and continuing again....

continuing.... :

Of course, there are those that just start fires just to start fires. Such example is Raymond Lee Oyler who is notoriously known to have caused the Esperanza Fire. Occurring on October 26, 2006, a wildfire broke out during a Santa Ana windstorm and destroyed about 40,200 acres of land and resulted in the death of five firefighters. Protecting an unfinished house above Cabazon, the winds quickly pushed the fire into the firefighters, claiming the lives of three firefighters. The fourth and fifth firefighter died after being rushed to the hospital after suffering 90 percent of their bodies burned. The wildfire also destroyed 34 houses, 20 other buildings, and damaged State Route 243. The fire was officially controlled and put down the next day on October 30th. Claimed to be one of the worst wildfire in California, reparations were planned to cost more than $9 million. However, the police were lucky enough to have an informant inform them that when he talked to Oyler about a visible flame in the mountains, Oyler said that the fire was the way he had expected to happen. The police were able to then test and discover that the cigarettes left on the ground from two prior wildfires were matched to Raymond Lee Oyler’s DNA. Prompted to suspect that Oyler was also related to Esperanza Fire, they were subjected to search for and arrest Raymond Lee Oyler. After being found at his house and arrested for the other two previous fires that he caused, the police were then able to find “a wig, latex gloves, cigarettes, black spray paint, and a partially burned slingshot that Hestrin [the Riverside County Deputy District Attorney] said was used to launch incendiary devices into the brush.” Only then did other informants address the police that they have seen a man matching Raymond Lee Oyler’s description. Oyler was charged with 19 counts of arson and 16 counts of possession of incendiary devices. Although Oyler pleaded not guilty on all charges and claimed that he was at an Indian casino and that he was tending to his daughter at his family’s apartment, the jury found him guilty on all charges and Raymond Lee Oyler was sentenced to death, the first arsonist to receive the death penalty.