An Unlikely Suspect: On The Trail of a California Serial Arsonist
PJ Phillips is a sheep farmer in the Capay Valley, a rural stretch northwest of Sacramento. When his parents called him at 3:00 a.m., he assumed it was about a sick animal. It was September 2006, and the sky was lit by an orange glow. Their ranch was on fire.
When the winter rains stop in California, the state becomes a tinderbox. But investigators say there was something different about the way this fire was started: they suspected arson.
California’s wildfires are getting bigger. Most of them are started by accident, but some fires are set on purpose, and the arsonists who start them are really hard to catch.
Reporter Teresa Cotsirilos brings us the story of how investigators caught one of them. It took two years and dozens of people to track him down, and the case is now considered one of California’s exemplary wildland arson investigations.