burning.
Speaker 4: Down a library. Could it be revenge?
Speaker 2: I'm sure somebody was in the library and a librarian
Speaker 2: spoke harshly to him, and he set the library and fire.
Speaker 2: No one could remember an instance of having an interaction
Speaker 2: was someone that where they felt like this person was
Speaker 2: angry and going to create a problem. So you've got
Speaker 2: the issue of all right, it's somebody with the psychological problem.
Speaker 2: How do you solve that kind of crime. The entire
Speaker 2: city was invested in figuring this out. People took the
Speaker 2: burning of the library very personally. Yeah, I think it
Speaker 2: really stirred in people this sense that the library belonged
Speaker 2: to all of us and that someone damaging it was
Speaker 2: really damaging a communal property that people really cared about.
Speaker 3: Take me back to that day in nineteen eighty six
Speaker 3: in La How did this unfold that actual day? You
Speaker 3: know where there are sprinkler systems, When did did people
Speaker 3: smell the fire? And how many people you know tell
Speaker 3: me that whole detail.
Speaker 2: This day in April nineteen eighty six, it was a beautiful,
Speaker 2: clear day. The library at that point was not in
Speaker 2: good repair.
Speaker 4: They had a lot of fire code violations, mostly sort
Speaker 4: of insignificant things that were technical violations.
Speaker 2: They had a book cart sort of in the way
Speaker 2: of a fire exit and so forth. But also the
Speaker 2: wiring in the building was very old. The building was
Speaker 2: built in the nineteen twenties and it had been neglected.
Speaker 2: It was really overdue for a serious renovation, and a
Speaker 2: lot of the systems did not work well. For instance,
Speaker 2: if you plugged in a coffee maker, the lights would
Speaker 2: go out or you know it clearly, the wiring was
Speaker 2: faulty and way overloaded a building built in the twenties.
Speaker 2: There was no air conditioning because they didn't have enough
Speaker 2: power coming into the building. Also the structure of the building,
Speaker 2: and this is no longer the way libraries are built.
Speaker 2: But you know, tons of books in a library are
Speaker 2: in sort of deep storage. They're not all on the shelves,
Speaker 2: They're in what is known as the stacks.
Speaker 4: Back in the old days, the stacks were built like
Speaker 4: small rectangular.
Speaker 2: Rooms within the library, and they would go the entire
Speaker 2: height of the library, resembling a chimney, no ventilation. And
Speaker 2: in the case of the La Library, and this was
Speaker 2: typical at the time, there were not floors between the levels.
Speaker 2: Now a floor or ceiling. In the case of a fire,
Speaker 2: the fire starts on the first floor and is going
Speaker 2: upward and hits a ceiling, it's not going to continue upward.
Speaker 2: In the case of of the stacks in the library,
Speaker 2: it was seven stories and they were divided by wire grates,
Speaker 2: not solid floors, so it truly resembled a seven story chimney.
Speaker 4: So the morning unfolded just as any ordinary morning.
Speaker 2: It was about ten or eleven AM, and a fire
Speaker 2: alarm went off at that point in time. Because of
Speaker 2: all of these wiring problems, fire alarms went off all
Speaker 2: the time, and even though people.
Speaker 4: Had to evacuate, they did it very.
Speaker 2: Grudgingly because most of the time it was just some little,
Speaker 2: you know, coffeemaker threw as fuse and that was all
Speaker 2: it was. And you still had to evacuate the hundreds
Speaker 2: of employees, the hundreds of patrons, So everybody was a
Speaker 2: little slow to get out of the building. Everyone assumed
Speaker 2: entirely that this was another false alarm. The library was
Speaker 2: working on the adding a wing at the time, and
Speaker 2: the architect of the new wing was in the building
Speaker 2: having a meeting, and they all took this fire alarm
Speaker 2: so unseeriously that he left all the plans in the building,
Speaker 2: He left his hotel key, a lot of the librarians
Speaker 2: left their purses. You know.
Speaker 4: People were just like, oh god, this is such a headache.
Speaker 2: We have to go out, and we'll left to stand
Speaker 2: there for ten minutes. Fire department will come, they'll reset
Speaker 2: the alarm.
Speaker 4: That'll be it.
Speaker 2: So everyone finally leaves the building. The fire department shows up.
Speaker 2: You know there they've been at the library a million times,
Speaker 2: so there again is like trudging through the building, check around.
Speaker 2: There's no sign of anything amiss. They go to reset
Speaker 2: the fire alarm and it wouldn't reset. And they try
Speaker 2: again and again it wouldn't reset, which any of us
Speaker 2: who have ever reset the breaker in our house knows
Speaker 2: that if it's no big deal, all you do is
Speaker 2: flip the switch.
Speaker 4: So this would not reset.
Speaker 2: They thought, all right, well, we'll do another walk around
Speaker 2: because obviously there's something is wrong, which they assumed was
Speaker 2: a failure of the fire alarm system. They walk through
Speaker 2: the library again and finally notice a little thin thread
Speaker 2: of smoke in the fiction department, and they come around
Speaker 2: the corner and they see a fire that has begun.
Speaker 2: They were absolutely astonished. What's more, when you think about
Speaker 2: where a fire would have fuel, a library is maybe
Speaker 2: the most delicious place for a fire to begin. What's more,
Speaker 2: this fire had begun in the stacks, this tube that
Speaker 2: I was describing that instantly the fire shot up through
Speaker 2: the stacks, unstopped by floors because there were no floors,
Speaker 2: there were just those wire grates, and it climbed the
Speaker 2: seven stories of the stacks almost immediately. Because this was
Speaker 2: an old building, nobody had the drawings of the interior
Speaker 2: at the ready so that they could say, whoa, you know,
Speaker 2: this is a seventh story chimney. We've really got to
Speaker 2: get in there and get it stopped immediately or it's
Speaker 2: going to really blow up. So while they're trying to
Speaker 2: find the drawings for the building, which are hidden somewhere
Speaker 2: in the archives from nineteen twenty six, the fire is raging.
Speaker 2: It took off really quickly. You know, this is the
Speaker 2: perfect environment for a fire. Not only the stacks, but
Speaker 2: that is what fueled the fire and.
Speaker 4: Built it the intensity that it reached.
Speaker 2: At one point it was estimated to have reached twenty
Speaker 2: five hundred degrees. There is a quality when a fire
Speaker 2: is so hot that the air itself is on fire,
Speaker 2: and you know.
Speaker 4: That requires a fire having an enormous.
Speaker 2: Amount of fuel, having essentially the perfect condition for fire,
Speaker 2: and it found it in the library, book after book,
Speaker 2: just being devoured, nothing really to stop it. The fire
Speaker 2: doors that are now very typical in every building. They
Speaker 2: had not installed fire doors. You know, this was an
Speaker 2: old building and it was not up to the code
Speaker 2: that we would now expect a building to be. And
Speaker 2: because it was a municipal building and nobody was spending
Speaker 2: the money and nobody was really spending the time thinking
Speaker 2: about it, and you know, the city there were many
Speaker 2: discussions going on about maybe the building should get torn down.
Speaker 2: So there was a reluctance to invest in the building
Speaker 2: because there was a movement afoot to tear it down
Speaker 2: and replace it, sell the land, build up a library elsewhere.
Speaker 2: So you had essentially the perfect scenario for a fire.
Speaker 2: It burned for seven and a half hours, which is
Speaker 2: as anyone can imagine an enormous amount of time for
Speaker 2: a fire to be burning, but every time they would
Speaker 2: dampen it down in one part of the library, it
Speaker 2: would simply shoot through the building to another area and
Speaker 2: start burning. Fire's a really interesting element. Fire has a
Speaker 2: will to live that we normally associate with animate beings, plants, humans, animals.
Speaker 2: You know, this sort of I want to live kind
Speaker 2: of impulse. Fire has it too. Fire wants to keep burning,
Speaker 2: so if it's thwarted at one point, it will turn
Speaker 2: and look for other places to burn.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: Writing about this fire was really kind of spooky. It
Speaker 2: was as if it was this wicked creature, kind of
Speaker 2: racing through this building, evading the firefighters and finding hidden
Speaker 2: passages in.
Speaker 4: The building that they didn't even know existed.
Speaker 2: Because nobody had current plans for the building.
Speaker 4: I mean, in the animals of fire history.
Speaker 2: It would go down as one of the more perfect
Speaker 2: fires from the point of view of destructiveness of an
Speaker 2: environment that was so conducive to fire.
Speaker 3: I remember seeing what I think continues to be one
Speaker 3: of the most interesting movies to me, which was a
Speaker 3: huge commercial movie Backdraft, right, and it was the first
Speaker 3: time I had really seen it as sort of this
Speaker 3: rolling animal almost coming through. You know, I've written about smog,
Speaker 3: and you know, see it as that's sort of like
Speaker 3: an entity also. So let me ask you some basic questions.
Speaker 3: No sprinklers at all, I have to assume in the building.
Speaker 2: No sprinklers. You know, sprinklers at that time, in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty six were a pretty blunt instrument. If any little
Speaker 2: bit of smoke was detected, they would be set off,
Speaker 2: you know, and here you are in a library with
Speaker 2: water raining down on books.
Speaker 4: Essentially you're ruining the books. So in fact, in the.
Speaker 2: Tally of the books that were ruined, met all of
Speaker 2: the books that were damaged, or the majority of the
Speaker 2: books that were damaged were damaged by the water, not
Speaker 2: by I mean a lot of them were damaged also
Speaker 2: by smoke. And you know, and the four hundred thousand
Speaker 2: that were destroyed were largely the ones that were burned,
Speaker 2: but the water used to put out the fire. At
Speaker 2: some point they just thought, either we're going to save
Speaker 2: the building, or you know, that's our goal is to.
Speaker 4: Save the building.
Speaker 2: We cannot expect to save the books.
Speaker 4: So libraries were very loath.
Speaker 2: To have sprinkler systems, because just imagine someone lights a
Speaker 2: cigarette like absent mindedly and sets off this catastrophic you know,
Speaker 2: rain of fire. Sprinkler systems have gotten much better there
Speaker 2: might you know a lot of them use foam and
Speaker 2: not water. I mean, they've evolved. But remember that was
Speaker 2: a long time ago, nineteen eighty six. Yeah, sprinkler systems
Speaker 2: were probably new to the world at that point. I
Speaker 2: mean I don't remember when they were developed. But they
Speaker 2: did one thing, which was they basically triggered these sprinklers literally.
Speaker 2: But no, the library didn't have any, nor did they
Speaker 2: have any you know, they probably had fire hydrants around.
Speaker 2: I mean that was the extent of it, but that
Speaker 2: would have worked on a little tiny you know, somebody
Speaker 2: dropped a match and they're squirting fire hydrant foam on it.
Speaker 2: It was absolutely powerless. I mean, by the time they
Speaker 2: discovered this fire, it was way beyond that minor control.
Speaker 2: I mean, it not only required the fire department, but
Speaker 2: it nearly outmatched the fire department.
Speaker 3: So when they first discovered the fire, you said in
Speaker 3: the fiction section, was it clear what the origin was
Speaker 3: of the fire? I mean, did they look at this
Speaker 3: and say this does not look electrical. It looks like
Speaker 3: this was intentional based on where it started.
Speaker 2: Yes and no, yes they believe that. I mean the
Speaker 2: science of arson. And let me go on my little
Speaker 2: rant here about arsen Most of the learning about arson
Speaker 2: had been mainly sort of folk knowledge that was passed
Speaker 2: down from firefighter to firefighter, not based on science, not
Speaker 2: based on actual clinical studies. The area that's most burned
Speaker 2: is where the fire started. That was the thought.
Speaker 4: Well, we have learned in more.
Speaker 2: Recent time, with actual studies of fire, that that is
Speaker 2: not true. It may be where the fire started, but
Speaker 2: it is not necessarily where the fire started. So this
Speaker 2: is like the foundational belief of arson investigators, and that
Speaker 2: is wherever it's burned the most, that's where it started.
Speaker 2: There was a very famous case in Texas of a
Speaker 2: guy who was accused of setting his house on fire
Speaker 2: by lighting a fire under his children's beds, and the
Speaker 2: children died. He was sent to death row and he was.
Speaker 1: Executed Todd Willingham.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then some years later, through the advocacy of
Speaker 2: people who truly believed he was innocent, they were able
Speaker 2: to prove pretty much without a doubt that the fire
Speaker 2: had started in a habachi on their front porch, and
Speaker 2: of course it was too late. They had already executed him.
Speaker 2: And it was the first really dramatic exposure of there's
Speaker 2: nothing malicious in this misperception.
Speaker 1: It was believe you don't know what you don't know, right, And.
Speaker 4: There's just logic.
Speaker 2: Where it got burned the most is where it burned
Speaker 2: the longest, which means that's where it started.
Speaker 4: It's just not true.
Speaker 2: And you know, in the Library book, I talked to
Speaker 2: the guy who runs what is called the Arson Innocence Project,
Speaker 2: which is similar to the Innocence Project that looks at
Speaker 2: people on death Row and re examines their case. And
Speaker 2: in this case, you know, given that Arson increasingly has
Speaker 2: been reconsidered, the science behind it the way to prove cause,
Speaker 2: and it's very important to prove where it started.
Speaker 4: That is kind of essential.
Speaker 2: You know, if a fire started under a kid's bed
Speaker 2: where there's no electrical or no other cause, you can say, well, obviously,
Speaker 2: the only other person in the house must have lit
Speaker 2: a match under his kid's bed. But if you can
Speaker 2: say there was a hibachi that had live coals in
Speaker 2: the front porch, suddenly you have an absolutely obvious potential cause.
Speaker 4: So this isn't just.
Speaker 2: A matter of curiosity. It's actually extremely important to solving
Speaker 2: whether something is an arson at all or you know
Speaker 2: who did it and why, and you know what the
Speaker 2: whole story of the arsen is. In the case of
Speaker 2: the library, the area that was burned the most was
Speaker 2: this area in the fiction department. There were no wires,
Speaker 2: there were no there was no evident cause.
Speaker 4: So you have to say that it had.
Speaker 2: To be human, a human hand, which is the language
Speaker 2: that they use. It was a human hand because there
Speaker 2: were no wires, there were no fuses, there was you know,
Speaker 2: there was nothing where you could say, here's the potential cause,
Speaker 2: and that shows that it could have been truly an
Speaker 2: accident that nobody made happen. In this case, they said,
Speaker 2: the fire started here in the fiction section, and there
Speaker 2: was nothing near enough that could have triggered a fire.
Speaker 4: Therefore it was arson.
Speaker 2: Therefore we must look for the person who started it. Now,
Speaker 2: I will just sidetrack here to say that when I
Speaker 2: went to the Arson Innocence Project, I gave them all
Speaker 2: the material that I was able to gather from the
Speaker 2: fire department, the investigation, and while they didn't do a
Speaker 2: formal review, His take on it was I don't really
Speaker 2: see how this is arson.
Speaker 4: You have dozens of I don't want to say the
Speaker 4: library it was a fire trap, but it kind of was.
Speaker 2: It had known problems with wiring, which is very often
Speaker 2: the cause of an unexplained fire. You have tons of fuel.
Speaker 2: I mean, if the fire starts in the middle of
Speaker 2: a refrigerator, you know, you or some environment where there's
Speaker 2: nothing to burn, right, then you think, all right, that's crazy.
Speaker 2: How could the fire have started here? This wasn't a library.
Speaker 2: It's filled with paper. I mean the fire load, which
Speaker 2: is the terminology for sort of burnable material in a
Speaker 2: library is higher than literally anywhere except maybe a sawmill.
Speaker 2: You know, it's just absolutely stacked with burnable material that's
Speaker 2: very reachable by fire. But the fire investigators, and again
Speaker 2: I'm not trying to say that they were malicious or
Speaker 2: dumb or you know, they were going by the accepted
Speaker 2: standard of fire investigation, which said, look where it's burned
Speaker 2: the most, burn the most in the fiction sex nothing
Speaker 2: around that could have triggered it must have been arson. Now, look,
Speaker 2: a library is an open door. Anyone and everyone is
Speaker 2: welcome to the library. That's part of their glory. That's
Speaker 2: part of why they are such special institutions. Anyone can
Speaker 2: come into a library.
Speaker 4: That means that you.
Speaker 2: Can have people with ill intent coming into a library,
Speaker 2: and it's very different from a private home a private
Speaker 2: business where there's a lot of control.
Speaker 4: Over who comes in and out.
Speaker 2: Libraries by definition, are the ultimate democratic institution in our cities.
Speaker 2: Anyone can come in. A person who is a pyromaniac
Speaker 2: can come in. The scenario that developed was very logical,
Speaker 2: which is someone with a mental problem or who was
Speaker 2: just going to get a thrill out of seeing this
Speaker 2: big dramatic fire.
Speaker 4: Came in there, and maybe they.
Speaker 2: Even had a grudge against someone at the library, we
Speaker 2: don't know and dropped a match. I mean, look, it'd
Speaker 2: be pretty easy to start a fire in a library.
Speaker 2: So all of the focus turned immediately to who started
Speaker 2: the fire. There was very little investigation into can we
Speaker 2: find a car because that explains the fire where it
Speaker 2: wasn't an arson. There really was very little investigation, or
Speaker 2: I would venture to say no investigation into whether there
Speaker 2: was some other probable cause.
Speaker 4: Because once they.
Speaker 2: Decided the fire had started there in the fiction Stax,
Speaker 2: that was it. They were off to the races it
Speaker 2: was someone lighting a fire. They never found a match,
Speaker 2: they never found accelerant, they never found material evidence beyond
Speaker 2: saying the fire started here, and there's no other explanation
Speaker 2: than the fact that a person started it.
Speaker 3: You know, I remember interviewing David Grant about that piece
Speaker 3: that he wrote about Todd Willingham, and you know, I
Speaker 3: had read about it for a long time. My dad,
Speaker 3: who was a law professor in the head of the
Speaker 3: Innocence Project that UT, talked about that case. And what
Speaker 3: I remember David Grant talking about is the reason that
Speaker 3: they were proving that this was arson and that must
Speaker 3: have been Willingham was the pattern, like the spider like
Speaker 3: pattern that was on the glass. And to the you know,
Speaker 3: so called expert, this meant you only see that with
Speaker 3: an arson. And then you have an expert come along
Speaker 3: after Willingham's been executed, or actually I think it was
Speaker 3: right before he was executed, because this was an appeal
Speaker 3: and say this happens with home fires that are just accidental. Look,
Speaker 3: this is the pattern, and he can recreate it. And
Speaker 3: so learning about you know, what arson and what fires
Speaker 3: are capable of is so important because I would hate
Speaker 3: for it to be thought of as like a junk science.
Speaker 3: It shouldn't be thought of a junk science. But with
Speaker 3: that case with Willingham, it was alarming after that because
Speaker 3: then you know who are you supposed to trust. So
Speaker 3: they are on a mission. It sounds like to find
Speaker 3: an arsonist who maybe didn't exist, But do they have
Speaker 3: any kind of suspects or how do how do we
Speaker 3: even move forward when this is open to thousands and
Speaker 3: year thousands of people.
Speaker 2: And also I would like to point out, even though
Speaker 2: it's shocking to even imagine, there are no cameras filming
Speaker 2: people in nineteen eighty six. Now I don't know whether
Speaker 2: today there are security cameras. My guesses there are just
Speaker 2: not so much to film who is coming into the library,
Speaker 2: but for security purposes on the perimeter of the library.
Speaker 2: You do not log.
Speaker 4: In when you come into a library. You walk in.
Speaker 2: And that's part of the freedom that we all expect,
Speaker 2: which is you want to be able to go into
Speaker 2: a library and not be monitored and not have someone
Speaker 2: tracking what book you take out. I mean, that's very
Speaker 2: important to the principle of libraries, which is it's open
Speaker 2: to anyone and your privacy is protected. And this is
Speaker 2: a very important issue when you think about it. If
Speaker 2: the record of the books you checked out were open
Speaker 2: to public scrutiny, you lose a huge amount of privacy
Speaker 2: in a very real way. And a lot of people
Speaker 2: come to the library to take books out about something
Speaker 2: that they are sensitive about, and they fully expect that
Speaker 2: they're except for the librarian who checks the book out,
Speaker 2: it's a private matter. So I know it's hard for
Speaker 2: us in this day and age of endless security cameras
Speaker 2: and everything is filmed and you don't enter a building
Speaker 2: without checking in at.
Speaker 4: The front door.
Speaker 2: None of that is true in libraries now, but in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty six even less so there is no record
Speaker 2: of who was in the library that day. Now, you
Speaker 2: could say, well, that's too bad, because they could have
Speaker 2: narrowed it down. Yeah, but we're talking about it very
Speaker 2: important principle of privacy that I think is Luckily we're
Speaker 2: not talking about endless crime in libraries where we need monitoring.
Speaker 2: But this is a long way of saying that there
Speaker 2: was no record of who was in the library that day.
Speaker 2: I mean, all the librarians were interviewed, no one had
Speaker 2: seen anything. None of the librarians had smelled fire. They
Speaker 2: left the building because the fire alarm went off, and
Speaker 2: so there was no eyewitness. A few of them said, well,
Speaker 2: there was a guy, kind of an odd guy, and
Speaker 2: this guy is a kind of an odd guy, but
Speaker 2: you know nothing beyond he's our regular patron and he's.
Speaker 4: A bit of an odd guy.
Speaker 2: So the investigation would have been extremely unproductive but for
Speaker 2: the fact that a young man named Harry Peek, who
Speaker 2: was a want to be actor, a boastful kind of
Speaker 2: performative guy, began saying to people, did you see that
Speaker 2: big library fire?
Speaker 4: I started it?
Speaker 2: And you know, he was telling friends, he was bragging,
Speaker 2: and eventually one of his friends, because there was a reward,
Speaker 2: told the police. My friend Harry Peek says he started
Speaker 2: the fire. So Harry, you know, you could say, we
Speaker 2: know for a fact that Harry was guilty of the
Speaker 2: crime of being an idiot. I would say, if he
Speaker 2: started the fire, maybe not such a good idea to
Speaker 2: go around saying your friends, hey, guess.
Speaker 4: What, I started the fire.
Speaker 2: But lucky for us, a lot of criminals are really
Speaker 2: not very bright and tend to brag about their crime.
Speaker 2: But the problem is with someone who is a notorious
Speaker 2: fabulous Did he really start the fire or is it
Speaker 2: that it was the big event of the day and
Speaker 2: he'd liked placing himself at the center of it.
Speaker 4: There was no murder, right, There were no injuries.
Speaker 2: I mean a few of the firefighters were hospitalized in
Speaker 2: you know, the course of putting out the fire, the
Speaker 2: heat exhaustion, the typical issues that arise in terms of
Speaker 2: you know, their exposure to smoke, their heat exhaustion. But
Speaker 2: no one, I mean luckily, because the fire alarm went off.
Speaker 2: Everyone was well out of the building for probably forty
Speaker 2: five minutes before they found the fire.
Speaker 3: Well, these days, I would say, I don't know what
Speaker 3: they would have done in eighty six.
Speaker 1: But you would have to think the same thing.
Speaker 3: If you're convinced as an investigator that you've got someone
Speaker 3: you know who started a fire, and then you have
Speaker 3: somebody ragging about it, you bring that person in and
Speaker 3: you have them somehow confirm evidence right that you have
Speaker 3: not released. You know, So okay, you say you started
Speaker 3: the fire, how exactly did you do it?
Speaker 1: And I wonder how much.
Speaker 3: The arson investigators released to the LA Times or you
Speaker 3: know whoever. So that there was no holdback at all.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, in Harry's case, I mean one of his problems,
Speaker 2: and you know, I wish, as a crime consultant, I
Speaker 2: could have said to him, bad move to say you
Speaker 2: did it, even a worse move to have multiple alibis,
Speaker 2: which is how this unfolded. First he said that he
Speaker 2: was at his parents' house. Then he said he was
Speaker 2: in the library, but he didn't do it. Then he
Speaker 2: said he was actually having lunch with two friends, you know,
Speaker 2: across town, and you know, it's never a good look to.
Speaker 4: Have multiple excuses.
Speaker 2: Ultimately, these two friends did vouch for him having lunch
Speaker 2: with them, but both of these friends were very questionable.
Speaker 2: I would say that their vouching for him was about
Speaker 2: as slender a kind of alibi as he could possibly
Speaker 2: have had. Also, you think, if you really would with
Speaker 2: your friends, why would you have first said you were
Speaker 2: at your parents. And there was no record of him
Speaker 2: being at his parents for sure, because he claimed to
Speaker 2: have made phone calls while he was at his parents
Speaker 2: back in the day they were all landlines, it was
Speaker 2: very easy to see that there were no phone calls
Speaker 2: made from his parents house during that time. So boom,
Speaker 2: that alibi went out the door. He said he was
Speaker 2: in the library, but he didn't do it. That's not
Speaker 2: exactly an albi. That's like, yeah, I was there, but
Speaker 2: I didn't do it, even though I said I did.
Speaker 3: It, yeah, and no one could I d him. I
Speaker 3: have to assume nobody would I d him there. No
Speaker 3: one said oh yeah, I remember that guy.
Speaker 4: Oh right.
Speaker 2: Well, there was one woman who you know, everybody was
Speaker 2: leaving the library during the fire alarm, and so people
Speaker 2: were sort of hurrying out, and Harry said that he
Speaker 2: had been rushing and had elbowed a woman, an older lady,
Speaker 2: and then apologized to her on his way out.
Speaker 4: There was a woman.
Speaker 2: When she was interviewed who said, yes, somebody had pushed
Speaker 2: in front of her in the line going out. She
Speaker 2: didn't remember what he looked like, but she remembered someone
Speaker 2: had sort of pushed. Yes, that has like a little
Speaker 2: kind of tang of truth, but she couldn't identify him.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people leaving too.
Speaker 3: I mean, everybody's trying to get they're all pissed off,
Speaker 3: they're walking out the door. I mean, everybody's probably gonna
Speaker 3: get knocked in a little bit.
Speaker 2: Right exactly, So just saying Oh, yes, somebody kind of
Speaker 2: pushed ahead of me. If you've ever been evacuated from
Speaker 2: a building, I assure you there's a lot of pushing.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: Harry was a.
Speaker 2: Pretty noticeable guy. He was good looking, tall, blonde, you know,
Speaker 2: unlike a number of other good looking, young blonde guys
Speaker 2: in LA But he was somewhat distinctive. But nobody could
Speaker 2: absolutely say he was there. Now, the real question is
Speaker 2: did he do it? And if he did it.
Speaker 4: Why now.
Speaker 2: Most pyromaniacs begin demonstrating their pathology young.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's a real pathology.
Speaker 2: And these are the kids that, when they're nine and
Speaker 2: ten years old are starting fires. It's very, very unusual
Speaker 2: for an adult who has never demonstrated pyromania to suddenly
Speaker 2: have a you know, florid evolution of it at age
Speaker 2: twenty eight or what. I can't remember Harry's exact age,
Speaker 2: but he was in his twenties. It's just it's very rare.
Speaker 2: It's almost always something that kids begin demonstrating when they're kids.
Speaker 4: So that didn't.
Speaker 2: Hold with the usual understanding of pyromania.
Speaker 4: So let's say he's not a pyromaniac. He was just
Speaker 4: goofing around.
Speaker 2: That's a pretty big goof.
Speaker 4: Like Harry was.
Speaker 2: A fibber and a liar and a boaster. To me,
Speaker 2: starting a fire in a library is a different species
Speaker 2: of behavior than say, people, I'm up for a role
Speaker 2: in uh Hawaii five Ohm. Hm, you know that's a
Speaker 2: fib No one is harmed by it. He was not
Speaker 2: a destructive person, a person who had ever done it.
Speaker 2: He was a fuck up. Yeah, you know, he was
Speaker 2: a guy who boasted about his career in Hollywood. He
Speaker 2: was you know, he was one of those guys who's
Speaker 2: always got a story, he's always about to get a
Speaker 2: big role in a show. But he had never done
Speaker 2: anything that seemed like a prelude to such a truly
Speaker 2: anti social act.
Speaker 3: That would be an odd statement, I mean specifically at
Speaker 3: a library, which I mean maybe he was a smart guy,
Speaker 3: but it didn't seem maybe that unlike you. Maybe there's
Speaker 3: no personal I can't imagine there's a personal connection between
Speaker 3: Harry and libraries where you might make a statement about
Speaker 3: freedom of speech or or what you know, your ability
Speaker 3: to read whatever you want and privacy and all of that.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that is that does not really fit in
Speaker 3: with what you're thinking would be something Harry would do,
Speaker 3: which would be bragging that.
Speaker 1: He was in a film with Marlon Brando when he really.
Speaker 2: Wasn't right exactly. I mean the kinds of psychopathy that
Speaker 2: he that you expect from him was these boastful, ragged docio.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm really good friends now with Clint Eastwood.
Speaker 2: I'm going to be in a new movie with so
Speaker 2: and so, and again, I think it's important to say
Speaker 2: that no one was ever harmed by his FIBs. They
Speaker 2: were sort of silly, braggy kinds of statements. He was
Speaker 2: not a malicious person, a harmful person. Everyone I interviewed
Speaker 2: who knew him said, you know, he was like big kid.
Speaker 2: He was, you know, a Peter Pan, a guy who
Speaker 2: really pictured himself making it in Hollywood. Yeah, even though
Speaker 2: he had terrible stage fright, I mean there were there
Speaker 2: was something about him that seemed actually innocent.
Speaker 4: Starting a fire is such a leap.
Speaker 2: It's it's a pretty aggressive, pretty scary thing to do.
Speaker 3: And it's risky too, because you know what I've learned
Speaker 3: when I've been writing about ar since to cover up murders,
Speaker 3: I interviewed a forensic chemist and she said, people don't
Speaker 3: understand you're not lighting gasoline, you're lighting the fumes.
Speaker 1: That's what happens. It's the fumes that catch fire and
Speaker 1: spread everything.
Speaker 3: And so she said, people are so dumb when they're
Speaker 3: trying to cover up murders because they don't understand how
Speaker 3: to do it. A lot of the times the body
Speaker 3: is still there, it doesn't destroy everything. But like you said,
Speaker 3: it's the water firefighters, you know, coming in and putting
Speaker 3: out the fire that destroys evidence.
Speaker 1: But she said, it's not that easy.
Speaker 3: It's not You have to kind of know what you're
Speaker 3: doing in certain circumstances. Right to me, Harry seems like
Speaker 3: the kind of guy who, if he is going to
Speaker 3: go down the road of being a criminal, it would
Speaker 3: be more like grifter, you know, using his charm to
Speaker 3: fund his next film. Right, tell me where we land
Speaker 3: with all of this. Do you think so Harry is
Speaker 3: petrified at this point? I would hope that that he's
Speaker 3: going to go down for something that he just stupidly
Speaker 3: admitted to when he didn't do it.
Speaker 2: Right and the police did arrest him. The problem is
Speaker 2: they had no concrete evidence besides his boasting about it.
Speaker 4: And we all know that that's a pretty.
Speaker 2: Common phenomenon of people claiming to have done crimes, including
Speaker 2: really horrible crimes. Yeah, for reasons that have to do
Speaker 2: with their own desire for attention and so forth. And
Speaker 2: you know, the minute he got arrested, suddenly he was like,
Speaker 2: I didn't do it.
Speaker 4: I don't know why I said I did. He never
Speaker 4: quite explained why he said he did. But I think
Speaker 4: we can.
Speaker 2: Just assume that Harry liked to see himself at the
Speaker 2: center of every big event. The problem was the police
Speaker 2: truly had nothing to connect him, absolutely nothing. They had
Speaker 2: no eye witness sighting, no no fingerprint, nothing at all.
Speaker 2: I'm surprised that they were able to even arrest him
Speaker 2: given that they didn't have anything. They held him in
Speaker 2: jail until they couldn't and he was released because the
Speaker 2: fact is they didn't have anything on him. He then
Speaker 2: sued the city for defamation and ended up settling for
Speaker 2: a very small amount of money. I think the city
Speaker 2: was pursuing the case and was going to defend itself
Speaker 2: against his claim of false arrest and so forth. When
Speaker 2: it came to be known that he was dying of AIDS,
Speaker 2: the city decided, look, let's just settle this is not
Speaker 2: going to be good for the look for the city
Speaker 2: to be, you know, wrangling in court with this guy
Speaker 2: who's dying. And the amount of money they settled for,
Speaker 2: and I'm sorry I don't remember the exact amount, but
Speaker 2: it was a trifling you know, knowing the city sometimes
Speaker 2: settles for literally.
Speaker 4: Millions of dollars. It was under one hundred thousand.
Speaker 2: I think it was like thirty thousand dollars, which would
Speaker 2: be way less than it would have cost the city
Speaker 2: to continue fighting. And they really had lost their appetite
Speaker 2: for fighting, and Harry was happy to settle for this
Speaker 2: rather trifling amount. They never pursued another explanation for the arson,
Speaker 2: which I mean, look, they never pursued who killed Nicole
Speaker 2: Brown Simpson either. You know, when you have a case
Speaker 2: that supposedly you got wrong, often there's no follow up.
Speaker 2: And in this case, you know, they never had another suspect,
Speaker 2: and they never they never investigated whether they could find
Speaker 2: a physical explanation for the fire. And at that point
Speaker 2: the building was torn apart and being repaired, and there
Speaker 2: would have been no way to kind of trace another cause,
Speaker 2: to find an electric wire that had sparked, you know,
Speaker 2: so it was too late and at that point, you know,
Speaker 2: people were really focused on raising money to reopen the library,
Speaker 2: and I think the desire for accountability had kind of passed.
Speaker 2: That this episode was so dissatisfying to everybody, the prosecutors,
Speaker 2: the arsenal investigators, you know, nobody, nobody felt that they
Speaker 2: got an answer. And to this day I have to say,
Speaker 2: we really do have to live with this question, which
Speaker 2: was we really don't know. I think a very strong
Speaker 2: case could be made that it was not caused by
Speaker 2: an arsenist, or that it was caused by an arsenist,
Speaker 2: but we got the wrong guy. I've gotten a couple
Speaker 2: of letters from someone who claims that he knows who
Speaker 2: did it, that it's somebody who had a real beef
Speaker 2: with the library. And you know, I don't know how
Speaker 2: much credence to give this letter. It could be someone
Speaker 2: who's just mad at their brother in law or their
Speaker 2: poker partner, and yeah, he's saying, you know, he's but
Speaker 2: this was a guy who spoke angrily about the library.
Speaker 2: It will remain a municipal cold case. It's way past
Speaker 2: being possible to investigate it.
Speaker 3: I want to make sure we don't skip over this.
Speaker 3: Although I mean it's certainly worth reading. You know your
Speaker 3: aspect of this. This was an important story for you
Speaker 3: that I think you felt for personal reasons, right.
Speaker 4: It was very personal.
Speaker 2: I was raised going to the library all the time
Speaker 2: with my mom. I had really strong connections to those
Speaker 2: memories of going to the library with my mother in
Speaker 2: a way that would surprised me. It was so intense hmm.
Speaker 2: As I began the book, my mom was in the
Speaker 2: very early stages of Alzheimer's, and it progressed almost in
Speaker 2: tandem with my progress on the book. There's an expression
Speaker 2: in Senegal that when a person dies, you say their
Speaker 2: library has burned, and it was an expression that I
Speaker 2: found rather puzzling initially, so I thought, I don't see
Speaker 2: the parallel between a person dying in a library burning.
Speaker 2: Watching my mom loose her memory, though, made very plain
Speaker 2: to me the uncanny parallel between the human brain the
Speaker 2: sort of repository of our thoughts and memories and.
Speaker 1: What you can share with other people you know too.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and that in a sense it's organized very much
Speaker 2: like a library, or maybe the way to say it
Speaker 2: is that libraries are organized very much in a way
Speaker 2: that is brain like, where these connections. You know, we
Speaker 2: put books together by their connection to each other, and
Speaker 2: that when a.
Speaker 4: Person dies, the entire content of.
Speaker 2: Who they are and what they know and as you say,
Speaker 2: what they can share is gone. And when a library burns,
Speaker 2: a community experiences that same deficit, that this collected, shareable
Speaker 2: knowledge is gone, and all the stories that we have
Speaker 2: in common are gone.
Speaker 4: That became the.
Speaker 2: Sort of emotional centerpiece to me, and as a writer
Speaker 2: of books, I felt, you know, particularly connected to this,
Speaker 2: that books are the one durable evidence of what goes
Speaker 2: on in our heads.
Speaker 4: That we can point to a book and.
Speaker 2: There it is, and it's I just finished reading a
Speaker 2: memoir yesterday of someone who passed away a few years ago,
Speaker 2: and it was as if she were speaking to me
Speaker 2: and telling me her life story. And that endures. When
Speaker 2: she's gone, I'll never have a chance to talk to her,
Speaker 2: and yet she lives on. And in that sense, books
Speaker 2: have an immortality that is maybe unique in the human experience.
Speaker 2: And now, of course we have other media. We have
Speaker 2: people can film themselves telling their life stories. But it's
Speaker 2: essentially the same idea that we can create a record
Speaker 2: that outlives us, and in this case it even mostly
Speaker 2: outlived the destruction of an Arson. Not all the books
Speaker 2: were replaced. There were lots and lots of books that
Speaker 2: couldn't be replaced.
Speaker 4: But I Ray survived, and you know.
Speaker 2: Most of the contents were replaced or new contents were
Speaker 2: brought in, and we have that lives on long past
Speaker 2: this incident that destroyed it.
Speaker 3: If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
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Speaker 3: This has been an exactly right production. Our senior producer
Speaker 3: is Alexis m Rosi. Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.
Speaker 3: This episode was mixed by John Bradley. Curtis Heath is
Speaker 3: our composer. Artwork by Nick Toga. Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark,
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