Arsonist's Portrait

Ricki A. has spent several years in prison for serial arson. The tall, thin Hispanic male, 29 years old and gay, has set hundreds of fires. He was instrumental in making Fresno the “arson capital of California” until his arrest and incarceration. The fire and the men who fight the flames sexually motivate him. He likes to visit fire stations, meet the firemen, and learn all he can about the fire equipment and fire districts. Ricki has memorized all the boundaries of each fire district in Fresno. He sometimes set two fires in a district to cause more excitement. He watched the fire, and in his fantasies, he directed the firefighters in their work. Ricki collected a box of souvenirs from his 23 major fires and buried them in Fresno. He [Page 33]often drives by the area and thinks about digging up the trophies.

Ricki has a long history of other crimes, including prostitution at the age of 15, theft of a police car, fraud, sexual assault, burglary, impersonation of a police officer, and assault. He set fires in Fresno over an 11-year period, beginning at age 12 with trash fires and escalating to burning down businesses at night. No one was ever killed, although several persons were forced to evacuate an apartment complex when one of his fires spread out of control.

Indeed, there are no acceptable excuses for Ricki's criminal behavior, but there are reasons. Although highly dangerous today, he was once a true victim. His father abandoned the family when Ricki was a small child. When he was 5 years old, a neighbor sexually molested him and continued to do so for several years. The man subdued the boy into compliance by threatening to harm his own dog. He also abused the boy, for example, by inserting the barrel of a gun into the boy's rectum and pulling the trigger. Then, at age 14, Ricki was raped by a 24-year-old male he met while making crank phone calls.

Today, Ricki is a friendly, talkative person but masks tremendous anger toward his mother for not protecting him from the neighbor and for not meeting his childhood emotional needs. He had craved attention so badly that abusive attention seemed better than none at all. Having been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, Ricki is now on parole and takes medication, seeing his parole officer and psychiatrist once a month. He has great difficulty in finding work because most employers will not risk having an arsonist in the building. Ironically, Ricki never sets fires to places he is personally affiliated with, such as school, home, and work.

Unfortunately, the prognosis for Ricki is not good. He harbors pathological attitudes and behaviors and still maintains his interest in fire, collecting fire memorabilia and admitting to having urges and fantasies about starting fires, especially when he becomes stressed and anxious. He frequently calls the author (E.H.) at times like this, just to talk. As a way of coping with his fire fantasies, Ricki now volunteers for the American Red Cross. In this capacity, he often gets to help out at the sites of fire emergencies, where he is in close contact with the fires and the firemen fighting them. For now, this seems to appease his personal desire to act out by setting his own fires.

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